Dr. Matthew Heller was just getting into his car when his cell phone rang.
He looked down and saw the word "Molly" flash and then made the conscious decision to ignore it.
He didn't like to talk to Molly so soon after being with Cathy.
For him, it was like listening to road work and traffic jams after a three-hour hot stone massage in a fragrant, darkened grotto.
It wasn't just abrasive, it was exhausting.
All the guilt, all the questions...way too much right after his time with Cathy.
Young, supple Cathy.
God, what a lay...
Yeah, he wasn't taking any calls from Molly for a bit.
It wasn't that he didn't love his wife...no; no, he supposed he didn't love his wife.
She was just getting so...hm.
So 40.
Ever since she had turned 40, she'd just been acting so...well, 40.
She was shriller, faster to enrage.
And she cried far too much for the wife of someone who made as much as he did.
There were times when he thought there was almost an unspoken agreement that he'd earned a little Cathy, but then he thought of bringing that up in a court of law with two lawyers, a judge and his wife present.
"You see, Your Honor, I just figured that I'd sort of done my job as far as Molly was concerned and that I was due for some enjoyable sexual contact, some mind blowing sex with a younger woman...you understand...?"
He smiled.
"Of course I understand, Dr. Heller, now if you'll just give half of all you own to your shrewish, forty year old bitch of a wife, you may continue to bang your tight young lady friend."
Fuck that.
Fuck that right there.
He sighed.
Fine, I don't deserve it...Jesus...what was the problem?! Molly wasn't frigid, but sex with her was just...so...joyless. How could sex be joyless?! And how could Molly not want to have sex with me?! Not to be immodest, but I am in great shape! She should be happy to have someone as virile as me! Even Cathy says I fuck like a twenty year old! What forty year old wouldn't want that?
Molly.
Molly wouldn't.
He sighed again.
If this was all just misery, then why the hell was he still with her?
Timmy.
Timmy was why.
They were together and would stay together because of Timmy.
They promised to stay together for Timmy when he was born and it sure had been easy to say that.
But seven years later?
Time does indeed wound all heels.
He and Molly had both come from divorced homes and, man, did that do a number on a kid.
They would be together forever, for Timmy.
Simmering and seething in each other's presences until...high school? College?
God, was that ever a depressing prospect.
Stuck with Molly for another fifteen years.
Stuck with her until he was fifty two.
Christ...
He was good looking and virile enough at thirty seven to catch and hold onto Cathy (she was in deep and he knew it), but when he was fifty two?
He just didn't know.
Could he stick with it?
If he did, he might just be staring down that slippery slope in front of him with nothing to show for it but a well adjusted son.
On the other hand, he could just cut and run.
It was no guarantee that Timmy would go through the same things that he and Molly had...
No.
He couldn't do that.
He wouldn't.
He would suffer in silence, keep banging Cathy until...well, until something happened.
Eventually, something always happened.
He was pulled from the rat run of his thoughts by a sudden itching on the side of his right hand.
He scratched without looking and blinked when the fingers of his left hand came away sticky.
He looked down and saw a thick, yellow fluid on them.
"What in the fucking shit is that?"
A horn honked, startling him.
He'd been drifting into the other lane.
He straightened the wheel and glanced down at his right hand.
He swallowed hard.
The area where that woman had bitten him was oozing pus.
"Fuck me."
He pulled over to the shoulder, hit his hazards and began rifling through his glove box, looking for a roll of gauze.
He found it and wrapped it several times around the seeping wound before tearing it with his teeth and applying a small piece of surgical tape.
The bite was still itching.
He picked up his phone and was dialing Brookhaven to find out if the results from her autopsy had come in yet, to find out what this was when, again, a horn drew him out of himself.
He looked up just in time to see a skidding black SUV explode a man standing in the middle of the road.
"Jesus Christ!" he screamed in a high voice.
He dropped his phone and got out just as another car slammed into the back of the SUV.
He saw the driver burst through the windshield, bounce off the roof of the SUV and land in a heap on the road in the red puddle that had been the man the SUV had struck.
Everything was driven from his mind as the doctor inside him took the controls.
He could tell the person who had just been launched from the second car was D.R.T. based on the way he'd landed, he'd seen the dull gleam of bone yawn out from the neck, and the man the SUV had struck was more liquid than solid, spread thickly over about twenty yards of the road, but he noticed another body lying off to the side.
Maybe someone was thrown from the SUV?
He looked both ways to make sure there was nothing coming and saw that the next vehicle was at least a half mile down the road.
He raced to the prone figure and knelt by its side.
He saw it was a beautiful brown skinned woman whose throat had been shredded, utterly pulped.
"God..." he muttered.
He stood motionless for a moment and then returned to his car to call the police.
He'd dropped the phone on the passenger side floor mat when the SUV had hit the man and, when he bent down to retrieve it, his vision was momentarily clouded with billowing curtains of grey. His knees buckled and he sat down hard on the seat, biting his tongue.
The curtains drew back and his vision returned to normal. He bent, picked up the phone and dialed 911.
It rang once and then a cold, metallic voice informed him that all the circuits were busy at the moment and to try back later.
"Fuck..." he hissed.
He dialed Brookhaven's ambulance dispatch only to receive the same message.
"Fuck!"
The world swam before his eyes again and he lowered his head to the steering wheel.
He noticed the "new voice message" blinking on his phone and, slowly, pressed 1, breathing deeply the whole time.
"Calm down...slow, deep breaths--"
His voice cut off when he heard the first thing Molly said and then his eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat when he heard the next thing Molly said.
She knew about Cath.
She knew about the heroin.
"Ohmotherfucker." Matt blurted all at once.
He hung up the phone, slammed the door and swung the car back onto the road, just barely registering the black woman standing by the side of the road as he flew past her.
I guess her throat wasn't shredded per se...
Yes it was and you know it was said a voice in his mind shredded, utterly pulped.
Fuck it.
He had bigger problems at the moment.
I've got to get home before--
"Ow." he said out loud.
He looked down at the makeshift bandage on his hand and his mouth went dry.
The gauze was now clotted with a virulent paste of dark red blood and feverish yellow green pus.
"Thass...infession." he muttered.
Matt swallowed, but his mouth remained as dry as ashes.
He tried to speak again but his tongue only twitched in his mouth like a slug.
"Fut." he managed.
His hand twinged again.
It felt like needles boring under his skin.
"Agh!" he barked.
He looked down at it again and saw the wrappings dripping with thick fluid.
This wasn't just blood or pus...this was...brown...this was...
For the third time in just about as many minutes, a blaring horn jerked him out of his thoughts.
He looked up into the twin suns which filled his vision and opened his mouth to say something.
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