Author's Note:

 

I don't believe in, nor write about the paranormal. So when I came across an article concerning a woman who had an out-of-body experience, I dismissed it; more likely the woman had some mad hallucination. But then, months later, a television host and comedian with whom I was working, related a similar incident. He'd been crushed between two cars and watched from the outside as rescue workers fought to save his life.

Now that got my attention.

Researching this book, I learned the out-of-body experience is much more common than I would have believed: A noted race car driver revealed he drives, not from behind the wheel, but from a position perched somewhere above his right shoulder. And a champion boxer watches himself as he fights in exaggerated time- as if on a movie screen. He watches his opponent unleash punches in slow motion, giving him the time to block and counter-punch.

Proof of an afterlife? I think not. But the separation between the flesh and the mental presence does exist. Keep an open mind and if you enjoy the book, please consider posting a short review to share your thoughts with other readers.

Jo-Anne Wiley

Prologue:

 

A gasp escaped her lips and her eyelids flew open. She was flat on her back, looking at the underside of a corrugated metal roof and leather belts restrained her. The Florida noonday sun was bearing down, the heat radiating off the metal above, so insistent it scorched her naked skin and caused the tin roof to creak against the rusty nails that retained it.

But it was the heat from her lower abdomen that brought a curdling scream to her lips. It felt like her guts had been pumped full with phosphorous and blasted with a blow-torch. The relentless burn sent crackling fingers tearing through every part of her sweat-drenched body causing more damage than she could endure. The agony was unbearable and with the sinew projecting from her neck like twisted, knotted rope, the woman lifted her head to see.

She was strapped to a rough wooden table and a gowned doctor stood over her, a surgeon's scalpel clamped between maniacal teeth. The doctor smiled and raised a hand, presenting her with a hunk of flesh hanging from a bloodied latex-covered finger.

A slice of human flesh- her flesh. And she realized her life as a whole woman was over. She screamed again, the sound thundering through the channels of her ears. The doctor took hold of the scalpel and repositioned it over her quivering flesh and in a desperate bid to avoid the blade the woman lurched up. The surgeon's eyes circled with astonishment. The leather strap that stretched across her torso, just beneath her breasts, suddenly parted. In an all-consuming panic she sat straight up, her arms flailing, hands clawing. Searching for something, anything.

Before the doctor could summon help, her fingers closed on a jar that was positioned on the side-table. It was solid, made of heavy glass and filled with a clear dense liquid. She was athletic and strong and she threw the jar with every ounce of muscle she could muster. It left her fingers like a missile.

The doctor turned away, trying to deflect the blow but wasn't quick enough. The jar caught the left brow and spurted its acidic contents into unprotected eyes. The doctor dropped to the rough floorboards in a heap of green fabric.

Blood seemed to be everywhere. There was a second leather strap bisecting the meat of the woman's thighs and she quickly stripped the buckle free and, disregarding the throbbing hurt, she got her feet down and ran.

"Rudd. Rudd," the doctor cried from the floor. "She's getting away, Rudd. For fuck-sake grab her."

Rudd rolled out of the canvas cot and landed on all fours. He was drunk. He had finished off a bottle of rye whiskey after he was done fucking the woman. She had been stunned by the fury of his fists and offered little resistance so he was quick to take advantage of the bronze-skinned brunette. She was older, but nice and with only a whimper she had allowed him to tear open her clothing. He quickly fucked her on the wooden floorboards before she gained the wherewithal to try to fight him off.

And now, battling an alcoholic haze, he was aware of the doctor screaming at him, and of a pair of nude legs vaulting past and disappearing out the door that led to the gravel parking lot. "Christ," he swore and tried to get his feet under. "I'll grab her," he shouted, not at all sure that he could.

"Get her, Rudd," he heard the doctor cry. "Kill her and drag the body back in here. Quickly now."

"I'll run her down." And he bolted for his truck.

Rudd looked to the right and then left. There was only swamp, dark, foreboding and thick with saw grass, cyprus, palmetto and scrub. He knew the stagnant water was infested with cottonmouth and 'gators. A naked and bleeding woman wouldn't last five minutes in that swamp so he started the truck and, slewing sideways, he tore down the lane expecting to lineup the scrambling woman between his headlights beyond the next curve. The heavily welded steel bumper would knock her down into the gravel. Then he'd stop and backup over her, crush her, just to be sure. But when he skidded through the turn, she wasn't there.

 

At the side of the building with her bare feet sinking into the bog, the woman jumped. She snagged a vine at the side of a cyprus tree and pulled herself up. There was a sickening crack and the vine parted sending her back down to land on hands and knees in the black scummy water. It smelled of dead things and she imagined she could feel something crawl across the backs of her legs.

Still bleeding, covered with swamp-slime and a sopping fowl stench, she leapt for a second vine. This one held and she climbed, swinging wildly, hand over hand until she was opposite the edge of the metal roof. Every move she made was accompanied with an intense burn in her groin that shot the breath from her lungs in hard bursts, like taking pounding blows to the chest. She swung and landed, her bare bum on the edge of the galvanized sheeting. It was like being perched on a pancake griddle. Seething, she bounded from hand to hand trying to avoid the scorching-hot tin, supercharged by the midday sun.

She considered bounding back to the tree but the sound of Rudd's truck returning quashed any ideas of leaving her hiding place and caused her, instead, to flatten out. Something seemed to unravel inside and her stomach caught up with her. Feeling lightheaded, she threw-up and the last thing she remembered was her vomit, mixed with blood, running down the galvanized roof and spilling over into the gutter.

 

"Can't find her," Rudd tried to explain. "I drove all the way to the highway; even followed it out a mile in either direction before heading back. No sign of her."

The doctor was incensed. "You fuckin' moron. You couldn't catch a naked barefooted woman with a fuckin' truck?"

Rudd shrugged. "I figure she went somewhere I couldn't follow with the truck."

"Meaning..."

"I think she's in the swamp, Doc. Or what's left of her is..."

The doctor looked up hopefully. "The alligators you mean..."

"Exactly. She wouldn't last five minutes. After she sinks thigh-high in muck, the 'gators will move in like kids at a McDonald's two-fer. Trust me, she'll be a mound of 'gator turd this time tomorrow."

The doctor seemed satisfied. "We missed out on a pile of cash with that one. Too bad. Cost of doing business, I suppose. But those old leather straps on the operating table are rotted out. Get them replaced."

"I'll buy some two-inch nylon webbing," Rudd replied. "Strong enough to hold down a horse."

"Good. I'm heading back to the City. You clean up here first, then do the same."

 

The sound of a truck turning over belted her wide awake. She wasn't sure how long she had been out of it. She saw that the sun had slipped lower in the sky but not before doing a number on her hide; she was burned and blistered. The ants and mosquitoes were lunching on her blood and the black flies had laid eggs in her torn flesh. Crawling to the edge of the roof, she was just in time to see Rudd's truck disappear around the curve, the palmetto fronds closing in after him.

With great care she lowered herself from the roof and looked about her surroundings. She was standing in front of a low shed that smelled of cow dung and decay and located somewhere in the middle of a swamp that offered her no way out. But inside the building, she found water to wash. There were bandages and antiseptic. She also found her clothes in the corner where the bastard had tossed them just before he- before he had...

The woman dropped to the edge of the cot and, burying her face in her hands, she heaved, the tears stinging her cheeks.

An insane thirst drove her to a squat refrigerator. There was beer and whiskey. She drank beer to quell the thirst, whiskey for the pain and devoured three stale slices of bread smeared with peanut butter before collapsing onto the cot.

When she came to, it was daylight and the truck was back. In a blind panic she ran through the building. There was a back door and she hid behind it and watched the man who had raped her unroll wide nylon straps. As he began bolting them to the table she shook herself and careened around the corner of the building. His truck was there and she hoisted herself into the back and crawled under a tarp.

Two hours later, when the truck rolled to a stop, she found herself in Gainesville, Florida. And now- she knew exactly where the bastard lived...