Free Dying Memories by Dave Zeltserman

hour on impact. The front of the SUV was demolished, the middle of the van caved in. Ironically, the two thugs in the van had protected Bill, acting almost as human air bags. Bill moved slowly backwards, observing the damage, then watched as the driver’s side door to the van opened and a man crawled out. The man’s face was a bloody mess. A paneled partition had separated the back of the van from the driver’s compartment,  so Bill hadn’t been able to see the driver earlier, and with the condition that the man’s face was left in Bill still couldn’t get a good enough look at him to be able to identify him later. That didn’t matter. He watched almost mesmerized as the man crawled on all fours, then pushed himself to his feet. The spell was broken when the man pulled a gun with an attached silencer from out of his jacket. Bill took a couple of unsteady steps backwards before turning and running, making the same sort of quick zigzagging movements he was trained to do during his time in the army. He wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination or not, but he thought he felt something whiz by his ear as he turned a corner, the sound almost like a fly buzzing. After that he ran harder. He ignored a burning in his chest and a growing lightheadedness as he raced down three blocks before darting into a small grocery store.
    For several minutes he stood frozen inside the store, his hands on his hips while he sucked in air, all the while watching the street for any of the men who had tried abducting him. When he was satisfied that they weren’t coming after him he reached for his cell phone, then remembered he had left it in his car, as well as his laptop. Swearing softly to himself, he turned and saw that people in the store were watching him with a mix of curiosity and fear, probably thinking he was either crazy or dangerous or both. He approached the cashier and asked her if he could use the phone. “I need to call the police,” he said.

Chapter 18

    After years of scrimping, Emily and her mom saved enough for her graduate studies so that with along with what she earned from the university by teaching an undergraduate course each semester, she was able to cover half of her costs for her college tuition and living expenses. The other half she made up for with freelance jobs, which were mostly graphic design assignment for web-sites. The university was good about letting her use her office and university resources for these jobs, and at that moment she was finishing painting a watercolor for a book cover that she had been contracted for. While she worked on her painting, Vivaldi’s Concerto in E Major for Violin played on a portable compact disc player that Emily had bought for nine dollars at a secondhand store. Emily liked classical music, particularly Vivaldi and the playfulness and exuberance of his concertos. Listening to Vivaldi and other classical artists allowed her to relax and empty her mind and tap more fully into her subconscious.
    Once the painting was finished, Emily would take a photograph of it and send it to the book publisher who had contracted the artwork to her. While it paid less than many of her graphic design assignments, she particularly enjoyed doing these book covers and the creativity involved with them. The painting she was now doing was for a lurid crime novel written by a local Boston area writer. Usually she didn’t like books as dark and violent as this novel was, but she found this one riveting, especially in its underlying themes of coldness and alienation in modern society. It was only as she was finishing up the painting that she noticed the excessively deep pink hue that she had used in coloring the villain’s face, and she realized then that she had painted the villain as the same scary-looking man that she saw a few days earlier who she thought might’ve been following Bill. It shocked her to realize that she had done this.
    A chill ran through Emily as she stared at her