This story is far more suspenseful and a little unsettling in parts, which is why I gave it an R rating. Nothing too gruesome or violent happens, but I just thought I should warn you dear readers that it can be slightly disturbing, so please use your discretion.
Now that I've given you the disclaimer, read on!
Waking the Dead Part One
Rated: R
MacGyver returned home from another late evening of hockey practice, stopping on the docks to admire his house boat. The bright moonlight gave the pale blue siding a tranquil appearance that others often mistook for loneliness and desolation. For him, it was a welcome, familiar, and comforting sight, the place where he rejuvenated, especially after a rough, demanding night on his sore joints and muscles. Out of everything in his desultory life, it was the one constant he could rely upon, the one place where he truly felt secure and removed from the hostile world that surrounded him. Sighing contentedly, he continued his easy saunter towards it, longing for nothing but a hot shower to ease the tension in his body and a deep, long sleep.
When he opened the front door, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He was greeted with the usual smells and sounds his home had that made it unique, distinguishing it from any other place he had ever been, marking it as his alone. It rocked gently with the water, a motion that some would consider unstable and disconcerting but seemed to already be lulling MacGyver to sleep. Yawning and stretching, he dumped his hockey gear near one of the house boat’s numerous cubbyholes. Before he could turn on a light, someone grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms.
He struggled violently to wrench himself free, but before he could position himself to fight this stranger, he felt something stick him on the neck. Even in the darkness, he knew he had been injected with something, the sting of the needle unmistakable. It took effect quickly, causing his limbs to grow rigid. The person holding him released him and he staggered back, unable to support himself, crumpling to the ground. As the powerful drug continued to race through his bloodstream, infecting him, it felt as if his body was turning to stone, every part of him hardening until he was completely immobilized. Soon, his breathing became restricted until he had to strain to make any breaths at all, coming in short, sharp wheezes and gasps like a fish out of water. His heart rate also slowed until it was only beating intermittently. He took for granted that respiration and heartbeats were automatic. Now, as he rarely felt them shudder through his stiffening body weakly like a failing engine, he panicked. He knew he was dying, but he was paralyzed and incapable of doing anything to reverse the process.
As he lay there helplessly, his breathing becoming more labored and gurgling, his heartbeat fading and growing fainter by the minute, the mysterious intruder who had done this to him stood over him menacingly, remaining silent and anonymous, a dark silhouetted form without a face. MacGyver stared up at the figure, trying to see if he could identify the person at all, but the darkness made it impossible and his vision was beginning to blur. He tried to ask who the person was and why they did this to him, but his vocal chords were stilled, and all he could manage was a weak, strangled, wispy gasp of air. He tried to move to defend himself, worried that this person wasn’t done tormenting him, paralyzing him first like a venomous snake so that it could devour its prey without a struggle. He had never been more terrified and vulnerable in his life, unable to move, his body numb, the stranger standing over him as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to inflict more damage.
His eyelids slammed shut, and he could no longer open them, feeling as if they had been sealed tightly. He tried to cry out for help, but his jaws were now clamped together as well, locked in place. As his fear increased, his heart rate and respiration should have followed. Instead, they abruptly stopped. He no longer heard the thumping in his chest, and he no longer felt his chest rising and falling. His body was completely silent and motionless. Yet somehow, MacGyver didn’t think he had actually died. Unlike his experience while in a coma, he didn’t see a blinding white tunnel of light or reunite with his departed relatives. He could still think, and he could still hear the sound of the stranger shuffling away in the darkness, leaving him trapped inside his unresponsive body while his mind still functioned. It was a strange, uncomfortable sensation, and he wondered if this was what Hell was like, spending an eternity inside a mind, imprisoned in a lifeless body, wandering in darkness, aware of surrounding noises but incapable of responding to them. He began to hope his mind would soon fail him, too and he would finally die. Anything was better than lying there, alive but not, a captive in his body, forced inside a small space inside his brain, deprived of all senses but hearing. Instead of his mind entering a blank, welcome oblivion, it continued functioning, torturing MacGyver as he wondered how much longer he could remain in this frozen, suspended state and survive.
***
Pete tried calling MacGyver several times to inform him that he had a new assignment for him. He knew his friend often stayed out late playing hockey, but it was already past midnight. Even though he could be fanatical about the sport, Pete couldn’t imagine he would still be at the rink. Sighing, he decided that MacGyver was probably already asleep and he shouldn’t bother him about the assignment until morning. Still, something felt odd. Both men possessed unusually heightened intuitions when it came to each other’s welfare. Whenever something happened that put either man in danger, they could sense it. It could probably be explained by the many years they had known each other, observing each other’s patterns and learning to tell when something had gone wrong. That evening, Pete felt a sense of foreboding about MacGyver that was more powerful and insistent than usual. Although it could have been nothing but a product of his overactive, paranoid imagination, knowing full well that his friend was most likely fine, he still chose not to ignore it, grabbing his coat and rushing towards his car in the Phoenix parking garage.
***
“MacGyver?” Pete called once he entered the house boat. “MacGyver, are you here?”
I’m right here, Pete, MacGyver said in his mind, knowing that his friend couldn’t hear him.
It frustrated him that he was still stuck inside his mind, his body still effectively shut down—dead. He thought it would have all ended by now, but he was still there. He couldn’t explain it. It was impossible. He had to be fully dead, yet his brain was a major organ, along with the heart and the lungs. Shouldn’t it have stopped working by then, too? He couldn’t understand his partial awareness, his partial clinging to life, as if he was only half dead. But…how? He was desperate to find the answers, but he was only a mind now, his body uncooperative.
Pete tripped over MacGyver’s body in the darkness. Immediately, he turned on the light. Horrified at his discovery, he dropped to the ground without hesitating, feeling frantically for MacGyver’s pulse.
“Oh my God,” he said when he didn’t feel anything. “Come on, Mac, don’t do this to me! Not now!”
He began pressing on MacGyver’s chest, trying to revive him. He tried to breathe into MacGyver’s mouth, but his lips were hard and refused to part. It was a sign of rigor mortis, indicating that he had been dead for a few hours. Still, Pete wanted to ignore this fact, wanted to deny it. MacGyver couldn’t die. He would be fine. He would respond. This was all just a ghoulish nightmare. It couldn’t be real.
“Please don’t do this to me,” he said, sobbing. “Come on, you can beat this! Come back to me!”
It distressed MacGyver to hear Pete suffer so much over his condition. He wished he could tell him he was fine, that somehow he hadn’t actually died—that whatever poison he had been injected with by the intruder only simulated death, but again he was alone with his thoughts, unable to communicate them. He felt Pete’s hot, ragged breathing against his cheek and he felt the man’s large body covering his as if protecting him, his trembling sobs transferring to his still body, creating the only movement he had felt around his body for hours. It felt foreign and it wasn’t his, but for a moment, it made him feel as if his heart was beating again. Desperately, he clung to Pete’s heartbeat as he felt it pulsate against his body, pretending he could borrow some of it to restore him fully back to life. He felt his body being lifted slightly, and he knew that Pete was cradling him in his arms, burying his face against his chest, releasing more muffled sobs.
Aw Pete, MacGyver’s thoughts said, feeling incredible sympathy for his friend.
Pete, I’m not dead. I wish I could tell you somehow, make you understand. Something happened to me. Somebody did this to me. I wish I could tell you… He tried to move, but every part of his body remained paralyzed. No matter how hard he struggled, nothing would happen. He tried to speak, but no sound escaped his tight lips.
“Mac,” Pete said, choking on tears and looking down at his lifeless friend, still not fully comprehending what he saw. The inconceivable had happened. His friend, who had narrowly dodged death several times, had finally succumbed. “How could this have happened? Who did this to you?”
I don’t know, but I’m alive, Pete. I wish you could hear me. I wish you could help me. I’m trapped and scared, and I don’t know what to do. Please, Pete. You’ve got to hear me somehow! Please! Come on! Only MacGyver could hear his shouts and desperate pleas. He knew he still couldn’t reach him. He made several more attempts to move, all of them proving useless. All he could do was listen to Pete as he fell apart emotionally, sobbing loudly, mourning over him, rocking his stiffened body in his thick arms. It was unbearable to hear his friend suffer so much, and so needlessly. If only he knew the truth. He wished he could stop hearing as well, not wanting to listen to so much agony. Whatever the drug was, it was the cruelest ever invented. It masqueraded as death; it taunted the victim, promising death but leaving remnants of life behind so that only they were aware of it, leaving those who cared for them to undergo the anguish of grief with no one to console them, especially not the helpless victim, who actually remained aware of their intense pain.
Pete, I’m not dead. Please… MacGyver didn’t know how long Pete held him, crying, but it seemed like hours. He wanted to cry, too, after hearing his friend’s ordeal, but his eyelids remained shut so tightly that he was even deprived of that response.
“I guess I’d better call the ambulance,” Pete said, his tone flat as if all his emotions had been wrung out of him over the devastating discovery of MacGyver’s death and he had none left. His voice was hoarse from crying, and he sounded as if he had died as well. He held MacGyver for a little while longer, not wanting to release him. Eventually, he had to force himself up to make the call, doing it all mechanically without thought, his initial overwhelming grief settling into a dazed shock and disbelief.
MacGyver knew what would happen if Pete called an ambulance. He would end up in a morgue, and from there…horror filled his mind as he imagined being buried in that half aware state, possibly still alive.
Pete! No! That’s the last thing you want to do! I’m alive! Pete! Once again, his shouts remained internal, and they were in vain.
***
The ambulance arrived, the paramedics examining MacGyver’s lifeless body. Pete remained in the distance, staring blankly at them, feeling detached from everything, as if he had entered some surreal reality that was not his own.
“When did you find him like this?” One of the paramedics asked.
Pete shrugged, resigned. “I don’t remember,” he said, his voice thick with sadness and exhaustion. “Hours ago. He was…” he swallowed back the word “dead.” “He was like that when I found him.”
“No pulse, no respiration…I see no signs of violence. No puncture wounds, no blood, no physical trauma whatsoever.”
They can’t see the injection site, MacGyver said in his mind.
Whoever did this to me was a pro. “I also don’t see any signs of forced entry,” the other paramedic said. “I’m not a cop, of course, but it sure doesn’t look like foul play to me.”
Well, it was, MacGyver said in his mind.
God, I wish I could tell you what happened. “As far as we can tell, he died from a cardiac arrest.”
“That makes no sense!” Pete said, rage in his voice where before he had remained flat.
Thank you, Pete! You tell them! MacGyver said in his mind. He wanted to smile over his friend’s persistence and his pursuit of finding the truth, but of course his face remained expressionless, his muscles still paralyzed.
“Look, MacGyver…was…” he choked again after referring to him in the past tense, something he wasn’t used to and didn’t think he ever would be. He held back more tears that threatened to spill down his cheeks and cleared his throat, trying to remain strong. “He was perfectly healthy. How could he possibly just collapse from a heart attack?”
“I don’t know, but it’s been known to happen. Maybe he had heart irregularities or it was genetic.”
“I just can’t believe that,” Pete said quietly.
I’m glad you can’t accept it. I knew you wouldn’t. That’s why you’re my friend. You’re as skeptical as I am. Please help me. Find the answers. Get me out of this somehow. Bring me back. MacGyver felt his body being lifted onto a stretcher. Something was enfolding around him, and he panicked as he realized the paramedics were placing him inside a body bag. He had never been claustrophobic before, but his inability to move, the lack of a heartbeat and respiration, his sealed eyes and clamped jaw coupled with the bag that was about to contain his body, further imprisoning him and making his death seem even more real—all of it combined to terrify him. That he couldn’t express his terror to anyone only increased it. He fought again to move, to scream—anything. Again, he was denied the abilities to do so, still shut away in a world of darkness and half life.
NO! Please, don’t do this! Pete, I’m alive! Tell them! Don’t let them do this to me! He screamed inside his mind.
Pete couldn’t see the torment his friend was going through, his expression remaining placid, his body still rigid and unmoving.
“Listen,” he said, trying to avoid seeing his friend get covered up by the body bag. “When you get to the hospital call Dr. Carr for me. He’s a close friend, and I would…like him to perform an autopsy on MacGyver to determine what actually did happen.”
A shudder of revulsion ran through Pete when he mentioned the ugly word “autopsy.” He didn’t want his best friend to be cut open and dissected, but if it was the only way to learn what happened, then he would have to give his consent. He was, after all, the closest thing MacGyver had to family.
If he was repulsed by the autopsy, MacGyver was even more so. He didn’t want to imagine being aware, hearing his skin being cut into, wondering if he would feel the pain, being unable to cry out, like a patient not completely under anesthesia, paralyzed and incapable of escaping the excruciating pain and unendurable torment. If there was a chance he was still alive and able to get out of this state, having an autopsy performed on him would certainly kill him without a doubt, leaving him with no chances at all for surviving it.
Don’t do it Pete! Don’t let them! I’m still alive! I can prove it! He pushed himself as hard as he could to move, to speak, to make any signal to Pete, but still nothing happened. He heard the body bag zip over his head, further shutting him out of the world. He released a silent scream.
To be continued…
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
--Henry David Thoreau
brains+brawn+beauty+personality=MacGyver
