No matter where she pressed her face against the floor-to-ceiling window, Paderau Argall could still see the corpse reflected from the carpet behind her. Beyond the window, downtown lay in ruins. Occasionally a building shivered with aftershock, but the worst of the quake was done. Paderau saw people wandering in a daze on the cracked and buckled streets, thirty-five floors below.
“Ever wonder why they call it jaywalking?” she said, her thick Welsh accent slurred with her lips pressed against the window. Her fellow paramedic, an American named Andrew, stood against the far wall. His lower lip had swollen noticeably, and a bruise already colored his jaw.
”Can’t say I have,” he said.
“I bet it’s named after the first person who did it.”
“Like a disease?”
“Yeah. Jay Smith, busted for jaywalking.”
Andrew rocked on his heels, gaze twitching between the body at the center of the room and Paderau. “So who committed the first homicide?”
Paderau slid to the floor. Her neck hurt. “Mr. Murder. Mr. Bob Murder.”
Nearby, a girl named Ann, age thirteen, huddled over her unconscious mother. She wiped ineffectually at a thick smear of blood across the woman’s forehead with a ragged strip of gauze.
The corpse was Dr. David Truls, a private practice pediatrician who had joined the medics as they scrambled through the city in the midst of the earthquake. Truls lay on his belly, his white button-down shirt soaked crimson. A hefty letter opener jutted from his back, a few inches from his spine. Paderau’s training informed her exactly what had happened as the blunt blade punched through his left lung, but she shut it out.
Two business executives, the only other survivors on this floor, staggered into the office’s open doorway. One leaned heavily on the other. “What the hell?” rasped the tall, portly executive named Rich Hamon. “What the hell? It’s been five minutes! That… my friend almost killed himself on the stairs out there! He needs a doctor!”
Andrew stared into Paderau’s eyes. The injured executive, Ken Sloan, a short man in an ill-fitting suit, thrust one finger at the female medic.
“Did she do this? She’s covered in blood!” he cried.
“We’re both covered in blood,” Andrew said. He sounded tired. He was right, though; their uniforms were smeared with the blood of all the people they had failed to save all day long. Paderau felt tears on her face and shirt, but wasn’t sure if they were hers.
The businessmen limped across the room, and Sloan sat heavily on the huge desk, gripping his chest. He coughed, blood spotting his lips. Paderau suspected massive internal bleeding. Her legs ignored half-hearted orders to stand.
“That’s my letter opener,” Sloan wheezed. He stared at a bloody handprint on his expensive desk.
Hamon crossed the room, stepping around the dead doctor to kneel beside Ann. He kept the two medics in view.
“Hey,” Hamon said. He grasped the girl’s shoulder. Ann flinched, throwing her arms across her mother. “Hey, look, sorry, but you have to tell us what happened.”
“Let her be,” Andrew said. “She’s just a kid.”
“Then you better start explaining,” Hamon said. “How did our only real doctor end up dead? We go to check on the stairwell, and we come back to find this shit?” His voice quivered. “This is some shit. Where’d you get that bruise? Looks like someone tried to take your head off!”
“Settle down,” Andrew said. “The more you move, the worse your injuries will–”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sloan demanded. “Look, this, this handprint here, it’s right where I kept my letter opener. It’s too small. It’s too small to be you!” He pointed at Paderau. “It’s got to be her!”
“What are you, Columbo?” Andrew glared. He stepped over to the desk. “Let me take a look at you.” Sloan swatted him away, nearly keeling over with the effort.
Paderau pulled herself to her feet, a severely lightened first aid kit tucked under her arm. “Sir, you might have some serious internal–”
“You’re crazy!” Sloan shouted.
“Sir, you need to calm down!” Andrew said loudly. Paderau saw the medic’s pale skin, the sweat, the slight shake in his outstretched arm.
“Calm?” Hamon yelled. “The stairs are gone! The stairs are gone and we’re stuck in here with a goddamn killer!”
Paderau heard sirens, faint and distant. It would be hours, at best, before rescuers would struggle through the chaos in the streets and make their way up to the top of this skyscraper. Ann gently shook her unresponsive mother.
“He… Doctor Truls…” Paderau heard herself saying, “got a phone call. His cell phone. His wife. He was so happy. He put her on speakerphone. She was alive. In all the shit going on out there, she was alive. Their baby was okay. The house was okay. Everything was going to be okay.”
Paderau swallowed hard. She knew now whose tears soaked her sleeves. “And then, then we, we heard something crack, and a big crash and, and a scream.”
“My God,” Hamon whispered.
“We listened as the doctor’s house collapsed,” Paderau continued, “and crushed his wife and two-year-old son.”
Sloan toppled over, gasping. Andrew leapt to his side. Hamon and Paderau stared at each other.
“He went mad, absolutely berserk,” Paderau continued. “Throwing things. Hitting us, hitting everything…” She tilted her chin so that Hamon could see the purple welts blooming along her throat. “He was going to kill us.”
Hamon’s shoulders sagged. “I’m… I’m sorry…”
“If you’ll excuse me, sir, we need to tend to your friend.” Paderau urged her feet to take her to the desk. She paused to consider the bloody handprint, too small to be either hers or Andrew’s, then dropped her first aid kit over the print and went to work.
Alex Burns is hoping someone from the UK will tell him how to pronounce Paderau, because he’s totally fallen in love with the name but is afraid he’s saying it wrong. This is his second story at Every Day Fiction.
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31 Responses to “AFTERSHOCKS • by Alexander Burns”
Comments
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May 22nd, 2008 at 3:24 am
Don’t worry about pronouncing “Paderau” properly. Most foreigners can’t pronounce their own languages properly anyway until we British show them how.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:49 am
Alex, a well-constructed story, fascinating set-up and good characterization. Some classic elements here, like the minutiae found in an epic catastrophe.
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 am
Love it, Alex. Well paced and you give us all the details that we need to know… it just takes a while to figure them out. Congrats on the successful flash mystery.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:02 am
Great job, Alex! I readlly liked it, though I have no idea how to pronounce Paderau either.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:03 am
Awesome story, Alex! Very tight and tense. You build the tension well in such a short piece and the ending is great!
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:17 am
Excellent. I like how you pulled off the ending. I didn’t figure it out until you wanted me to know. It is genius. Additionally, the writing is tight and clean. I like Paderau viewpoint and her struggle with her own exhaustion and injuries came through. Great job.
May 22nd, 2008 at 7:52 am
Greatness! You should write more flash mysteries!
I say pronounce Paderau however you want.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
5*
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 am
I love the whole story. Absolutely, gave me chills. I would love to novel developed around this flash. I dare say, I’d be hardpressed to put it down. Very entertaining! Thanks for sharing.
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] of, I want to give a shout out to Alex, one of my fellow writing group members. He wrote a flash fiction mystery, and it went live on Every Day Fiction this [...]
May 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
Really nice, Alex. I had to think about that ending for a while before it all clicked. Then it made the rest of the story even better. Great story.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:59 pm
pretty damn good i must say…jolly good show!
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Great story. Drew me in from the first sentence and kept me. Pacing, characterization, and setting were all spot on. Kudos.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
[...] haven’t wandered over here from there already, go check out “Aftershocks” over at Every Day Fiction. This story came out of a challenge issued by the editors there, and I’m quite proud of the [...]
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Thanks very much everyone!
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Indeed! This is my favorite of your many excellent flash works!
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:59 am
Very tightly written. You have packed a lot of emotion in this short piece. Vivid imagery. Well done.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
[...] flash mystery, Aftershocks appeared in Every Day Fiction yesterday. Go read it, for it is [...]
May 31st, 2008 at 6:49 am
I struggled to read this, distracted by the verbs and adverbs. I’m running a slight fever, so perhaps it is just me, but it started to feel like an in-joke of some sort. I even looked to see if there was a pattern.
This took away from the piece for me. I’ll re-read it when my flu is gone.
May 31st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Hmm, no in-joke that I know of. I don’t really understand “distracted by verbs and adverbs.” There aren’t a lot of adverbs, and verbs are sort of necessary for human communication.
But let me know when you read it again.
May 31st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Sylvia,
Thanks for your comments. Could you elaborate further? I’m didn’t spot too many adverbs, but I would love to know what areas you struggled with.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:43 am
Looking again, now that the fever has receded, it’s not as blatant as it seemed. But the NAME VERBED syntax becomes repetitious and for me turned into a rhythm.
It’s about halfway through that I started to really get hung up by it
Andrew demanded
Andrew glared
Paderau pulled
Sloan shouted
Andrew said loudly
Hamon yelled
[it actually diverges from this for a bit but by then I was in the rhythm]
Paderau swallowed
Hamon whispered
Paderau continued
Sloan toppled
Andrew leapt
H&P stared.
Having re-read the story, I like it a lot better now, actually and I can see being pulled into the story enough that the repetition didn’t strike me. I suppose that bit of distance meant I ended up feeling like it was a search for a new and interesting verb rather than simply following the action.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 am
Ah, I see what you mean. I probably could have inverted a few of those. I think I was more worried about fitting everything in and what not and didn’t notice.
Glad you ended up enjoying it! Thanks!
June 30th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Great job!! Loved it!
June 30th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Alex, you already know how great I think this is. So I will put it out live. Awesome writing.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Hey Alex! Nicely done!! Jeez, how many writers do we have in our family?!?!
June 30th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Alex, this is really sweet. But seriously, I have no idea how to pronounce Paderau, and that fact sort of bothers me. If you find out…let me know.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
How many, RMann? Many, many. We are the writing family.
And it is a very cool story.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:17 am
[...] by Virginia Marion Remember? by Erin Kinch Socks and Banshees by Jens Rushing Crush by Alex Burns Aftershocks by Alex Burns Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)“Brimstone and Liars” is online!Sewing [...]
October 20th, 2008 at 9:32 am
[...] Authors page is down. If you’re interested in my previous stories there, they can be found here and [...]
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:53 am
[...] after Every Day Fiction accepted my story “Aftershocks” (go check it out first if you haven’t already, as I don’t want to spoil anything) a tragic news [...]