Last Time She Died

by Niki Kamerzell

  He sniffed the air and pulled a face. “What is that?”

  Cali waved her hand trying to bat away the smell that wafted to her and shook her head. Clouds drifted in overhead and cast long shadows around them.

  Cali looked up. The clouds were dark yellow. “Storm clouds?” She pointed.

  “We should go.”

  Cali could hear the tightness in his voice and the hairs on her neck stood up. They packed up the blanket and started down the trail.

  About halfway down, the clouds dissipated.

  The steep climb down burned her calves, and they made quick time. When they reached the flat trailhead, her legs felt like jelly.

  The sun set as they drove home, lighting the mountains up like fire. Cali yawned and leaned her head against Dustin’s shoulder while he drove.

  A cough startled her, and she realized she’d fallen asleep.

  The radio blared to life and static sounding strangely like a laugh cackled through the speakers.

  Dustin pulled over and turned the radio off.

  There were no cars around.

  “You okay?” She gagged as soon as the words were out.

  A smell filled the car. The same smell from the hike, but much stronger. Sulfur, and lots of it.

  Dustin coughed again. “I don’t know if I ran something over or what.”

  The speakers crackled even though the radio was off.

  He reached for the door and as it opened, a tiny puff of yellow dust came through the vents. There were eyes in the dust, watching her. She was sure. She jumped out of her seat to join Dustin.

  They examined the car, but there was nothing. The smell was gone. Poking her head back in, she smelled near the dashboard. Nothing.

  The radio was off and the speakers were silent.

  She ran her finger along the vent and examined it, expecting to see yellow from whatever had come in. Nothing.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  Dustin shook his head. “That was really weird.”

  Cali pushed down the anxiety creeping up her spine. The feeling of being watched drifted away. It was nothing. “You probably just ran over a skunk or something.” She tried to sound convinced but wasn’t sure she did and hoped Dustin didn’t hear the waver in her voice. A weird look played across his face. “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “It’s weird. I got really anxious, and then the smell, and then—” he trailed off. “Nothing. You’re right. Maybe a skunk.”

  On the drive home, they pointed out rocks that looked about to fall, and an elk by the road. It was all Cali could do to distract herself from the gnawing inside. She wasn’t sure what caused it. Thinking of Lexi on the hike, maybe. The sulfur, probably.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. She thought too much. The smell was a dead skunk. She’d let her mind run wild lately.

  At her place, they undressed and crawled into the hot tub.

  Since the closest neighbor was quite a distance away and the yard behind the duplex was enormous, Cali took her top off and Dustin sat behind her rubbing her shoulders. She stared out at the barn and old chicken coop in the distance and relaxed in his strong hands. His curly chest hair tickled her back.

  Tesla whined behind the screen door but quickly gave up, circled and fell asleep.

  Crickets sounded over the bubbling water and Cali felt the muscles in her calves loosen.

  She sagged into Dustin. “I’m sleepy.”

  “Me too.” He kissed her neck.

  Retiring to the bedroom, they took advantage of being warm and naked before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  ***

  Alexia had to work the dinner shift, but she’d woken early. She relaxed in the hot shower. Of course the dream had woken her. As she stood in the steam, she focused on the day ahead and batted away the yellow headlights in her mind.

  The water started to run cool. She turned the water off and wrapped the towel around her head. She froze in front of the mirror. Her hair was almost dry, and she’d brushed it. But she didn’t remember doing so. She was dressed in her blue work shirt and jeans. The towel was in the laundry basket behind her.

  Her heart sped up.

  She left her bathroom and plopped down on her bed. The clock on her nightstand told her it was after noon. Four hours after she’d gotten into the shower. She’d lost four whole hours.

  She tried to convince herself she’d just woken up later than she realized. Her stomach growled at her and she focused on only that as she headed to the kitchen. She sat in front of her laptop as she ate a bagel.

  Pulling up the news, she read the same sentence three times before admitting she didn’t care. In the browser, she looked up reasons for losing time. All that popped up were time management suggestions and nothing helpful.

  The conversation with Stacy floated through her mind. Alexia hadn’t had a stroke, but the accident had been serious. No brain injury though.

  She looked up side effects of brain injuries. She read several articles that described symptoms like hers, but it didn’t feel right. She kept reading to see if it was possible to miss such an injury for so long. It was, though not likely.

  The clock on her laptop told her it was time to go. She let out a sigh and closed the screen. She was no doctor.

  Besides, her head was probably fine. So she zoned out at work sometimes. It was just work. She was focusing on stupid shit, like the stupid dream and how boring her shifts had been.

  There was nothing wrong with that. There was nothing wrong with her.

  She focused on her entire drive to work just to prove that she could. She counted the trees and named the types of cars she drove by. In the parking lot, she matched each car up with a coworker.

  Her brain was fine.

  She was, however, running behind. She rushed inside and clocked in two minutes late. No one would notice.

  Stacy flashed her a smile while leaning against the counter when Alexia got onto the floor. It was going to be another slow afternoon. Only two tables sat in Stacy’s section and one of them was getting ready to leave.

  She made a mental note to focus while working. Stacy’s shoes had an orange stripe. There was a crumpled napkin under table seven and a fork under the front counter.

  As the second table, two men in business suits got up to leave, the girls went back into the kitchen.

  Stacy leaned under the heat lamp and kissed Jeremy.

  “Hey guys,” Leland called from the hallway.

  Butterflies exploded in Alexia’s stomach as he neared. He wore black pants and a black shirt that had ‘Tom’s Diner’ written in large, gray, cursive letters across his chest. She blushed and smiled at him, pulling her eyes too slowly from his pecs. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  Stacy pushed open the swinging doors to the dining room to make sure her table was gone.

  A screeching sound came from out front. A little blue car spun across the road in front of Tom’s. It turned one-hundred and eighty degrees where it slid backward over the median and continued perpendicular across the other two lanes of traffic. Glass shattered and sparkled in the bright sun as the car careened across four lanes of traffic. Cars darted out of the way as the little blue sports car slammed over the curb, sliding mere feet from a tree on its passenger side.

  “Oh shit, Stacy!” Alexia pushed through the swinging doors. “Call the cops.”

  Stacy turned as Alexia ran toward the door. Smoke climbed from the hood of the car.

  She heard someone call her name from behind her as flames peeked from the hood of the car, curling the sparkly blue paint that chipped around it.

  Slipping in the rocked boulevard, Alexia instinctively put her arms down to brace herself but she hit the ground hard. Rolling over, her gaze fell to the rock she’d tripped over. It was a human skull. With the wind knocked out of her, she lay in the rocks staring at the empty sockets of the dead face that gaped at her.

  Chapter Five

  A tan, strong arm reached for Alexia
as she stared at the skull.

  “Are you okay?” Leland’s voice was soft and worried.

  He crouched beside her, helping her up. A strangled sob escaped her. The air rippled around her like heat off a hot road in summer. As she stared, the skull morphed into an oblong gray rock.

  There were no eye sockets.

  It was no skull.

  Confused, she looked up to Leland, then back toward the front doors where Stacy stood, holding the doors open. Searching the road, she saw the truth. The car was where it started. It had been rear ended and never moved from its original lane. It wasn’t even blue; it was a dark green sedan. There was hardly any damage from the slight impact. No smoke. No fire. No one seemed hurt at all. She hadn’t seen any of it correctly.

  What just happened?

  “Alexia?” he said, creeping closer and breaking her concentration.

  “Umm, yeah. I tripped over a rock.”

  She’d imagined her own accident, somehow. She shook her head and glanced back across the road. There was nothing there. She tried to swallow around the lump in her throat.

  It was bad enough she dreamed about the accident every night, keeping the events constantly fresh in her mind. Now it had found a way to disrupt her waking hours.

  Alexia avoided Leland’s eyes. Scrambling back inside, she hoped no one was paying attention to her. The police came and she tried not to watch the officer talking to the drivers. Soon after, both cars drove away. Alexia didn’t say another word about it. Only one table had come in during her outing. Stacy had taken care of them, but now, in the boring stillness of the diner, she leaned against the counter facing Alexia who was rolling an empty coffee mug in her palms. Her smile was questioning, but she said nothing.

  Hours later, she plopped onto her couch and was asleep within minutes.

  Alexia woke in the passenger seat of her car, watching herself drive. She knew she was dreaming; she knew what was going to happen, but she couldn’t wake up. Her dream-self listened to the same song on the radio every night. It was as though she was watching someone else, but it wasn’t someone else. It was her. She watched lightning dance all around the car. The tightening grip of her dream-self’s hands on the wheel. Her knuckles turned white as the clouds roiled and darkened. The whole sky looked sickly and yellow. Bolts arced closer. The hair on her neck stood up a millisecond before lightning slammed into the tree, bursting the trunk into giant shrapnel. A chunk slammed into her car booming like the thunder above and causing it to spin.

  She could only watch the events unfold. She’d tried to act before. It was just a dream. It was too late to change anything. She could only learn. The night of the accident, she hadn’t known what had hit her car. She just knew it was spinning. She hadn’t noticed the yellow that night, but in the dream, she saw it. The airbags hadn’t deployed, and, through the dream, she learned it was because the tree had hit her just right and missed the sensor. It helped her remember, but it tortured her.

  The dream version of Alexia cracked her head against the driver’s side window, pushing the glass out of place, shattering it like confetti into her hair. She screamed as the car spun. Alexia held on and watched as the dream-her pumped the pedals, desperately trying to stop. In her panic, she pushed in the clutch, not the brake, so the car didn’t react. Alexia was ready when the car’s rear-end slammed over the curb—inches from the tree—but her dream-self was not and her head slammed backward, then forward. Alexia listened to the sickening crunch of her dream-self’s head smashing into the steering wheel and the dream cut out.

  She didn’t always scream when she woke anymore, but as she sat up on her couch, she did.

  Alexia rose from the worn, old couch. The slate tiles felt cool under her feet as she padded to the kitchen for a glass of water. She took a long refreshing sip. The marble countertop was cold against her forearms as she leaned upon it and looked out at her small yard from the window above the sink. The moon’s ethereal beauty lit up the sky while the stars hid behind clouds. In the eerie silence, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was out there looking back in as she stood looking out.

  A raindrop hit the window to her left and a voice murmured her name. Alexia turned, focusing into the dark. The wind outside visibly swirled with dust.

  When another drop hit the glass, she jumped with a nervous laugh. There was no one there. The eerily swirling droplets against the window weighed heavy on her nerves. When she looked out into the darkness, emptiness stared back.

  She turned on her porch light and walked out into the sprinkling rain. Standing there a moment, she looked at the sky, soaking up the warm showers, and breathing in the damp scents. The rain sparkled as it streaked down through the streetlights. It softly pattered to the ground and the glistening light relaxed the knot in her chest.

  The feeling of someone watching her crept in again. But there was no one. She turned toward her door and when she glanced at the window, Cali stared back from inside. Gasping, Alexia did a double-take, but, of course, Cali was gone—had never been there. The reflection was only her own.

  Alexia went back inside, locking the door behind her with shaking hands. She tried to ignore the tricks her mind played and walked to the sink to splash water on her face. Movement behind her caught her attention and she turned away from the sink.

  He was standing there. The man from her dream. He illuminated the otherwise dim room.

  “Why are you still here, Alexia?” Lit from inside, like he was a human lightbulb, he approached her.

  The ends of his hair curled and danced in an unfelt breeze. His intense blue eyes watched her. The edges of his face blurred into the bright light. Frozen, Alexia stared at him as he repeated the question with his deep voice. Something inside her sparked with recognition and excitement when he said her name.

  She knew him. She couldn’t explain how, she couldn’t think of his name, but she was absolutely sure he was no stranger. They’d met somewhere in history before he started crashing her dreams. When she didn’t answer, he moved toward her and pressed his face to hers. Their lips connected, sending rushes of heat and excitement through her body. All the warmth rushed down her spine and danced behind her belly button. There was an urgency she’d never felt from kissing anyone.

  He had come into her house. She should have been screaming for help, but she couldn’t. She didn’t want to pull away from his warmth, from his familiarity.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he gasped as he pulled away from her mouth.

  “Me too.”

  Cupping his hands around her waist, he hoisted her onto the counter where she wrapped her legs around his hips. He pulled her shirt over her head and she tugged at his. His brightness emanated heat that engulfed Alexia. Her thighs clenched and she found herself pressing closer than she thought possible into him. She moaned as heat coursed through her.

  “No.” She pushed away, coming to her senses, as he trailed kisses down her neck. “Who are you?”

  As she leaned back, the counter underneath her morphed into something softer. The world transformed around her and she sat in warm water. Waves crashed at her back.

  It was like the dream the night before. She was in someone else’s body. She could feel her thoughts, and before Alexia could center herself, the other mind took over and Alexia was just visiting, hearing the other’s thoughts as if eavesdropping.

  “Arishat, we will lose the light unless we leave now.”

  The body Alexia inhabited responded to the name.

  She grasped the arm he offered and stood. The words, the outstretched arm. It was so familiar.

  “Alright.”

  Arishat’s eyes cleared, and Alexia saw that it was the same man from her dream the night before, but she was in a different place. The hot air dried her as she stood in brackish water. Layered over her sleeved chiton she wore a blue stola. The moss green palla that had been draped over her shoulders and head had tangled around her left arm. She wore no shoes. Golden bracelets ado
rned her ankles and wrists.

  “You look terrible, my love.” He straightened her palla and ran his hand down her arm, electricity sparking at his touch.

  His looks and clothing slowly morphed until his attire was similar to hers. His face rounded and the edges softened. Still familiar. The chocolate brown eyes knew her, and she knew them, but he no longer looked like the man in her kitchen.

  He was the man from the Scythian tribe too. Even in the dream, she knew it.

  This wasn’t the Scythian tribe though. She was there. The man was there. But this was ancient Carthage.

  Like the last time, she noticed their words were not English. Alexia knew, prior to being in Arishat’s body, she’d never heard the strange language.

  Arishat smiled at the man. He hugged her and lifted her feet off the ground. She leaned in to kiss him.

  Opening her eyes, Alexia fell hard to the floor. She found herself alone on the cool slate tile next to the kitchen sink. Her thighs contracted and the skin on her arm tingled where he had touched her. She ached with desire. Looking around the room, Alexia doubted that unexpected sensual moment—with a man who couldn’t exist—could have been a dream. She felt his lips hot on her skin. She smelled his clean, soft scent and felt his breath as he spoke to her. Her crumpled shirt sat on the counter behind her.

  As she pulled her shirt back over her head, a cold shiver ran through her. Feeling dizzy, Alexia couldn’t remember why she’d been in the kitchen. Her thighs pulsed. Intense and desperate, and out of the blue. Something danced around her memory, not wanting to be forgotten, but the closer Alexia moved toward it, the farther away it retreated.

  Dragging herself to her bedroom, she flopped onto the bed. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. Tossing and turning, she balled the sheets around her feet. Her memories of the evening were foggy, at best, and trying to find the missing pieces kept sleep at bay.

  Her thoughts drifted to work. She couldn’t remember if she had a shift the next day or not. She hoped she did. She wanted to see the new cook, Leland. The pulsing started up again in her thighs. She groaned, dropping her head against her pillow when she remembered he’d been the one to help her up after she panicked about the minor car accident.