One Minute to Midnight (35 page)

"You may or may not be interested, but if
nothing else, you might be able to point me in the right direction,
as we are looking for some special people. I also might be able to
refer people I know to you. Would 11 a.m. Wednesday morning at the
Panera by the mall work for you?" She paused again, her smile
growing. She wrote some information in her journal. "Great, thanks
Don, I'll speak with you then. Have a great day." Tina hung
up.

"Wow that was great!" Dianne
said.
"You can do it, too. It's literally a script, but we modify it to
fit the situation, or business industry, rather." Bobby
said.

The calls went around the circle and when it
was time for Dianne to make her call she nervously picked up her
phone and dialed the number on a business card in front of her. She
let it ring a few times, and then, to her surprise, the person on
the other end picked up.

"Hello, uh, is this Jason Wembly? My name is
Dianne Trainer and I have your business card here." Dianne
began.

The man on the other end was not Jason Wembly,
but Hugo Ross, a farmer in Iowa who had been the recent
door-to-door call of one Jason Wembly.

"Yeah, this is uh, Jason. How can I help you?"
Hugo got up and walked into his kitchen to write down the number of
the caller and her name.

"As a matter of fact, I am in the home
improvement sales business." Hugo grabbed one of Jason's cards from
his living room coffee table. "You can help increase my bottom
line? Sure, that sounds great. Who can't use a little extra money
now that the holidays are coming up, right?" Hugo sat down on the
couch. "You want to meet at the Panera by the mall on Wednesday?
Can we make it Friday? I'll be out of town until then." Hugo said.
After a few more moments, Hugo bid the strange lady on the other
end of the phone a good day, and hung up.

Hugo put the clown mask he had been wearing
back on and placed his left hand on the right knee of Jason
Wembly's body. He sat still for a moment, trying to understand what
had just happened, and now he had an appointment to keep. Jason was
getting stiff and had begun to stink up his living room, and Hugo
would have to get him in the freezer soon. But before he did, he
was determined to finish their conversation. He turned his head to
the glassy-eyed corpse of the salesman who had stopped by earlier.
Jason had a deep maroon gash in his neck from where the butcher
knife had caught him, and the once white dress shirt he wore was
now soaked in the thick clotting mess of blood that had drained
from the laceration. Through the mask Hugo's voice was
muffled.

"As I was saying. I just don't
need anything you're selling. I mean, there was a time when I
wanted to write a computer program that could turn me into a
hologram of myself, but that was crazy. I know that now. They told
me so at the center." Hugo leaned his head back on the couch. "I
just want to be left alone, you know. Hey, dude. Have you ever had
one of those days when the buzzing in your head is so loud you
think the whole world
must
hear it, too?" Hugo pressed his thumbs into his
eyes to alleviate the pressure, and then he turned his head to
Jason, who stared in silence at the floor with his death
gaze.
"You're starting to freak me out. I gotta' get you cut up and in
storage before I head to North Carolina."

Hugo dragged Jason into his kitchen and
hoisted him onto the island counter where he began to saw him into
pieces and carefully packaging them for his freezer.

"I think you're going to keep me fed this
winter, man you must have worked out. You got lots of muscle,
mister." Through the clown mask his words came out so muffled that,
had anyone been in the kitchen with him, it would have sounded like
mumbling.

Hugo sawed off the head and placed it on the
counter next to him.

"See, now we can really get down to brass
tacks. I have an appointment to keep this Friday, but I don't want
to drive all that way." Hugo stopped cutting for a moment and
thought. "What if you come with me?!" He placed a hand on Jason's
head. "That way neither of us has to be alone, right? You'll be my
new co-pilot!"

Hugo picked up Jason's and began to move his
mouth. He tried to mimic what Jason would sound like if he were
talking to him in reality, but it just came out as a low
murmur.

"Hugo, I think taking a road trip is just what
we need. Besides, we might be able to get some more people to move
in here with us. I like it here."

A few hours later Hugo had Jason packaged and
stored for later, and now exhausted as he was, he began to get
excited about meeting Dianne. Hugo knew a little bit about the
Internet and had used it in the past to put his resume online for
jobs. There was one site in particular he knew about that might
have Dianne's street address. It was a resume-posting site where
people could tell the world about what they do in their careers,
and put their resumes and contact information for anyone to see. He
remembered that he had written down Dianne's name and phone number.
In about fifteen minutes from the time he sat down, he knew almost
everything about Dianne from his Internet search. He was not sure a
trip to Panera would be the best recourse though. Hugo was shy, and
tended to avoid large crowds, so he put her address in the map
software on Jason's phone and brought up the entire route to
Dianne's house. In fourteen hours they would be together, face to
face.

"Who knows?" He told Jason's head. "Maybe
we'll get along very well." He went upstairs to pack.

Back in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dianne was
elated because she had managed to book three appointments for that
week, two on Wednesday, and one on Friday. She called her husband
Felix, who supported her efforts, was just as excited as she was.
Dianne had never been good with crowds, or talking to people, and
it took a great deal of courage for her to show up at the coffee
shop where her team was making calls, but she did it.

"See! I told you you'd do great!" Pearl said.
Tina and Bobby clapped for her, and smiles were all around the
table.

Dianne went home and tried to relax from her
wired high. The calls had been fun, but after an hour of dialing
strangers and keeping her energy up, she was spent. She had taken a
day off from her job to make those calls, so she was overjoyed that
it had been a success. Felix would be home soon from his job at the
robotics factory and she was going to take him out to dinner to
celebrate her breakthrough. Dianne drove home and made herself a
cup of tea before laying on the couch to take a nap. Her phone rang
a few moments after she lay down, and it was from Jason Wembly's
number. She stared at the phone for a minute. "What if he was
calling to cancel their appointment?" She thought.

"I'll let the voicemail get it."

Half way across the country, Hugo sat on the
edge of his bed, thinking he might break their appointment.
Fourteen hours was a long drive, and he did already have a
roommate. He found a three-gallon pickle jar and placed Jason's
head in it after packing his bag, and it sat with him on the bed.
No answer, and he hated leaving voicemails. It was too much like
talking to himself.

"Sorry man, but you're stinking the place up."
Hugo said as he tapped the jar. "She didn't pick up and I don't
leave messages. Looks like we're going on the road, my man." Hugo
said.

He put two full gas cans, some rope, and a
knife in the trunk of his eighty-five Cadillac. Hugo then placed
the head in a jar next to him on the passenger seat and started his
car as the sun set on another day.

"My daddy always carried two gas cans around
with him on long trips, just in case he took a wrong turn and ran
out of fuel. It's just smart, you know? Ready to roll!" Hugo
yelled. He set the car in drive and headed down the
road.

Dianne called her husband after the phone went
to voicemail from Jason's call.

"Felix, we're heading out to dinner as soon as
you get home." She could hear the road in the background as he
drove.

"Hey sweetie! Fine by me, then neither of us
has to cook or clean. I love it."

That night the two of them ate
dinner, drank wine, and made love like they were teenagers again.
This was the last night Dianne would sleep without knowing that
true horror exists in the world. The next day, Dianne went to work
and drudged through another day at what she affectionately called
her J.O.B., or Jump Outta' Bed economically indentured slave
detail. Dianne was a help desk operator at a major cable company,
and received call after call of problems from users who had locked
themselves out of their computers or had clicked on a phishing
email and had the Active Directory account locked by the security
department. The incessant bitching from people on the other end of
her phone about problems she could neither help them with or cared
about became like the buzzing of flies inside her head by the end
of most days. She revealed her theory to a co-worker one day when
they were out for a walk.
"I think that people are so frustrated because no one will listen
to them, and when they finally get a live voice on the other end of
the phone to help with one problem, they feel like its open season.
These people effectively dump their purse on the table for you to
look at. You know what I mean?" Dianne told her friend, Stacey, who
nodded agreement.

"Like I care about your personal life, right?!
I just work for the paycheck like everyone else in Corporate
America!" Stacey said.

"I know, I've had it with these jobs. I'd love
to spend more time with my family, you know? I just feel like
there's something wrong with the way things are going these days.
There's got to be something more than flushing eight or more hours
down the toilet every day for a company that would fire you if they
could figure out how to automate your job for less than they pay
you." Dianne said.

The two walked on, but that conversation was
what brought Dianne to her first meeting for the network marketing
business she was now building. She was fed up with the broken,
failing system of endless days at a job where her closest
interactions with people were behind a computer screen, and where
faceless corporate overlords who controlled her ability to pay her
bills would decide when she could have a day off.

Dianne left work at four o'clock and drove
home through rush hour traffic; another day when the stress from
her job caused the buzzing sound in her head to increase. When she
got home, a strange looking, rust covered Cadillac was parked out
in front of her house less than a foot from the mailbox. She pulled
up the driveway and opened the garage with her remote, and once
inside, closed the door behind her. She assumed one of the
neighbors had a friend over for drinks or something, but it always
peeved her to see a car she did not recognize blocking her mailbox.
If the mail carrier saw a car parked in front of the box they might
deliver the mail, but there was no guarantee. She got out of her
car and walked into the house. Sitting in her living room was a
tall, portly man in a ragged dark blue suit with his head rested on
the couch, and he was snoring. The stranger had a large head, and
had not shaved in more than a week from what she could tell. Her
heart rate began to increase as her mind went into panic mode.
Dianne backed up into and tripped over a sneaker left in the wrong
place by her husband. The man snapped awake.

"Who are you?" Dianne asked.

"Wuh, oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry to have
fallen asleep in your living room. I meant to shut my eyes for a
few minutes and, well after driving fourteen hours to get
here…"

"Who are you? What do you want?" Dianne was
backing toward the knife block on her counter.
"Sorry, I'm the guy you talked to on the phone. We have an
appointment Friday."

"Jason? What are you…why are you in my home?
You need to leave." Dianne was really scared now.

Hugo stood up, and when he did she could see
that there were pizza stains on his jacket, and he was wearing a
clip-on tie.

"Please forgive me. I only wanted to meet with
you in person, away from the crowds. I don't do well with them. Can
we sit and talk for a few minutes? I want to hear about how you can
save my bottom line, you know, like you said. Then I'll
leave."

"OK, fine. Let's sit down at the table." She
said.
Dianne was trying to figure out this man's motivation for breaking
into her house, and she suspected it was not for a business
meeting. He walked over to her dining room table and pulled out a
chair, and just as he did, Dianne saw her husband's car pull up the
driveway. The stranger did not see the car and sat down at the
table with his hands clasped together, smiling. Dianne could not
figure out what to say next and this man frightened her. Something
about his disheveled appearance and odd, jerky mannerisms. Dianne
thought about her pistol above the refrigerator, and she could see
Felix outside, looking into the window of the beat up Cadillac. He
drew away with a start, alarm washing over his face, and quickly
brought out his phone.

"Well, as I was saying on the phone, we can
help you turn your business around by shopping for paper, office
supplies, and whatever you need online, and mostly with free
shipping. You also earn cash rewards every time you shop." Dianne
cut her eyes out of the window and she could see Felix typing on
his phone. A moment later she heard the chime of an incoming
message.