Weekly Short Story

"Ten Seconds" by David Hoogterp

One bulb had been destroyed by Larry's head, but the other was more than enough to make clear the extent of the damage. The window glass had been contained by teh ugly curtains. At least they served some purpose. In fact, only one piece of the broken panes landed on teh floor. It showed a red stain where two of its edges came to a point. The rest of the glass settled on a bedside table. On the other side of the room, closer to where Larry was standing, rested the remnants of what had once been a frosted light shade with gold trim. Between them lay the object that had broken the window.

It was a hand grenade.

"Jesus Christ!"

But it couldn't be real. It was probably a dummy, like the ones for sale in military surplus stores, the hollow ones, that he used to threated neighborhood children with when he was growing up. After all where does one get a live grenade? Even the local drug dealers did not have the clout, or the cash, to get that kind of weapon.

Larry went down on his hands and knees in what seemed like super-slow-motion. His eyes automatically went to the bottom of the object, checking for the hole that would give away a dummy grenade. There was no hole.

"Ok...Ok, it's real. A grenade has ten seconds between the time the pin is pulled and detonation... I think."

His mind was retracing his actions an counted the fractions of seconds that had alread elapsed. The window breaking, sitting up, cutting his foot, jumping across the room and breaking the light, groping for the switch, finding the grenade... It seemed to have taken forever, but it had only been a few seconds.

Larry had a friend in the army. If only he were here, he might know what to do. Larry's mental clock ticked away another second. Then again, he might not and we would both be killed.

What to do?

"Larry, you idiot, just run."

He turned and grabbed the doorknob. He was panicking. He pushed the door, trying to force it open the wrong way. Tick, another second gone. He pushed again. It still didn't open. In a futile gesture he bolted across the glass of the broken light shade, grabbed a pillow, and placed it over the eplosive. He fully expected to be blown to bits.

I wonder what it feels like to have your body ripped apart by shrapnel. Do you hear the explosion/ Can you see the chunks of metal flying towards you ready to rend you to pieces?

Then an idea came to mind. An idea that struck him with its simplicity. Throw the grenade out the window! He had seen it in movies, why couldn't it work? He again dashed across teh dangerous shards. Tossing the pillow aside, he picked up the grenade and made for the window.

Then he noticed something he had missed before, a tiny flash of silver against the flat gray of the object in his hands. The pin was stil in it.

Professor Michael Adams, guest lecturer, began his discourse of the human brain.

"One cannot begin to appreciate the amount of information that can pass through the brain in, say, ten seconds time."

The man in the back of the auditorium, with the bandage on his head, just laughed.

 

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