by Tara Brown
Mitch lay back with her, his hand still held hers. The tiniest part of her wanted it to mean something beyond the strength and gratitude it really was. She knew he liked not being alone as much as she did.
"Cookie sure seems to like you." He spoke softly.
She almost giggled, "He was a dear friend to me. It broke my heart to lose him before. I came back for him. For all of them. I was alone after I left Lydia's and in my heart I always saw this as home."
"Did you get an apartment?"
"Yeah, it’s a dump but I'll get it squared away."
"I'm glad you're here Ari, even if it's hard to be reminded of my life before."
She turned and snuggled into him, "Me too." They watched the sky darken and the stars start to appear one by one.
She drifted off to sleep enjoying every second of the dry heat and the fresh air.
She woke with a start in her bed. She couldn’t recall leaving the roof. She swore she had slept on the roof. She looked around the small apartment seeing nothing but herself and frowned.
"Mitch?" She spoke softly worrying about the fact he not only knew where her apartment was that he'd brought her home. She was still wearing her waitress clothes, which was a relief.
He never answered her. She layback wondering where he'd gone. She liked that he'd been a gentleman at the very least.
She reached over to the small wooden jewelry box on her dingy old nightstand. It was one of the few things she'd brought in her small backpack from Portland. She opened it and looked at them all. The shiny white stone, the earring, the necklace, the ring, a piece of paper that said 'LOVE' on it, all different little trinkets or pieces of jewelry. For every person she'd sent back one thing had remained. She couldn’t understand why but something always stayed behind. She kept everything. She reached down and touched the rosary remembering the hatred she felt for that one. She wanted to keep it separate from the other pieces but knew that it would only have power if she gave it to it.
Everything in the box made her feel like a serial killer keeping mementos.
She closed the box and slipped it under the bed. She didn’t want anyone to see it, she didn’t want anyone to see how many there were. It made her uncomfortable that Mitch had been in the apartment when she'd been sleeping.
Her fingers tingled remembering how amazing it felt to push on someone. She knew she would have to do it soon.
She looked at her bedside table expecting to see a cell phone. She wished for a second she hadn’t thrown it away. She knew she had to but it was annoying not being able to text Aimee and have her take her to an alley and push on a drug addict. Her lip trembled as she thought about Aimee. She missed her dearly.
She got ready for work leaving the apartment locking the door. She felt uncomfortable in the apartment suddenly. Mitch had encroached on her private space making her feel a slight bit territorial.
The restaurant was booming with every table full. Cookie had been amazed with how quickly she'd learned everything and fit in.
She watched him for a second seeing something she had never noticed before, stress. He wasn’t the jovial cook he'd always been. He seemed worried and constantly stressed about everything. If her uncle had owned the place and taken all of the responsibility on and just left Cookie to do the cooking he would have been happy with that. The fact he had to cook and run it seemed to be wearing on him.
She leaned through the window, "If you need any help with anything just ask okay. I used to do the ordering and inventory for my uncles restaurant back in Portland."
He nodded, "I would love it if you took that over. I'll go over it with you later when we slow down."
She smiled and rolled her eyes, "If we slow down."
She felt the door open blowing in some of the hot air. She turned to see Mitch coming in. He seemed down about something. She wondered if he felt guilty for taking her to her apartment without waking her, she still wondered how he'd done it.
"Hey Mitch." She spoke softly pouring a coffee for the mayor.
His eyes darted meeting hers for a second, "Hey Ari." He moved past her quickly.
She frowned pondering his change in temperature toward her.
When the shift was ending and the last of the patrons were paying and leaving Cookie got her to come to the back and go over the inventory and ordering. He was stunned at how fast she'd figured it out.
"You're a real lifesaver Ari."
She whacked him in the arm, "You should have asked someone sooner. You look tense and stressed all the time."
He frowned at her familiarity with him, "Yeah I guess I've been a bit stressed."
She walked out with the ordering sheets and went and sat down at a table to rest her tired feet.
Mitch avoided eye contact with her. She kept her gaze on his face until finally he looked up at her frustrated, "What?"
She smiled, "What?"
"Why are you staring at me?"
"Why are you avoiding me?"
He shifted uneasily, "I'm busy is all. I'm tired from someone passing out on the roof too. I tried to wake you up but you wouldn’t. I carried you all the way home. You could have been more grateful."
She frowned, "I wouldn’t wake up?"
He shrugged, "Nope. You were beat."
She smiled, "Well thanks for carrying me home."
He blushed, "Don’t mention it."
She squinted at the way he still avoided eye contact with her.
She stood up with the papers, "K well I'm outta here. See you tomorrow?"
He nodded and smirked, "Yeah."
She walked out feeling the bursting heat hitting her as she walked through the door to outside. She loved the feeling. The warm wind played with her long hair making the smell of the greasy diner fill the air around her. She smiled at it remembering the runs she used to take and how the smell of her uncles diner always filled the air when she released her hair.
"Do you have the time?" She looked up at a man in dressy clothes.
She looked at the watch on his right arm and turned to run but everything went black as she screamed, "LUCAS."
Her head pounded in the dark as she woke. Her sweaty body felt like it was overheating again. She looked around the room but the light was so faint she could barely make out where she was. It looked to be a warehouse of sorts perhaps. She didn’t know how long she'd been there. Her dry lips felt cracked and her mouth parched. Smacked her lips together feeling the pasty thickness in her mouth.
"Hello." She called out softly.
She looked around the room but no one was there. It was a cell with no windows. There was a small shower and a toilet. There was also a door.
She felt a hot tear slip down her cheek as her hands began to burn again like they had in the beginning of her change. She knew she'd been there a long time. They'd starved her. The burning meant she would attack anything she saw.
Noises off to the side of the room made her lift her body up. Her hands tingled like an acid ate them.
"Help me. Please someone help me." She called out. No one answered her.
The noise interrupted her silence again.
"PLEASE HELP ME. WHOEVER YOU ARE PLEASE HELP ME!"
Her voice cracked from the dry throat. She needed a drink. The hunger in her hands was burning her up.
The door was opened filling one corner of the room with light. The light made her shut her eyes suddenly.
"Please I just need some water. I wont tell anyone who you are. I don’t even know who you are. Please just some water."
The light was gone as quickly as it had come making her able to open her eyes again. In the dark she could see a figure. Her hands sensed the person before her eyes did. She was like a shark in water smelling out blood. Her hands wanted the person on the opposite side of the room.
"Stay on your own side, please trust me. Don’t come any closer or I'll hurt you. Not because I want to please just stay there." She begged feeling the hot tears burning their way down her cheeks.
>
The feet shuffled closer. The person made a muffled sniffle.
"Please, please don’t come any closer." Ari backed up the bed pressing herself against the wall.
She could make out the shape, it was a girl. She was maybe Ari's age. Her long hair was around her shaking shoulders. She cried.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Ari asked softly.
The girl took another step as if fighting herself. It seemed as if she didn’t want to walk toward Ari but she couldn’t stop herself. Ari pulled the blanket on the cot up over her own head.
"Please, please please please please." She chanted, "Please please please please."
The noise of the shuffling footsteps got louder.
Ari lifted back the blankets to the startled face of the girl directly in front of her. Tears stained her cheeks. Her glistening eyes caught the light. Her hands were behind her back and duct tape was across her mouth. She wore a t-shirt and shorts. As she shuffled closer Ari recognized her gasping, "Missy. Missy please stay away from me."
Missy sobbed harder as Ari spoke her name. In the dark her white t-shirt was nearly glowing in the dark. Ari's hands were burning she sat them underneath and rocked back and forth, "Lucas will find me." The girl was almost on top of her now. Her t-shirt was right in Ari's face. She climbed onto the cot sitting right in Ari's face.
Ari closed her eyes, which didn’t help, she could feel the heat emanating from the girls body.
"Lucas will find me, Lucas will find me, Lucas will find me."
Ari felt herself losing the control she fought to maintain.
"WHY? WHY? LEAVE ME ALONE. MISSY PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE." She shouted into the face of the sobbing girl.
Ari knew the girl was under some kind of spell, some kind of mind control. She remembered Aimee saying Dorian could do mind control.
"DORIAN YOURE MY DAD, PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS." She shouted again praying he would listen to her.
She felt the dark taking her again. She slipped along the wall passing out into the darkness again as the heat overtook her.
She woke again feeling the pounding in her head. She opened her eyes jumping back as Missy leaned over her. The girl had passed out as well. She lay on top of Ari. Not thinking she put her hands to the girls arms to move her out of the way and instantly as her hands made contact with the sleeping girls arms her hands took control and pushed. Ari felt it pouring from her like it had with her uncle. The energy shot from her.
The air filled sparkling the way it always did. Suddenly the picture was there hanging in the air. Missy was prom queen and her boyfriend wanted her to go to the car with him to celebrate their victory. She made it out to the car but decided against celebrating. She got angry with her boyfriend David. Ari recognized him. Missy broke up with him for being so disrespectful and asking her to lose her virginity in a car. She stormed off. She decided to take the acceptance to Yale, which she was about to turn down because he was her soul mate and he was only going to community college.
Suddenly she was back at the car. She got in and the car started moving suddenly making Ari sick. She got out of the car and David broke up with her anyway. She was so heart broken she decided to wait on the college acceptances she'd gotten. She found out she was pregnant. She went to Albuquerque and went to Planned Parenthood. She got an abortion. She got depressed. She faded from Ari as a fat girl on a couch eating a tub of peanut butter and watching TV in a trailer. Her Grad ring hung in the air catching the light on the silver band. Ari put a trembling hand out into the air knocking the ring to the ground. She felt relief and pain simultaneously. She curled into a ball and cried into her pillow.
She whispered into the air softly, "Lucas will find me. Lucas will find me. Lucas will find me. Please Lucas come find me."
She wished someone could touch her arm and send her back to the cross roads where she boarded the plane home. She wished she'd just gone back to Lydia's.
She woke hot and sweaty again. She didn’t cry any more. She didn’t have any tears left and they never fed her. She didn’t get water any more. The only sustenance she got was people. She didn’t know how long she'd been there. She didn’t know who held her there. None of the people sent in ever spoke. She never saw light unless they sent someone in to be pushed. It was always an innocent.
Her hair was ragged, her skin was clammy and her body felt weak. Every time she ate she would get a sense of being full but it wasn’t the same. They had sent eight people to be pushed. She'd tried to fight in the beginning but it didn’t make any sense any more. The only thing she accomplished by protesting was scaring the humans beyond belief. Lorna had been her last. She swallowed her pain and anger and just walked up to the crying woman and pushed her in complete control.
She couldn’t get their faces out of her mind. Each of them went from completely happy lives to pain and suffering. One girl committed suicide. One man killed his wife in a fit of rage. One woman ran away leaving her children and husband alone. One man got cancer. Lorna became a prostitute and died in an alley of some kind of sickness.
Every one of them haunted her memories and filled her dreams with pain and anger. She didn’t know how to make it stop. She tried waiting at the door for them to open it but they waited till she was asleep and snuck someone in.
The last day in confinement Ari slept on her cot. She had felt craziness overtaking her. She looked around the room smelling someone else there. She looked over in the corner to see a man. He was as the others had been. His arms tied behind his back and duct tape over his mouth. She knew it had been a long time since Lorna had been there. Her hands were burning savagely.
The man watched her, he fought every step he took toward her. She climbed off the bed refusing to witness him struggle in fear and agony.
As she drew closer she shrieked and stepped back. The man before her was as close to her as her uncle. His face fought in recognition of who she was. She collapsed on the ground and sobbed, "No please anyone but him. Please don’t make me do this."
She turned toward the door and screamed, "DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS. HE WILL DIE. DON’T MAKE ME DO THIS." She didn’t need to push him she knew exactly where he would go. She knew he nearly died in the army.
He took another step toward her. She felt herself going crazy as her hands lifted. Tears poured from her face as her hands made contact with his bare arms. The push was as gentle as she was able to give. He froze as the air sparkled and his picture filled the air around her.
He was young and in the army. He was on mission in a desert, she knew it was Afghanistan. He had told her the story. He passed the keys to his buddy as they walked up to the jeep and let him drive. He laughed and they joked. As they were driving his friend looked over and pointed out something. They didn’t notice the mine on the side of the road. The jeep blew up. His friend died instantly while he was blown out of the jeep.
Suddenly he was back at the jeep. His friend gave him the keys and instead of throwing them back he drove. When the jeep hit the mine Cookie was killed and his friend was blown from the vehicle. He was injured as cookie had been but at Cookies funeral the wounded man hugged three children and a beautiful woman. He cried and kissed the casket.
As Cookie faded he smiled and spoke softly, "Thank you Ari."
He faded leaving his dog tags floating in the air. She reached out and grabbed them. As her fingers made contact with them the floor began to change around her. She looked around the room as the door opened suddenly and people began running in screaming at her. She couldn’t hear them. She saw Mitch smiling at her from behind the group of men she didn’t recognize. He gave her thumbs up. She was back at the diner, standing in front of it. She wore her jogging shorts and her legs looked tanned again.
Mitch had doomed her to being captured but he saved her knowing that Cookie would bring her to the beginning. Everything in her life changed with Cookies death.
Her hands burned again. It was the first day, angry Ari was gone, churchy Ari was gone, Ben
and Lucas were distant memories like dreams in her brain. None of it was real. She was outside the diner on the very day she sent her uncle back.
The red sign said Vince's. She sighed knowing everything was right again, well except everything in Portland but at least she hadn’t been able to mess with their lives.
She started to feel faint. She felt like she was going to pass out. Her hands were burning her. She knew it wasn’t the flu. She walked away from the diner knowing she had to get away from her uncle.
She walked down the street to the pharmacy and stood at the side of the building, "You okay Ari."
She looked up to see David, Missy's boyfriend.
She smiled, "Yeah wanna give me a hand? I lost my contact over here." She pointed further down the alley. She knew he was a dirt bag and she had no remorse for what she was about to do.
He nodded smiling looking slimy, "I can do that."
They walked into the alley making Ari smile.
Chapter Twenty-Six- Chronic Case of Déjà Vu
Aimee
She looked out at the wet day feeling exhausted from something but couldn’t put her finger on what it was. She felt as if she'd run a marathon. Déjà vu seemed to be at every turn. It was as if her powers had grown and she was able to glimpse things in the future. She sighed hoping that wasn’t the case, she liked the mystery of it all.
Aleksander walked into her room tapping lightly at the door. He smiled sending a shiver across her body.
"Morning Aimee."
She smiled still unable to see him without feeling giddy, "Hey Aleks."
He frowned and licked his lips. Aimee watched him doing it forgetting she had vowed to stop messing with him. She knew what she felt for him was part magic and part passion. Love wasn’t apart of the equation.
"So I've been having the weird feeling lately, it’s a bit like Déjà vu but it's not. It's like my day was going a certain direction yesterday but today it's gone and going a different way."
Aimee smiled, "Yeah I'm having that too."
She sat up making room for him to sit on her massive bed. She liked having him on her bed.