Chapter 2 - Mission Improbable

A wave of nausea washed over Timothy Parker. His body was attempting to expel the 'sickness' that had lied dormant, just beneath the surface of his psyche, for so many years. He darted out of bed, clods of grass and dirt trailing behind him, and raced for the bathroom. As he purged his system of once delicious, now importunate Gummi Bears, Tim continually flashed back to the moment where he had 'lost control'. He tried to piece it all together, to make it fit, but could make no sense of it.

"Goddamnit! FUCK Bob! If only Jessica hadn't brought him into this. BOB! Why hast thou forsaken me?" Timmy lamented, as though Bob were a cruel God who had lain upon the earth a woman, for Tim's own delectation. Alas, for He is a weak God, and abandoned the helm of Timmy's fate to a dark, unseen hand. Tim's own pseudo-mystical delusions aside, Bob Buxtom was a mortal(and a handsome one, at that). Jessica Buxtom was his wife. 'The Queen of the Queen', Bob liked to tease, but unbeknownst to him, Timmy had adopted the same moniker for her. The title definitely suited her - her demeanor was that of a 'delicate dominatrix' in the way she handled business- Firm, but easy to scoop. Timmy had really thought he was going to get to sample some more of her Sweet Seduction^TM that night, too, right before she broke the bad news. That's when the 'Hand of God choked the shit out of her', as Timmy recalled it. He had been smart, about it, at least- No messy clean-up(God, how he hated to mop!). After draining her blood into an empty and conveniently sized ice cream tub, he came to, and the nightmarish act he had played out was reality. After a quick, yet thorough, removal of evidence, he carried her ethereally light body, which he once adored, to the backseat of his 'bitchin' 3000GT. He buried her in his friend Dave's backyard. He had full memory of the horrible act committed, but to remember it was like watching a psychopath slaughter a beautiful, helpless woman- through the slayer's eyes. Tim chose to block it out, as he sobbed uncontrollably between spasms of dry heaves.

A snap back to reality- 'I forgot to clock out!' Timmy's heart skipped a beat as he fully grasped the magnitude of that insufferably fortunate glimpse of his subconscious at work. He glanced at the clock, eyes still blurry from horking up the gelatenous ursidaic confections. It was still early. Working quickly, he sat at the computer and loaded a program he had designed for the times when he wanted to shut down the store early without anybody knowing. The program merely reads the scheduling database(which he designed as well, and was quite proud of), then compared it to the 'timeclock.log' file. After filtering out people who were scheduled but never punched in, the program then adjusts the Clock-In and Clock-Out for each individual that actually worked, and outputs the altered 'timeclock.log' with all the shifts 'corrected'. He even took into account the statistics for each individuals tardiness. Tim's teenaged co-workers loved working with him on a Friday night when he had plans, because that normally meant they got to go home an hour or so early and get paid for it. Tim made a quick adjustment in the source code of the program to correct the timestamp on the 'timeclock.log' file, so that it would seem unaltered. 'Jess would have never thought to look at that, but a forensics specialist certainly would', Timmy thought as he recompiled the source code into the complete hack, choking up at the memory of Jessica's helplessness with all things computer-oriented. He fought to stifle back the images, now. He had to save his own ass. He would mourn her death later.

Tim saved the necessary hacks onto his killer 1-Gigabyte USB pen drive, and raced out of the house.

As he sped obscenely towards the scene of the crime, Tim prayed that Bob hadn't noticed that Jessica never came home. He would have to operate in stealth mode. Tim knew the layout of the neighborhood like the back of his hand- this was not the first time he had snuck around this neck of the woods at 5:00am. It would be light soon, and Tim knew he had to work quick. He parked his car near a trail he knew in the woods that led directly into the Burger King parking lot, just a short sprint away from the loading dock door of the Dairy Queen. As he approached the Queen, he saw that she was barren. His heart was pounding like a Vinnie Paul drum solo, blooding boiling over with adrenaline. He paused for a split second at the sight of Jessica's brand-new Jag. 'I should probably do something about that when I'm done,' Tim noted to himself.

He maneuvered his way under the security camera outside the back door(the only camera on or in the entire building), and unlocked the door without a sound. As soon as the door was shut and locked, Timmy threw himself down the short hallway to Jessica's former office. He turned the knob, and it didn't budge.

"Goddamnit! I did not lock the fucking door!," Timmy hissed in a ferocious panic.

He snapped the door knob hard and to the right, and this time, it turned. An enormous sigh of relief escaped Timmy's nervous lips.

Jessica's office looked like it had never been touched. He plucked a few stray hairs out of the file cabinet drawers, against which he had stared down her sweet, soulful eyes without a shred of remorse. "No, that wasn't me. I was a man possessed," Timmy protested to no one. He popped his pen drive into Jessica's computer, and let it do it's binary magic while he checked around the store a bit. That was when he saw it - The tub of Jess' blood. How could have he been that careless? He ducked back into the office, and patted himself on the back for his 'elite hacker skills'. His program had worked perfectly. No one would ever know that Timmy had worked yesterday, the day that Jessica Buxton went missing. Certain now that he had elimated any trace of foul play, he snatched up the tub and headed out the way he came in. As he walking towards the door, the doorbell rang.

'Who the FUCK is that'? Timmy cautiously looked out of the industrial sized peephole.

'Shit! It's Bob! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit...', Tim muttered under his now feeble breath. Bob was standing inches from the door, his eye up to the peephole. Suddenly, Bob's head jerked back, as if he had been startled.

'Did he see me'? Timmy had just crossed the treshhold from relatively composed(considering the circumstances) to scared shitless.

"Jess! Let me in! I know you're in there! Come on! It's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, and I had to leave Nick home alone to figure where the Hell you were. Open the goddamned door, Jessica!" Bob was shouting at the top of his lungs.

'Shit! The cops will be here in no time if he doesn't shut up'. Acting upon an urge he could not rationalize, Timmy opened the door.

"Timmy! What are you...Are you fucking my wife?' Unbridled Incredulity sets the tone for the state of mind this threw Bob Buxtom into. 'This fucking kid...is here at 3AM...my wife's car is in the parking lot...this kid is dead meat'.

"What? No, don't be ridiculous. I was just uh...fixing the schedule. Woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it. Had to get over here and change some things before I could get back to bed, you know how it goes..." Tim was fearing for his very life, but he stood determined to try and play it cool and BS his way out of this. It would take a miracle.

"No, I don't know. Where the fuck is she?"

"Who, Jess? Why would she be here, it's 3-"

"Trust me, I know what time it is," Bob interjected sharply. "The funny thing is, if you look right behind me, you'll see her car. So, where did she go? Amazing coincidence that you would just happen to show up at 3am in the morning on the night that my fucking wife vanished into thin air?" Bob pulled a Beretta 9mm pistol out of the waist of his designer jeans. "Get inside."