by Cassi Gray
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After being questioned by Detective Halloway, I was accosted by men and women who insisted with dogged determination that I be sat in an ambulance and whisked off to the hospital for a head to toe check-up. I gently refused at first, but lost my lady-like charm after the tenth invitation. I thought of myself to be a patient person, especially after the day I had, but enough was enough.
I had looked around briefly for the Green Eyed man, but found that Detective Halloway’s partner was eyeing me with the same suspicious curiosity, so I smiled at the emergency personnel who approached me, and continued on my way.
By the time I got home, the sun had set long ago. It moved from this land to cast its glow and warmth on another land far away. I missed it. It had the ability to chase away the ever increasing chill that was slowly enveloping me. No amount of hot tea, coffee or hot chocolate could push it back into the depths of sadness from which it crawled out of.
I still missed Jeremy, I thought about him often, and wished desperately that I could thank him for saving my life. I also wanted to ask him why me. Why did he choose me out of the others in the other elevators? I wasn’t anyone special.
My mind still flitted back to the SWAT member with green eyes. I didn’t know much about him, I didn’t even know his name, but those eyes I would never forget, along with his completely unabashed show of concern for me. I wanted to thank him too, but knew I would never get the chance to.
Two men in my life that were there so briefly, yet made such an impact on me that I knew I would never be the same. And I would never be able to tell them so, along with my mother, any news of a man that made me sigh and she’d be ordering wedding invitations.
I allowed myself to sink further into the little hole of cushions and pillows that I created in the corner of my couch. The TV remained off because I had enough chatter within my head, I didn’t need anymore, and I had on only a small tabletop lamp next to my couch. It cast a bubble of warm glow around this corner of my living room and I was centered in its golden bath surrounded by mountains of softness.
My cell phone gently vibrated the couch next to me, not wanting to pick it up, I leaned over the corner of a pillow to catch a glimpse of who was calling me.
Right on cue, it was my mother.
I sighed, and sank back into my little haven, I would call her later, again. I had already spoken to her at least five times since I had gotten home, telling her every little detail so she could analyze it and spin her own resolution to the situation. I knew she had been worried about me, especially while reading news blurbs and blogs all day trying to follow the action.
But I needed a break. I also happened to leave out the little part about Jeremy, and the falling man. I just told her I slept all day while I was in there.
The phone stopped buzzing like a stuck bee next to me, content, I shifted inside my valley of pillows to make an attempt at getting further into the couch when the TV sprang to life.
I leapt out of my cushioned sanctuary and scattered pillows about the room in the process, leaving my living room to look like the aftermath of a dorm room pillow fight, minus the dorm attendants, and the dorm room. My living room was much cleaner.
Panting, I eased myself back down onto the couch and started to laugh, I must have pushed a button on a remote wedged into a cushion somewhere, in my tries at burrowing into the couch further. I plunged my hands in-between cushions to try to find the remote, but came up with pennies, dried food crumbs and fortunes from my favorite take-out joint. But the remote, I didn’t find. I took mental note to vacuum under my cushions the next time I wanted to compare my living room to a dorm room.
Shrugging my shoulders I sat back and paid the attention to my TV that it deserved.
The news. Great. Like I needed any more coverage about the terrorist attack on my work building.
I was about to get up and change the channel, despite the arguments from my tired muscles and the persuasive hugging of my couch, when the news caster switched to a follow-up interview of a story that had broken earlier this morning, and was developing slowly throughout the day within the shadow of the attack.
I let my muscles and couch win this battle since this segment wouldn’t be about the miniature war within the lobby of my work. I allowed myself to melt back into the welcoming softness.
The on-scene reporter was standing in a cone of bright, white light being cast by the camera crew’s equipment further off screen. He held an old fashioned looking microphone that I raised my eyebrows at, surely they could have found one of the newer microphones for him, the style that you see clipped onto the reporter so they have the freedom to flap their arms and hands around to show enthusiasm in whatever they’re reporting about.
“…standing here with the owner of the property. Who says that the rock came from the sky. We’ve been following this story all day and bringing you the first footage of the rock and the story as it develops, before anyone else.”
I blinked at the screen as they showed pictures and footage from earlier in the day, when the sun was still present to cast it’s light down onto us and chase back all the shadows. I recalled seeing a blurb about this rock found in a field during my early moments of being trapped in the elevator. The rock was the same in color and texture as every other normal rock, there really wasn’t anything spectacular about it, other than it was in a field, and it didn’t belong there. It reminded me of seeing pictures of giant boulders precariously perched in places that made you think, “Now how did that get there.”
“Now if you recall, and those of you who haven’t been watching, we’ve played the earlier footage of the rock in the daylight, this stone looked like any other ordinary rock. Except that it’s quite large. The owner of the property parked his full size truck next to it so that we could see the scale of the rock.”
A picture flashed on the screen of a red Ford F150 pick-up parked at what I could guess to be two car lengths away from the now massive boulder. The reporter was right, you couldn’t get a good idea of how large the rock was, unless something of normal size was next to it. It was monstrous. At least as tall as a small office building, say maybe three stories tall, and about as big around at its widest point as a regular sized house.
“Good, there, that was the picture from earlier. Now if you look behind us now,” the camera zoomed out away from the reporter and tired looking property owner and focused on the looming boulder in the background. It was silhouetted by the dark night sky with the assistance of the rising moon. You could make out its egg-like shape in the darkness, the stony, but smooth edge creating a crisp, distinct line against the star speckled sky. It looked like a giant egg shoved into the ground, with one end pointing towards the moon and guardian stars, while the other end made its best impression of an ostrich.
“If you look back there now, you might have to zoom in,” he told the camera man, who obeyed, “If you look very closely, you can see a faint glow coming from the base of the stone.”
I was on my feet, inches from my TV and squinting at it before I realized that I was.
But there it was a faint, but noticeable unearthly bluish, white glow that seemed to be emanating from inside the rock itself. It ebbed and flowed like waves were sloshing around within it. It was stronger at the bottom for sure, where the stone had plunged into the earth, but looking even closer at it, you could see that it faded the further up the rock you looked. But it was there. And it was not normal.
I suddenly felt as though I was on the verge of discovering something incredible. My heart quickened its pace, tapping gently against the confines of my rib cage at first, but building in speed and force. My breath caught in my throat of which I was convinced was working against me by shrinking my airways to cut off the much needed air.
I could feel the eye opening discovery just on the outside of my reach of comprehension, and my brain continued to weave through its maze of thoughts, determined to come to the end, the mind blowing revelation that was just
…right…there.
“So I’m standing here with the owner of the property again, and it’s been a long day for all of us, but he’s agreed to answer a few more questions for those of you at home who have posted questions on our website.”
The cameraman forced me to stare back at the reporter and the very tired looking man standing next to him. I felt myself becoming frustrated, I didn’t care about the property owner, or the reporter, I wanted to look at that rock again. Why were they focusing on the owner? Did they not care about the glowing stone that was blotting out the night sky behind them? Did they forget that rocks don’t glow here on Earth?
Several things happened all at once. I didn’t have enough wits left in me after today to sort them all out one by one. Instead, I just took notice of the blaringly obvious.
The banner below the property owner boxed in his name, little, white letters floating in a red background.
Jeremy Ruthers.
I couldn’t breathe, I stepped backwards trying to get away from the TV and the man whose voice sounded oh-so familiar, even though I had never seen him before in my life.
“You’re questions are all the same now, it’s not going to matter how I word it, I saw what I saw, and that rock right there,” he turned and pointed back at it, “that right there, is proof. I know that no one will believe me on what I saw coming out of it, it wouldn’t let me take any pictures of it, but it doesn’t change the fact that…I saw what I saw.”
He looked confident, but defeated as he finished his statement. I took another step back away from the TV as my heel found the missing remote, that I remembered nearly too late that I left it there earlier in the night from when I sat on the floor eating my warmed chocolate lava cake. Not wanting to crush the malicious thing, I yelped and stumbled backwards, landing with a bounce onto my couch which tossed the remaining pillows and cushions askew in their feeble attempt to launch off the couch and join their brethren on the floor. My cell phone flew up into the air higher than the pillows, its own attempt not so feeble as it thumped to the carpeted floor.
All of this happened simultaneously to a rearranging within me. A realization forming that wasn’t missing any pieces of the puzzle, it just needed time and a gentle nudge to shift into place.
I never asked him what he was.
Jeremy was mysterious and elusive in his answers, but the thought never even crossed my mind that he was that way because he didn’t know any other way to be. Humans have a broad range of emotions and knowledge. And I already gathered that he was not human, which meant that he did not have the capacity to act like a human.
I remained how I landed, sprawled out on my couch and bore a hole into Jeremy Ruthers on the TV, as the reporter rambled on about reports, neighbors, and agents showing up.
He looked exhausted, his brown hair was pointing in every which way, and his eyes were downcast and weary as his day was coming to a close. There was no way he could have controlled my elevator while doing interviews all day. That would have been impossible. Literally impossible.
The rearranging within me stopped, and settled into place over my mind. My mouth slowly opened to form a perfect ‘O’ with my lips. I began to pick through my epiphany, like it was a magazine full of the most interesting and rarest things in the world, as the reporter thanked everyone for watching, and a commercial flicked on about preparing the perfect home cooked meal for your family, through an app on your phone.
Jeremy Ruthers saw something come out of the rock. While he had no proof of this, I could see that he was tired of explaining everything over and over. He must have had contact with it, because he said that it wouldn’t let him take pictures of it. It all flowed through my mind as easily as my day to day grind at work, Jeremy, my Jeremy was from that glowing rock. He knew no other names than the name of the first human that he had contact with, so he modeled his voice and his name after the property owner who came to take pictures of him.
Jeremy Ruthers.
I started to laugh. Nothing else seemed right to do at the moment. An alien, or whatever he was, had come to Earth to save me. It was ludicrous. Outlandish. But it happened. And I missed him.
My phone had another stuck bee moment and flapped its wings against the floor at my feet, groaning out loud because I was suddenly reminded that I needed to pick up the phone and talk to my mother at some point.
I reached for the buzzing brick, pushing the button to unlock the screen, I stared blankly at it. And then my gaze lifted to the TV again.
The remote was never in the couch cushions.
I looked back down at my brightly glowing phone. It was not a phone call from my mother, but a text message. The sender was Unknown, but the message itself was not:
I won’t let anything happen to you.
The End
About The Author
CASSI GRAY lives with her husband, and their rambunctious yellow lab under the gloomy skies of Western Washington where she aspires to write entertaining novels and short stories for all. With her unique and creative style of writing she brings to life objects, places and characters like never before.
Behind The Voice is her first novella and she hopes you enjoy it just as much as she did writing it.
Discover Other Titles By Cassi Gray
BEHIND THE VOICE is the first novella in her first series. Keep watching for the second book in the BEHIND THE VOICE series and be sure to connect with the author to let her know how much you enjoyed her first published book.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/CassiGray09
Email: [email protected]
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