Living on the edge is living in the darkness…
The video clip was not high def, but Abigail Johansson, court reporter for the deposition, Solana Sherman v. SSS Pharmaceuticals, saw that all fifteen attorneys sitting around the polished maple table were glued to the images of Don and Solana Sherman sitting at their breakfast table.
Abigail’s heart pounded, her head aching with each beat, her palms moist.
But she stared too. She couldn’t help herself.
Strange, because there was not a single movement on the video.
Not one sound coming from the functioning audio track.
Yet here she sat, like everyone else. Transfixed by Solana’s eyes, or what little that they could see of them, whites barely visible through the narrowed, rigid slits of her thin lids.
At once, the beast uncoiled and struck.
Sixty seconds before, the video started with the couple sitting at the small kitchen table in their apartment for breakfast. Just small-talking their way through another early morning. All of it boring fare to the attorneys, Abigail saw. But they did boring for a living, so really, who cared.
Actually, she silently confessed to herself, she was bored too, except when the husband pulled his wayward tie, dripping with milk, out of his cereal bowl. Twice. She stifled a giggle.
My husband would never do that she thought. If I had one.
Suddenly, she saw Solana sit up straight, her head snapping back so hard that her sunglasses, delicately perched across the top of her head, flew right to the ceiling and out of view of the camera. Everyone jumped at the crash the lens made on the ceiling, shards flying everywhere.
“Whoooaah!” her husband exclaimed. Actually, to Abigail his voice didn’t sound upset. Just surprised. Even jovial. Solana, he had said in his own earlier deposition, reacted terribly to kitchen messes (at least that’s what she remembered him saying). Yet, here is wife was, making one. You could read the quizzical look on his narrow face, and Abigail wondered along with him what had gotten into her.
“Solana?” he said.
Now, the reporter noticed, everyone sat forward.
Abigail’s stomach tightened as the camera revealed only the whites of Solana’s eyes were visible, the rest (iris? pupil? She didn’t know or care) moved so far left in their sockets that she swore that they disappeared. Meanwhile, her head, (quite a pretty head) started a slow, quiet, sinister twist to the left ─ toward her husband and the camera.
“Solana!” he now cried out, leaning over the table with its plates of cereal, fruit, and toast to gently touch her left shoulder with his right hand.
Her head continued its leftward turn, turning so far left that Abigail knew that there was no way that his wife could see Don. Left, left, left ─ stretching Solana’s neck and facial muscles so taut that they were visibly twitching in agony. Left…left…left ─ the long, black hair swishing first against, and then away from her neck as the combination of gravity and position controlled its response. Left…left…left. At its physical limits, unable to twist any further, her head started to tilt over on itself, still to the left.
Just watching this made her own neck hurt.
On the tape, Abigail saw Don gawk with helpless horror at his delicate wife’s upper body tilting up and leftward, following her head, lifting her chair onto its left two legs in an ungainly wobble.
Then, a new, soft voice on the video. Nobody could hear, but his depo transcript showed that he thought that she said to him, “Don. It hurts. What’s … going…on. Don…Don.”
Abigail saw the young wife grimace, fighting against a new, terrible force that with each passing, degrading moment, took control of her body. She gaped as the new beast, stol–.
The movement stopped at once.
The chair quickly righted itself on all four legs with a sharp thud. Don and his twisted Solana set quietly.
Abigail and all the viewers around her sighed in relief. One or two of the attorneys loosened their ties, while others looked around, pleased that it was all over.
The time feed on the video said, August 25, 2015, 8:54:27AM.
Everybody jumped at the sickening crunch Solana’s head made as it slammed into the breakfast table. The forceful impact split her forehead and demolished the breakfast plate, spitting food and glass in all directions, the broken fragments skittering across the cheaply tiled floor of the small kitchen.
Abigail’s hands shot to her mouth, heart pounding in pure terror as Don jumped toward Solana. His awkward grab missed, his own chair clattering over near hers. Solana said nothing, the blood from her lacerated face streaming across the top of the table, making its thick way to where Don had been seated.
Abigail heard someone vomit their breakfast onto the polished wooden table.
Heard Mr. Giles shout, “Clean that crap up, and keep the video going. We don’t want to be here all day.”
But she didn’t dare turn from the screen.
Don was up now, behind is wife, grabbing her shoulders trying to pull Solana’s head out of the food.
But Solana wouldn’t budge.
To Abigail, Don looked like a crazy man gesticulating and grapping one of his wife’s arms, then the other, then the shoulders, then a full Nelson. But his wife stayed fixed and unmovable. She looked like a demented karate expert who kept pushing hard against the block that she expected and failed to break with one determined blow.
“SheooooUSHHH,” Solana suddenly exhaled as she slid off the side of the chair. Plunging forward, Don shot his right arm out to catch her, but failed as, with a “Thap”, his wife fell to the linoleum floor, rolling to the right until she pinned her right arm and leg underneath her.
Don swore, kicking his wife’s chair out of the way with a savage thrust of his foot, the chair slamming against what sounded like a pole light that crashed to the floor.
Abigail watched as Solana’s left side shook violently. Her left arm flailed, banging over and over onto the floor, her left leg banging its shoeless foot against the hot radiator, scalding its flesh and breaking its bones as the wild electricity raced through her.
White cotton balls filled Abigail’s vision, lightheadedness taking over, the stink of vomit filling the room. She turned from her recorder then jumped off the chair, as a paralegal shot up and bolted from the room, followed by two others.
“There go your careers, sweethearts,” she heard Mr. Giles called after them.
Suddenly, the lightning left, and the seizures released their control.
Slumped in her chair, Abigail cried, her breaths coming in soft ragged gasps as she watched Don Sherman, sitting in urine and feces, holding the broken body of his young wife in his arms. “Sweetheart, mía,” she heard him say. “I’ll get you through this. We’ll be OK. OK…OK….–”
The image froze.