100 Minutes

00:33 HOURS

2010-06-16T01:43:00.001-07:00

Animal Two wondered if Travis remembered five years ago.

If he remembered meeting up with his four buddies, Deano, Pete, Carl and Matt to go cruising down the streets in Deano’s new car. Like they had done a hundred times before.

If he remembered an innocent mistake during their cruise. An inconsequential bump against a drunken pedestrian staggering across the road.

If he remembered reporting his friends to the police the next day.

If he remembered his friends getting 18 months in jail while he walked away with nothing but a fine and a slap on the wrist.

Travis remembered.

00:32 HOURS

2010-06-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

Animal Two continued his meandering self-congratulatory monologue for a few moments, then took a steady breath. ‘So how did you like your little brother’s room.’

Travis said nothing.

‘Thought as much. Now you’re beginning to understand how we felt.’

Still silent.

Animal Two spat, ‘How we felt when you killed our brother. When you killed our friends. When you bashed their heads in and gouged their eyes and stabbed them up and broke their necks. One brother, three friends, you left one of them choking in his own blood you filthy motherfucker!’

Travis said nothing.

Everything being said was true.

00:31 HOURS

2010-06-16T01:40:00.001-07:00

Travis stumbled back into the living room and picked up his phone. He called Animal Two.

‘Didn’t catch that last part.’

‘YOU DUMB PIECE OF SHIT. START ANSWERING YOUR PHONE OR WE WILL BLOW. YOU. UP. We didn’t strap a bomb to you so you could disarm it ten minutes later. Your ‘disarming’ it activated the remote control system you dumbass.’

The bomb rig beeped. A green light lit up.

‘It’s primed. Disobey and we blow you in half.’

Animal Two began describing how clever he and Animal One – oh. His brother – were.

Travis listened. Now they had his attention.

00:30 HOURS

2010-06-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

The light was still on in Cody’s room. Travis avoided looking at it.

His phone was going crazy in the living room. He tried not to think about it.

He took the pliers and looked at the stitches holding the corset around his abdomen. The skin around them was swollen and he was still weeping blood. Maybe a little lightheaded.

He worked carefully, trying to cut the stitches – was that right? Threads. Nylon. He got the pliers around the first and squeezed.

Nothing. They were too blunt.

Animal Two screamed from his phone. Only caught three words.

‘BLOW YOU UP.’

00:29 HOURS

2010-06-10T01:01:00.001-07:00

Travis was thinking clearly. Cody’s room had overloaded him. His brain had reset.

Now he had one thought. One of his tormenters was calm, composed; the other borderline retarded. He called the latter – Animal One, he mentally dubbed him.

‘What happens if I take off the bomb?’

A pause. Then, ‘Uh. You explode, bitch.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

He hung up and considered his tools. Animal One was either slow, or lying. Possibly both.

Or very smart, and cunning, and a good actor.

Again the phone started ringing. Again he ignored it.

Collecting the tools, he headed into the hallway.

00:28 HOURS

2010-06-10T01:00:00.001-07:00

Travis pulled out the tools. There was another note wrapped around the handle of the hammer.

‘Don’t try to remove the bomb. Trust us.’

The phone was ringing on the couch where it had been left. Travis kept ignoring it, examining the tools.

Hammer, screwdriver, pliers, a wrench, two plastic tools to pad it out.

The phone went to voicemail.

The second animal screamed. ‘We can see you, you dumb son of a bitch. Stop playing and answer the damn phone. Trust us, asshole, it’s in your best interest.’

He disconnected.

Travis waited a second longer, then grabbed the phone.

00:27 HOURS

2010-06-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

Travis stormed the house, pain be damned.

He opened the door to his room. Hit the lights. Trashed. The windows, secure. Bed torn to shreds, as if stabbed repeatedly.

The study. Door, lights, wasted. He didn’t bother letting it sink in. A cursory glance sufficed.

The kitchen. Cutlery missing, anything sharp, anything dangerous removed.

Except the tool belt. Back to the bathroom, moving like he had a purpose. Gut screaming at him to slow down. At least he’d finally got over the bomb scare.

He grabbed the tool belt, returned to the living room.

The phone rang.

00:26 HOURS

2010-06-08T02:57:00.000-07:00

Every part of him was on fire, but Travis still walked. He fumbled with the doorhandle to Cody’s room and pushed the door open.

Stumbling in, he half-dropped Amy onto the bed. Hated himself for not being more careful. She didn’t deserve that.

He closed her eyes. Started backing out of the room.

Something occurred to him. He hesitated, flipping on the light.

There was blood everywhere. The sheets, the walls, the floor.

Across the ceiling, ‘WE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU’.

They had run out of blood to write it with. They finished it with paint.

Travis barely avoided vomiting.

00:25 HOURS

2010-06-04T04:19:00.001-07:00

Amy Adams’ dead eyes were staring into space.

Travis couldn’t take it. Those eyes had been the brightest, most expressive he ever knew. Now they were glassy, lifeless.

Straining everything he had, he got to his feet and staggered to her. Fresh blood flowed. His white full-length cargo pants were turning reddish brown at the top.

With every care he could take he scooped her up and headed down the hall.

Suddenly he thought about how he’d pummelled her with the door earlier. Poor Amy, full of life, now an empty shell. Battered without a second thought.

He almost cried.

00:24 HOURS

2010-06-04T04:17:00.001-07:00

Travis Redgrave picked up his phone and numbly dialled 1, then hit the call button.

The first voice, first man – no, dammit, animal – he’d spoken to that night answered. ‘We got you, we got you.’

‘Where’s Cody.’

‘Now you know how we felt. We got you, bitch, we got you. ’

Travis hung up, dialled 2, ‘call’.

‘Where’s Cody.’

‘That would spoil the fun.’

‘Is he dead.’

‘There’s no fun in me telling you. See, we’re starting to get level. You killed our friends. We’re killing yours. Although, yours is a short list.’

The animal started laughing.

Travis hung up.

00:23 HOURS

2010-06-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

Travis’ mind replayed the last few hours of consciousness before waking up in his bathtub.

He had made dinner for himself, his brother Cody, and Cody’s girlfriend, Amy. They had a few drinks. At ten past nine he dropped them off at a party.

By nine thirty he was back home. He would wait up and taxi the two back home when they called.

The episode of House ended at 10:05.

He could not remember ten thirty.

It was 12:23 and Amy was now dead on his recliner.

He did not know where his brother was.

He eyed the phone.

00:22 HOURS

2010-06-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Travis Redgrave was numb.

The phone rang.

His body was convulsing.

The phone rang.

He wanted to tear someone apart.

The phone rang.

He wanted to be sick.

The phone rang.

He wanted the world to end.

The phone rang.

But before it did he wanted to kill at least two people.

The phone went to voicemail.

‘Guess you recognised her. Now you know how we felt. And yeah, you can’t call out. We basically turned your phone into a glorified walkie-talkie. Dial one or two and press call to talk to me or my colleague. In your own time.’

00:21 HOURS

2010-06-01T01:19:00.000-07:00

Travis Redgrave looked at the dead girl on his recliner and was horrified that he knew her name.

But he knew more than that. Her name, her age, her address. Her personality. Her family. What she had eaten for dinner earlier that night.

He fell to his knees, mouth flapping, no sound escaping. Held back tears. He wanted to be sick.

Her name was Amelia Adams, 23. She lived on Schneider Street, two kilometres from here. She was an extroverted and empathetic girl. Only child, parents were teachers. She had eaten lasagne.

She was Cody Redgrave’s girlfriend.

The phone rang.

00:20 HOURS

2010-05-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Travis looped his arms under the dead girl’s armpits and dragged her onto a recliner by the couch. Wheezing, he stumbled to the light switch and threw it.

The light in the living room was much harsher than the laundry or bathroom. He blinked back the glare.

There she was, on the couch, slumped unnaturally. There was nothing peaceful about her appearance. She was dead and had died violently and every part of her showed it.

He tried to think. To remember. Between the pain in his stomach and the adrenaline he couldn’t think straight.

Then, slowly, he remembered her.

00:19 HOURS

2010-05-25T01:31:00.001-07:00

Manoeuvring in the cramped space was awkward at best. He repositioned the body to get the door open easier, which took some trying, and then got his arms under her knees and behind her back.

She was light, but still his stomach was on fire and his legs felt ready to explode. The half a dozen steps to the stairs felt like a mile, one deliberate foot after the other.

The upstairs floor was at eye-level. Travis heaved the girl onto the living room floor as best he could and got on the stairs.

Now to pick her up again.

00:18 HOURS

2010-05-25T01:30:00.001-07:00

Getting the door open before had been difficult, but with his legs still trembling from the shock of the bomb it was almost impossible. Blood was weeping down his front into his pants.

Travis decided to try a new tactic, rearing back and slamming the door with all his might. The door opened enough for him to scrape himself past.

He still couldn’t recognise the girl. The lighting, the angle. He turned his head this way and that.

Familiar. Like someone he knew.

Upstairs was better lit. He bent down and started to pick her up.

Every movement was agony.

00:17 HOURS

2010-05-25T01:27:00.000-07:00

Travis Redgrave tried to call the cops on his mobile phone, but couldn’t. He dialled, pressed ‘call’, but nothing happened. Three tries and nothing. No number seemed to work.

Trapped and unable to communicate. They made it clear they were outside, so calling for help wouldn’t work.

You didn’t recognise her?

The words rolled over in his head.

No.

He didn’t.

He stood up and headed for the laundry, legs still weak. He used the stairs this time, ambling towards the toilet.

Collapsing against the door, he noticed his stomach was starting to hurt.

Looking down, he saw blood.

God.

00:16 HOURS

2010-05-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

‘We’ve waited three years for this.’

Travis frowned. His memory was foggy. Three years ago?

‘You’re going to pay, you miserable shit.’

Three years?

‘We’ve got you right where we want you. You’re ours.’

Travis almost lost concentration as the voice droned.

Then, unexpectedly, it asked if seeing ‘her’ had shocked Travis. Travis assumed he meant to the girl in the bathroom; the voice sounded surprised that Travis hadn’t recognised her.

‘I’ll hang up, you can go check. I’ll call back in five minutes.’

‘I’ll just call the cops.’

‘With a dead girl in your bathroom? Please. Five minutes, go.’

00:15 HOURS

2010-05-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

The voice explained very simply that all of this was happening because Travis Redgrave was a bad man.

Scoundrel, liar, fiend, unfaithful to friends; but not in so kind words. The voice, the man, on the other end of the phone painted a lurid picture of a person who was in need of a good punishing, although stated no specific cases against him.

Travis listened, absorbing very word. There was nothing else he could do; these people had him where they wanted him.

So he sat, and listened, and started forming his own image of his tormentors.

Bright.

Clever.

Angry.

00:14 HOURS

2010-05-19T01:24:00.000-07:00

Travis answered the phone, breathed, and calmly informed whoever was on the other line that if they resumed laughing, he would hang up.

But the voice was different. ‘Oh, that was my colleague.’

Travis froze. He looked to the windows. ‘What?’

‘That wasn’t me.’

Travis was on his shaking feet. ‘How many of you are there?’

‘Two.’

Travis’ mouth hung open, unable to think of anything to say. He drew the curtains.

The voice chuckled softly. ‘That’s not going to help.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I was hoping you’d ask that. Take a seat, this may take a while.’

00:13 HOURS

2010-05-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

The phone rang.

Travis had left it in the living room. He exited the bathroom, shaking so hard he had to support himself against the wall in the hallway. His knees were jelly during an earthquake.

On the fifth ring he picked up.

‘Félicitations! You’re alive!’

‘Listen you French –‘

‘French?’

And the voice began to laugh again.

Travis waited to see if it would settle, if the voice on the line would speak plainly.

It didn’t.

He hung up, and dropped down on the couch, still trembling.

Deep, steady breaths. The bomb’s disarmed. Just –

The phone rang.

Travis swore.

00:12 HOURS

2010-05-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

One minute left.

Alarm going off.

Think straight.

Order, colour, exact. Last three words were a list. Jaune, rouge, vert.

Order, colour – colour. They were colours.

He looked at the wires. Red, green yellow.

Vin rouge was red wine. Cut the red wires second.

That show House talked about jaundice. Bits of people going yellow. Maybe the two were related.

Fifteen seconds left on the timer.

Go for it. Yellow, red, green. He grabbed the pliers and started cutting.

The alarm shut off, the timer blinked out.

The ticking had stopped.

The only sound now was Travis Redgrave breathing heavily.

00:11 HOURS

2010-05-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

Panic came back with a vengeance.

Travis took out the screwdriver, found the instructions wrapped around the handle. Trembling fingers unwrapped it, careful as they could be.

Oh, no.

Oh, God, no.

His stomach dropped out. His heart skipped a beat.

They were in a foreign language.

French.

The timer was counting. He could recognise a few words. Ordre, couleur, exact. Seemed close enough to English.

Order, colour, exact. What was en, ‘in’? Half the other words he didn’t even begin to know. Thinking straight was becoming almost impossible.

An alarm began to sound on the timer, shrill.

One minute.

00:10 HOURS

2010-05-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Moving quickly, Travis left the basement laundry and returned to the bathroom.

It was difficult to see the tools behind him. Even harder to get the scissors into the right place. The stitches were sewn in tight and the wet blades kept slipping.

He dried the blades. Worked as fast as he could, getting all twelve stitches that held the tools in place.

Took maybe thirty seconds. Cut himself more than once.

Stripping the tool belt from the corset, he heard something beep shrilly.

A timer, previously hidden by the tools.

He now had two minutes to disarm the bomb.

00:09 HOURS

2010-05-12T02:03:00.000-07:00

Travis looked at the girl.

Her eyes were open, staring. Green. Pupils dilated in death. Strawberry blonde hair. Was probably very pretty until someone tore her neck open.

Looked familiar.

He kicked the toilet bowl lid up. Looked inside.

God knew what was in there. A dark mess. Looked bad, smelled worse.

He reached a hand down … stopped. Hesitated an age.

It was too gross.

It was too obvious.

Whoever got the jump on him was smart. Creative.

Instead he eased off the cistern lid. Paydirt.

He grabbed the scissors and made his way out of the small cubicle.

00:08 HOURS

2010-05-11T00:46:00.001-07:00

At length Travis was able to remove the knife and retrieve the letter. He also managed to discern the body was female, but still couldn’t see who.

Stepping back into the laundry he positioned the note under the light.

‘You can remove the tools. Scissors are in the toilet. Instructions to disarm bomb wrapped around screwdriver.’

Travis threw the paper over his shoulder and went back to the toilet door. The body was in just the right position to make getting inside a pain in the ass.

With whatever strength he had, he heaved against the door and slipped inside.

00:07 HOURS

2010-05-09T22:59:00.000-07:00

Travis heard ticking.

The bomb. Of course. There wasn’t time to piss around.

Just do it. Open the door.

He turned the handle and pushed. Something heavy was against the door, blocking it. The door opened just enough for him to turn on the light inside.

Another push, and he could squeeze his head in, just enough.

Son of a bitch.

There was a body, slumped in a heap, unidentifiable from this angle. Plenty of blood.

On its back was another note, held in place with a knife. No blood stain.

Travis leaned on the door heavily and reached inside.

00:06 HOURS

2010-05-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Travis Redgrave thought to himself, ‘I have seen (made!) my fair share of dead bodies. Dead bodies do not bother me.’

But here he was, alone, in his house, a bomb and tools strapped about his waist and sewn into place, doors and windows locked, with no ostensible way to get out, and suddenly he was finding the idea of dead bodies bothersome.

And suddenly he found himself thinking if there were more dead bodies in here with him. He hadn’t really checked all the rooms yet.

Maybe there was one body. Maybe many.

Maybe none.

The door remained shut.

00:05 HOURS

2010-05-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

It didn’t matter how much Travis blinked, the sign stayed the same.

‘There is a dead body on the other side of this door.’

Somehow it had the effect of calming him. His mind stopped racing, his heart stopped racing. He had a single thing to think about now.

Now he had focus.

‘There is a dead body on the other side of this door.’

Was there really? His mind ticked over.

Open the door, he thought. Find out.

‘There is a dead body on the other side of this door.’

He hesitated, unsure if he wanted to confirm it.

00:04 HOURS

2010-05-04T22:36:00.001-07:00

Spare phone.

The thought flashed through Travis’ mind. He had a spare phone for such an occasion. Downstairs in the laundry/toilet, under the sink.

He opened the door, turned on the lights. A single buzzing fluorescent bulb turned on, flickering sickly.

With a leap he forsook the stairs and went straight for ground. Trembling fingers tore open the sink cabinet.

Found the phone. Or what was left.

Growling in rage he spun, planting a fist on the bathroom door.

After a second he noticed the sign stuck there.

‘There is a dead body on the other side of this door.’

00:03 HOURS

2010-05-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

Travis began working the phone. Looked through the contacts, found they had all been erased. He instantly regretted never bothering to remember anyone’s phone number.

He thought to leave and tried the doors. Front and back, both locked. Keys not in their usual places. He rattled the handles, tried to force them.

No luck.

He fared no better with the windows. Locked and covered in security mesh. In his quest to make his house a secure fortress, he had turned it into an apt prison.

Travis Redgrave was not a man who scared easily.

But now his blood ran cold.

00:02 HOURS

2010-05-02T16:42:00.001-07:00

Travis Redgrave’s phone rang somewhere, distantly.

He stepped out of the bathroom and into the hall. Darkness either side. Moonlight filtered into the living room at the end of the hall.

And another light source. A brighter blue, by the couch.

The phone, ringing.

He ran to it, scooped it up. Unknown caller. He answered anyway.

An unfamiliar voice said his name on the other line. Travis asked who it was, but received silence. Then another sound, a horrible noise.

Laughing. Maniacal.

The sound only managed to enrage him. He demanded the voice identify itself.

It didn’t.

He hung up.

00:01 HOURS

2010-04-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

Panic, now. A bomb. Oh, shit, a bomb.

His mind raced. Oh shit oh God why who how.

Calm down. Deep breaths. Steady breaths.

Travis calmed himself. His heart rate slowed. He quickly got to his feet and stepped out of the bath. His shirt came off in one movement. There was more on the corset, around the back. He craned his neck over his shoulder to see it.

A tool belt.

He reached for the tools. Couldn’t get a grip. He tried to move the corset.

Pain. Eyes focused.

This was getting too much.

It was sewn into place.

00:00 HOURS

2010-04-29T05:10:00.001-07:00

Travis Redgrave woke up in his bathtub with no memory of how he got there. His eyes roamed, took in the blurry shower curtains, the blurry towels on the blurry rail, the humming fluorescent light, an indistinct haze of white.

Slowly he became aware of a pressure around his abdomen. He looked down; saw a bulge underneath his shirt.

He blinked. Once, twice, everything back into focus.

He lifted the bottom of his shirt. There was something around his stomach. Metal cylinders strapped to a corset, tops and bottoms a mess of wires.

Ticking.

A single thought formed slowly.

Bomb.

ABOUT

2010-04-29T04:58:00.000-07:00

An experiment to apply one hundred word storytelling to a longer story. Rather than one hundred words to describe an entire narrative, '100 Minutes' uses one hundred words per chapter, to detail exactly one minute of story. It was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated and, somewhat ironically, time-consuming.

The chapter headings are written in 24 hour time, with 00:00 hours denoting midnight, and progressing until 01:39 hours.