Flight 666 (Moment of Death) Read online

  “Single white female, Sarah Loth, twenty-six years old. Multiple contusions, broken bones, and internal bleeding.”

  She was in a room, blindingly lit. She felt herself being prodded and poked, felt needles slipping into her veins, connections to monitors pasted onto her skin. Her body began convulsing, and her muscles went rigid. Pain threatened to split her apart and drive her mad. The shaking stopped and Sarah passed out and into another vision.

  “Who is she, Gabriel?” Sarah demanded as she glared at her fiancé across the marble floor of their two-story beachfront mansion in Malibu. “I want a name!”

  “Sarah, for the last time, I’m not sleeping around. I work long hours. You know that. What do you want from me?”

  “I want the truth, Gabriel. Is it another one of your prostitutes? Is it your ex-wife? I’m sick of being neglected, and I’m sick of being lied to.”

  “That’s pretty funny coming from the queen of lies and neglect. But I’ll give you the truth, Sarah. I’ve been spending as many hours at the hospital as I can, because I can’t stand the thought of coming home to you and your lazy, indolent ways. I’m sick of us.”

  “How dare you call me lazy and indolent?” Sarah raged. “Who made dinner for you just last—two weeks ago?”

  Gabriel laughed at her. “It was three weeks ago, and you ordered it, you didn’t make it. I’m not an idiot, Sarah. You fooled me for a while, but you don’t fool me anymore.”

  The argument went downhill from there, finally ending when Sarah threw a wineglass across the room at Gabriel’s head. He ducked and it smashed into the cobblestone hearth.

  “Do you want me to leave?” she asked tearfully, but the tears, of course, were as artificial as her eyelashes and fingernails.

  “Yes,” Gabriel answered. “And don’t come back.”

  So she left—with his precious Maserati. She had raced down their street at ninety miles an hour and had forgotten about the speed bump. When she hit it, she vaulted straight up out of her seat. She landed back hard as the tires reconnected with the pavement, and she seemed to slip through the seat and through the floorboards and into a dark vortex. When she stopped spinning she was back on the hospital gurney.

  “Clear,” the doctor said. A jolt of electricity seared her body, seemed to tear it apart. She faded once again into blessed unconsciousness.

  In the next instant, Sarah felt the wind in her hair as she raced the Maserati up into the hills. Taking a curve at top speed, she lost control and flipped the sports car, tumbling into the ravine below. She heard the terrifying crunch of the car slamming into the ground and her bones shattering, but she felt herself continue to fall, into another whirling vortex and onto an operating table.

  “Clear,” she heard repeated once again. “She’s stable, doctor.”

  “Prep for emergency surgery.”

  Sarah felt a glimmer of hope. She was still alive, and they were trying to save her.

  “We’ll salvage her organs and meet our quota.”

  A wave of nausea passed through her when she heard those words. She wanted to get up, but she couldn’t move.

  “I don’t think we should administer anesthetic, doctor,” the nurse said.

  “Good point,” the doctor said. “We don’t want to pollute the organs.”

  “Actually, what I meant was that she doesn’t deserve anesthetic,” the nurse replied. “I know this woman. She’s a lazy, gold digging, waste of space who started sleeping with my husband, Gabriel, two years ago.”

  The doctor nodded and dismissed the anesthesiologist and anesthetist. “But we’ll need a few more orderlies to hold her down.”

  Moments later, Sarah felt at least a half dozen pairs of hands pressing on her shoulders and forehead, her legs and feet. Her heart was hammering so hard she thought it might burst through her chest.

  “Everybody ready?” she heard the doctor ask.

  The next thing she heard was the sound of a buzzing saw.

  Sarah forced her eyes open again, hoping she could beg for mercy with her eyes. The doctor had Aryan blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a tiny scar along his left cheek.

  “It looks like our little patient is awake,” the doctor said. He turned off the saw.

  Sarah let out a long sigh.

  The nurse picked up Sarah’s left hand and tried to twist off the diamond engagement ring Gabriel had given her. It wouldn’t come off.

  “What is it, nurse?” the doctor asked.

  “Poetic justice,” the nurse replied. “My ex-husband”—she turned to Sarah then and smiled—”who’s coming back to me, gave her this ring. But since their engagement is now as dead as she’s going to be, I’m taking it. It’ll finance our second honeymoon.”

  “Excellent,” the doctor replied as he turned on the saw again. He straightened Sarah’s ring finger and, in one deft motion, sawed it clean off.

  The pain was excruciating as the finger stump spewed out blood in pulsing spurts.

  “Let’s get started, then, shall we?” the doctor said.

  “What parts are we after, doctor?” the nurse asked.

  “All of them. I’ve got a buyer waiting for her heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver. We’ll put the rest up for bids.”

  The sound of the saw increased in pitch to a high whine, and then suddenly changed as the doctor sank the blade into her side. Please, no! Sarah screamed inside her head.

  The awful sound ceased, and the doctor handed the saw to an assistant. Then he thrust his hand into her side and tugged at her liver. Sarah heard a squishing sound.

  “Snip there, and there, nurse,” the doctor said, before pulling her liver free from its cavity.

  Sarah’s body was on fire, but she was still conscious and could feel every cut, tug, slice, and snip as the doctor removed every usable organ. Please just let me die, she thought.

  Finally, the doctor buried the saw blade into the center of her chest. The pain, already unimaginable, doubled, but still she remained conscious. Only when the doctor cracked her breastbone wide open did she begin to slowly fade. She could feel air entering her chest cavity as the beat of her heart began to slow. It finally stopped when the doctor removed her heart from her body.

  Sarah’s head rolled to the side and came to rest against Tony Tulgrin’s shoulder as death finally took her.

  Tony was surprised when the young woman next to him—Sarah she had said her name was—put her head on his shoulder. She hadn’t seemed especially friendly, so this was a welcome development, even if she was sound asleep. He glanced down at her. She reminded him of the type of girl his half-brother Gabriel always dated, the ones Tony could only dream about. He hadn’t seen Gabriel in more than ten years, since the day he’d married that Asian chick. Tony hadn’t appreciated Gabriel’s best man making fat jokes at the wedding reception, and he liked it even less when his brother didn’t defend him. Gabriel the big-shot doctor was always trying to prod Tony into losing weight, as if it were his own fault, as if he could do something about it. It was better to cut his ties rather than listen to unwanted advice bordering on ridicule.

  Tony looked around at the nearby passengers. Most were asleep and no one was watching him. He moved slightly and let the young woman’s head settle against him more comfortably. He hadn’t been this close to a woman in years, and he was enjoying it almost as much as a bucket of French fries or a carton of ice cream. He snuggled in as close as he dared, hoping she wouldn’t awaken.

  He looked around again. Nearly everyone was asleep or reading or engaged in quiet conversation. Taking care not to make any noise or disturb the sleeping beauty next to him, Tony slowly lifted his arm and draped it around Sarah’s shoulders. She didn’t stir. Tony held her tighter. She was oblivious, so he began to stroke her left arm lightly. He thought he might be falling in love.

  He’d been in love only once before, when he was in his teens. But that love turned to rage when he found out that the reason the girl had gone out with him was because she’d lost a bet,
and he was the booby prize. That’s when he turned to food for comfort and watched his body turn to flab as his weight soared to scale-busting heights. He’d been a heavy child, fond of food practically before he’d left the womb, and he developed a talent for leveling insults at other kids before they could do the same to him. He became an accomplished school bully, and his threats to sit on his enemies kept most of his would-be antagonists at bay.

  That sorry history had pretty much precluded any chance at intimacy, yet he had never stopped yearning for it. But mostly he yearned for food. His one other chance at a real relationship, when he was in his twenties, had been destroyed not by his carnal appetite but by his physical cravings. So he might as well take advantage of the pleasant situation in which he currently found himself.

  He gazed at Sarah, took in every inch of her, from her high cheekbones and angular facial features to the mesmerizing curves of her body. He closed his eyes and began to fantasize. In his daydream, he was about to do something with Sarah that he’d never done with any woman he hadn’t paid for. And then his stomach rumbled. He sighed as the hunger pangs took hold, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in at least an hour. He opened his eyes and was gratified to see that the flight attendants had begun their rounds.

  He closed his eyes again and snuggled closer to Sarah, hoping the activity in the aisle wouldn’t wake her up. His stomach rumbled again, and he worried that the growling and grumbling signaling his hunger might be loud enough to wake her. But she was still sleeping blissfully. He looked around and then ran his tongue up her ear. It reminded him of a dried apricot, which reminded him of food and his lack of it. His heart raced, but whether it was because of the proximity of the tiny goddess next to him or the approaching snack cart, he wasn’t sure.

  “What would you like to drink, sir?” the attendant whispered to Tony, taking care not to wake the woman seated next to him.

  “A can of cola and two bags of peanuts,” Tony whispered back. “And the same for my girlfriend here. In case she wakes up.”

  The attendant handed him the beverages and snacks as well as his dinner menu.

  “How soon will you be serving dinner?” Tony asked.

  “Not for several hours, sir. I’ll be back to collect your order after I make my rounds.”

  “No need,” he replied. “I’d like the ham. And she’ll have the same.”

  Tony finished the sodas and the peanuts and settled down to wait for dinner and indulge in his fantasies about Sarah. He imagined them lying together on a beach at night under the stars as waves rolled in and then slowly receded. There was a fire pit nearby, with a pig roasting over it, and he could almost smell the tantalizing aroma rising from the meat. In his daydream, Sarah was nude, her perfect body glowing in the moonlight.

  Back in the real world, she was still asleep, her head still nestled on his shoulder. He picked up the blanket from the unoccupied aisle seat and put it over them. He pulled his arm away from her shoulders and put it under the blanket, then began stroking her thigh.

  He began to sweat. His rising temperature made the tiny woman seem slightly cool to the touch.

  He closed his eyes and returned to his fantasy, where Sarah, still naked, was sitting on his lap and feeding him dripping chunks of meat and pungent chili dogs and candy bars the size of a billiard table.

  Back in the real world again, he was seized by a jolt of heartburn. He removed his hand from his love slave’s thighs so he could open the roll of antacid tablets he always carried in his pocket. He chewed four of them, one after the other, wishing they were cherry-filled chocolate bonbons instead of chalky-tasting acid reflux medicine.

  He was getting really hungry. His hunger pangs were overwhelming his sex fantasy. He closed his eyes and tried to focus his mind on that roasting pig, and he thought about his brother’s Hawaiian wedding ten years ago. It had been a luau, the only one Tony had ever been to. He heard the crackling fire and the soft sounds of a Hawaiian song and the voices of the wedding guests. Maybe Sarah would be there this time, hanging on his arm and looking up at him with love and admiration.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. As he stared, the color drained from her face. He gasped and then recoiled in horror as the flesh melted away, revealing a skull with hollow eye sockets, glowing red, staring back at him.

  He screamed and tried to stand up, but he seemed to be paralyzed. He felt a spinning sensation and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make it stop, but his mind began to whirl faster. He held his breath until the spinning slowed down and stopped. He was breathing heavily. Music filled the air as he heard the soft sounds of Hawaiian music in the distance. A tropical version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was being strummed on multiple ukuleles.

  Tony opened his eyes again. It was nighttime, and he was standing on a secluded beach at the wedding luau he had attended ten years earlier. There were all the familiar faces he hadn’t seen for so long, friends and family members, Gabriel’s colleagues, Gabriel’s wife’s family and friends. And there was Gabriel himself, and his new bride and best man, standing in the middle of a sea of people.

  Tony walked from the beach toward the crowd to say hello to the people he knew. The throng hadn’t seemed very far off, but the more he walked the less progress he seemed to make. He felt someone come alongside him, and he stopped and turned. She was tall and beautiful, and she was smiling at him. He smiled back. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around. Another woman was there smiling at him. Other women were walking toward him now, all smiling and cooing as if he were a celebrity or a long-lost lover just returned home from a long journey. Soon he was surrounded by beautiful women putting their hands on him and stroking him like a puppy. And best of all, the air was filled with the smell of a feast.

  And there was Sarah, cavorting on the wet sand down by the water’s edge. He smiled and called out to her. “Hey, Sarah, remember me?”

  But she ignored him, choosing instead to gaze out toward the ocean, now and then bending her knees to dip her hands into the ocean and splash seawater into the air in a glittering moonlit spray.

  The women surrounding him begged for his attention. He let them paw him all over, and when he glanced back toward the ocean, Sarah was gone. As he felt the tingling touch of a dozen beautiful women, he decided he didn’t care about Sarah. Soon the women were feeding him grapes and slices of pineapple from a basket-laden table that had magically appeared. They continued to fondle him as they fed him.

  The women led him to a straw cot out on the sand and gently forced him to lie down and look up at the stars. Women knelt beside him from all around, still feeding him, still fondling him, rubbing his thighs, massaging his chest, and licking the juice that ran down the side of his neck. His heart raced and his nerves fluttered from the thrill. It was almost too much to bear.

  “Please, ladies, please, there’s enough of me to go around,” he said, as they continued their ministrations.

  “We’re counting on it,” one of them said.

  He was stuffed full, even to the point of pain, yet they kept the food coming. “No more, ladies, please, I’ve had enough food,” he said at last, words he never thought he’d hear himself say.

  The women nodded and then grasped his arms and pulled him unsteadily to his feet.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as the women led him toward a path made of wood planks like a narrow boardwalk that led away from the luau and into a stand of dense foliage.

  “You’ll see,” one of them said, caressing his arm. All he wanted to do was sleep, but the dozen women bore him along as if he were a piece of driftwood floating on the tide.

  The wooden stairs ended at a round deck. In the center of the deck sat a hot tub.

  “Climb in,” one of them said as they all nudged him forward. The water was refreshing and once he had plunged in, several women followed. One ducked her head under the water and resurfaced with his swim trunks. The thought of being nude while surrounded by beautiful women aroused him
tremendously.

  The women still outside the whirlpool parted and Tony saw Sarah standing there naked. Without a word, the tiny woman climbed into the hot tub and mounted Tony. She pulled his face toward hers and kissed him, shoving her tongue down his throat.

  He felt a quick, sharp pain. Sarah smiled and held up a ten-inch needle in front of his face. Numbness began spreading over his body. Soon his limbs were paralyzed and all he could do was open and close his eyes and take short, shallow breaths.

  Sarah and the other women got out of the hot tub. Sarah flipped open a box on the side of it and turned a knob. The water began to heat. Sweat began to pour out of Tony’s face as bubbles began to surface on the water that surrounded him. Women began to baste his face, shoulders, and arms with a buttery liquid. Others cut carrots, diced potatoes, and sliced onions, tossing them into the water as they worked. Tony had never felt such heat, and it was getting worse. Every nerve ending was screaming as the water reached a full rolling boil. He knew he should be dead by now, and through the excruciating pain he wished dearly for the ultimate fate to befall him. But he was still very much alive.

  “Soup’s done,” said a woman who had kissed him and fondled him while they languished and luxuriated in the hot tub less than twenty minutes earlier. “Time to prepare the main course.”

  Four men suddenly appeared. They grabbed Tony and heaved his naked body from the hot tub. They dropped him to the ground, and Tony looked up at them. He shuddered inside. He recognized each one.

  The men hauled Tony back up and bent him over a rail. He felt a sharp shaft thrust into him, up between his buttocks and out through the top of his skull. Tony screamed as he was impaled on the sharpened pole, felt every inch of it as it ripped through his insides and up into his neck and through his brain and skull. Yet he was still alive.

  The men grabbed each end of the shaft and carried him back down the board path. He wished he could die or at least pass out, but his consciousness was alive with agony. He stared at the path, then the sands as the men carried him along.