by: me
She stood in the darkest shadows in the bathroom late that evening. An evening that would go on to haunt her...but far worse would be the effect on the ones more closely involved. The nameless, faceless ones that would come to fill her life & her dreams with a horror she'd never have a chance to fully come to terms with...but a fear that would fuel the fire; sparking her inner survivor. A part of her personality she'd never even knew existed, a strength that would prove to pull her through the darkest nights, toughest days & an increasingly painful existence. She'd long preserved this part of her, solely to pull her out of the perils she foresaw - and to help her help those that weren't aware...didn't even have a clue as to what happens when people stop being nice (read: humane) and start being real (read: intolerable cruelty inflicted by those afflicted with a need for control, a lust for money, a deep-rooted desire for power and seeming lack of conscience).
Waves of terror smashed through the curiosity garnered earlier that Thursday. She sat, ears perked, shoulders hunched just below the open window...
She tried to listen through the scratching of the leafless tree limbs against the open pane for - what she could have sworn - was the sound of a close yet distant drill pushing through the siding of her home: 4 distinct & eerie sounds slicing through the night air.
She sat amidst the shadows for hours that night. She nervously moved to almost every corner of the room, spooked by the echoes of the outdoors & finding comfort within the shadows of the room, straining to hear the mechanical sounds again.
When she finally found the courage to peek through the window screen, she saw nothing but a glowing moon. Terror continued to course through her veins. Her instinct had each nerve standing on edge. Something was not right. Something was very, very wrong.
She'd never felt this way before. The terror was different than her childish fear of the dark. It echoed through her soul, leaving her short of breath and shivering. Her entire body trembled.
Her gazed crossed Larchmont, down in the direction of New Rochelle and further still - New York City.
At the time she had yet to comprehend what she was looking at...or for...that rainy night.
As Thursday turned into Friday, she eventually stopped trembling & the panicked terror eased.
She spent all day Friday wondering what exactly she'd encountered the previous night. She'd never felt like that before. The experience was a unique one and she didn't have words to describe the emotional roller coaster she'd unintentionally boarded that Thursday night. A ride that, it turns out, wouldn't come to a halt for years afterward.
She sensed her premonition had something to do with the somewhat controversial information she'd become privy to after spending at least a month as a library assistant for a law firm.
From Day One, her intuition seemed to have been awakened on some level, evoking an almost fight-or-flight response. Once her heightened intuition had surfaced, she foolishly fought to ignore too many gut feelings. She naively thought that by stamping out her intuition, she could ignore whatever it was that was nagging at her. It didn't occur to her that her intuition would become the most efficient tool in her intellectual arsenal.
However, she had been unable to ignore the previous night. Fear: Pure & Raw. Where the feeling came from, she wasn't sure. Not at the beginning, anyway. For some reason, she knew it wasn't the future of her own fate she feared, rather something told her it would come to affect a colleague she'd just started working with.
"It's Lee!" she thought to herself. "I know last night's episode was all about Lee! And I'm scared for Lee in a way I've never felt. Utterly helpless & frightened beyond belief," she noted to herself.
She spent much of Friday considering whether or not she should tell her boss about her fateful premonition. Literally, she agnonized for 8 hours straight about what to do...She had just scored the job and didn't want to come off as some crazy girl fresh out of the college dorms...nor did she want to scare Lee into cardiac arrest.
As the clock drew closer to the end of the work day, she closed her eyes & inhaled slowly. She knew what she had to do.
"Lee..." she started.
"Yes? Can I help you?
"Lee, I had a really bad feeling last night & um..well...um...this might sound weird, but can you please just make sure you lock all of your doors and windows this weekend?" she blurted out after having spent 8 hours weighing the potential outcome of this situation.
"Yes, I will," Lee responded non-chalantly, as though the young girls request was hardly a strange one.
She dropped her jaw in shock. Maybe she'd been too late to be of any help. Maybe Lee was covering something up.
She desperately wanted to explain the nature of this situation, which she assumed had to do with her recent research, but the old bat hadn't batted an eye...or the e-quivalent, during their Instant Message conversation.
So, what could she do? Hopefully she wouldn't arrive to work Monday morning to find out Lee had in fact been in danger.
This time would be different, the girl feared. It wouldn't be a broken shinbone or a fractured ankle.
For some reason, the word collarbone came to mind. She couldn't shake it. She would pray for her faceless boss. She'd pray for the voice at the other end of the phone line...the fingers communicating with her via IM. She'd have to pray hard. Harder than ever before. She just wished she knew exactly what it is she should pray for. Had she known what was to come, she'd have kept mum in the first place. What was coming would echo across the generations.
The End.
by: bary
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