Chapter1

She was dreaming….dreaming… dreaming that same horrible dream she always dreamed, she had dreamed in her coma for seven years…seven years. They say, people do not feel the time lapse or time between when they had gotten into that so very dead-like state to when (or if they come to) nor do they dream…but she had, she had done both… who ever she was. She felt every single second of it as if every slow rotation of the red hand on a number clock, was a palpable lash from a whip upon her skin, hot and digging. Every second. Every second of seven years in a coma; felt. Every. Single. Second.

The dream had no beginning and no end…at least not for a while. It was just one long picture of a spiraling clock that descended; down, down, down into a rabbit-holed abyss of more endless time.

Unending time. Time in this heinous, blood curdling dream.

She was running; not away from something, but towards it. Evermore towards it. Running. Running pale hands clenched so tight that they were white, the knuckles were bone-white. Nails digging into the heals of her hand in half-moon crescent…moons, moon, M-O-O-N, M-O-O-N. The moon came in the high windows of the cells and cascading through bars into the corridor in long strips. Long horrible strips that ran in spurts; darkness then spurts of slitted lights, then darkness again.
She was running, scampering between that darkness and scattered bars of light, her bare feet flinging themselves against a cold green linoleum floor. Miles of green. Thunder roared.
She was chasing something. A pagan group of dark clad figures inclosing a figure of white and tan that walked slowly, ever so slowly toward the door at the end. The group, the man… the condemned man just out of her reach. Blood begun to flood from all sides of the floor, first seeping from the crease where wall met ground then ebbing at the pretty, bare white feet. She ran faster. Red ebbing on green

Thunder roared, her shear virgin white gown fluttered around her legs as she picked up speed. She seemed to be yelling something, something that was washed away by the thunder.
Hell…Hell…Del… Del

That one word over and over again. Del… Del. She couldn't let Del get passed those double doors or ol' sparks would fly. Sparks…Old Sparky.

A jolt of electric, crushing pain shot through her making her one shoulder jolt out of its joint. Falling on her side, the blood still ebbing, now soaking the white dress. She had to keep going.
That fall was where the dream had changed. Normally all it was continuous running, but when she fell down it was enough for the men to go through the double doors. Enough to break the cycle.

"No!" she shrieked, one arm shooting out as the other hung torn and trailing behind ligaments ripped…as if it… as if she was stepped on.

Burning, it filled her nostrils. He was burning. That horrible smell.

She got back up and shattered through the doors with a numbing pain coming at her from every angle; she screamed, the sound was like a mouse who was caught by an ominous black cat, a cat that had been chasing her while she was chasing after the group of men, high and long. The doors gave under her weight.

She had wanted to break through the doors for so long. If not to save the man, then just to break the awful cycle. She fell through them, crashed through them. She thought the fall would be endless but it wasn't. it was a short cladder to the dirt of a corn field.

Corn field?

Her back felt heavy, as if there was additional weight to them; there was, a hidden weight that had always been there; she looked back at them as they twitched, her wings…her dove-like wings, her angel wings; huge and heavy. Tips tinged with crimson. The wings were too much. Too much for one person to bare. Too much for one angel to bare on this earth alone. Alone. She was alone now. Completely alone.
Or was she.

"Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world"

The voice; warm and old and sweet came to her on the breeze accompanied by an acoustic guitar. She stood to follow it, a warmth radiating from it. "Keep singing." The angel whispered, blood seeming to drip and wash away from the tips of her wings. Eyes as green as the day, half shut with relief. "Oh, keep singing so I can find you." The corn seemed to bow and bend as a path for the poor winged creature to follow the melody. Wings feeling the light husk touches.

"Mine is the sunlight
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise ev'ry morning
God's recreation of the new day"

Home, she could go home. God would let her back home and she was going. Going into that warmth, that sun. that song. Wings golden. Home. he was letting her go home. she was coming home.
She levitated.

….but the imp…caught her.

A mouse caught by a cat.

if he had to stay here, then so did she. And he would be sure of it. The imp pinned her to the ground, not quite a man, but a shadow. Claws tore. At her dress, at her hair, but mostly at her wings. She screamed, a gnarled grin and a struggling fight.

A Stand.

Tampa Florida June 20th 1990

Audrey-Elizabeth shot up in bed like the click of a pen, bathed in a semi-warm sweat. Oh my God it was that stupid dream again. She took a quick half inventory of where she was; bed, nightstand, seashell plugin nightlight now dim by the light of the morning. She snatched up the name tag that sat in the red glow numbers of the alarm clock that read 7:15. With shaking, trembling hands she got the pin-on tag straight in her palms and checked it. It read; Nordstrom's, in the signature font, and under that in a plainer font it read; Audrey-Elizabeth. Hyphen and everything.
She was still here. She was still Audrey-Elizabeth Gleason. She was still twenty-six (or thereabouts) and she was still an employee of the Florida Nordstrom's jewelry department, bottom floor. And Jesus Jumpin Christ she was still in bed. She should have been up fifteen minutes ago! Agnus was already burning the toast, she could smell it.

She kicked off the pastel-colored sheets which resembled a fine Monet painting and she took even more inventory of her surroundings as she moved briskly through an already hurried morning routine. Seeder cane chair by the bed; red pencil skirt and blazer on the seat, white button up had fallen to the floor joining tan pantie-hose. Matching white dresser to the nightstand; lace panties and bra waiting neatly with big pearl earrings and a jumbled array of bobby-pins, a soft bristle brush that was used to a dubious 100-strokes a night routine. Closet half open revealing a minimal amount of clothes, three sundresses, two pairs of jeans (light and dark) a few different colored tank tops, a few blouses, and a sexy little slip of a little black evening gown that she never had the courage or right event to wear. In shoes she had; her work heals, her white canvas tennis shoes and those perfect heels to go with that unworn black number. The "come fuck me" heels, as Agnus' daughter called them. Audrey-Elizabeth blushed just at the thought; why did she even have those heels? She hadn't had a boyfriend since….well since she could remember anyway…let alone done "the other thing". The heels went unworn too.

In her wake was a stuffed teddy-bear with a Florida State T-shirt on it laying on its side, it must have fallen out of bed when she had her nightmare. It was probably silly for a woman her age to sleep with a stuffed-animal but it brought her comfort and was a good way to elevate her wrist which had sustained injuries after her "accident" or that was what the doctors were calling it. Assumingly; because the-event-that-took-half-of-your-life-away was too long and didn't sound medicaly enough. They didn't even know if it was an accident.
The story—her story had been run on the 6 o'clock local news for a time and never went anywhere (of course, she had still been in La La Land when it was airing, wherever Comatose La La Land happened to be) it went something like;

An anonymous person; female, early to mid-twenties was found by local retirement home gardener in shed on January 3rd, Thursday of last week. The local hospital says that the girl is in stable condition though in a comatose state. (then they showed a photo of a face that was mostly medical tubes at the corner of the screen) Public officials ask that anyone related to or having any information about this girl please step forward by either calling or going to Tampa General. In other news…

That was it…she was just found there. No car crash, or no car in sight that would lead anyone to believe it was a car crash, no blood or gashes to lead to a crime scene, just a random girl found with head trauma in a shed of Sunnyridge Retirement home. had it been due to drugs? The doctors didn't think so. Had someone tried to rape and kill her, or mug her and then bashed her over the head? neither the police or doctors thought so. She just…showed up. There had been some interviews of the residence of the retirement home to see if she belonged to someone as a grandchild. No. she had been finger-printed and nothing showed up there. No social security number, no birth certificate, no fuss, no muss, no coconuts. A blank slate
A regular Jane Doe in every sense of the word.

Audrey-Elizabeth picked up the bear momentarily and mused that maybe she should bring up the bear to Dr. Adler in her session on Thursday, and then decided that the nightmares and lack of identity were probably more than enough to fill an hour of therapy and that sleeping with a stuffy like a child was probably the least of her worries…don't sweat the small stuff sweetie. Besides, it wasn't like she named they thing….Mr. Jingles….okay, she had but she hadn't told anyone.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

The smoke detector was screaming now and she was wheeling around the banister of the stairs still in her pajamies, taking the steps two at a time. Oh Lord Almighty. "I'm coming Agnus!"

Agnus Bueller was puttering around her sunny little kitchen making breakfast for her live-in guest; after all it was only right. Agnus had been of the era of housewives and being a good hostess and making a full breakfast was part of the territory. In her own mind, she was really cooking and making record time too. The bacon was sizzling, coffee was brewed, the toast nearly done, the eggs were sunny-side up like the day was going to be, plated and on the table.
Agnus was feeling pretty good today. She had gotten up and the Florida sunshine had peaked over the horizon like a little kid peaked over the edge of a parents bed gleefully waiting for them to get up, the pain that normally pegged her lower back and knees seemed to be at a low level; pins and needles, not full-fledged bee stings, yet. She went into her master bathroom and put on her Maybelline face (it was unheard of to be seen without your face on. Even Erving; her husband for sixty-two love filled years had never seen her in the mornings without her face on. In sickness, in health, for richer and for poorer Agnus Bueller had made sure that Erving had woken up to a pretty, made-up wife. Though; she noted the "pretty" was dwindling as the years went on and on and soon it was just made up.

In the 4X mirror she looked in to curl what was left of her once strawberry-blonde hair, Agnus saw lines on her lines even as if time had decided to draw a map of her life upon her face complete with detours, eighty-three years will do that to a woman. Putting on her makeup was more like spackling those lines now, but she had managed it. Her little loopy curls in place in fluffy patches that didn't quite blend anymore. She had burned the corner of her forehead with the iron but that was no reason to stop the world. Turned off the bathroom light and went out.
She was moving pretty good today, she thought. She had seen a bag of dirt and some unplanted azaleas that she must not have gotten to resting by the incoming flower garden in the left hand corner of the small yard and thought she might get to those later that afternoon, and after maybe call up her friend Jenny for a game of Gin Rummy.

She had looked in on her little guest before getting in that up-the-stairs-down the-stairs chair gadget her grandchildren had been so fond of.

How long? How long had her son been badgering her to get a dog or cat or even a bird after Irving died for company. Agnus had scoffed. She had never gotten why people fussed over animals all the time. What kind of company could an animal be? yes, you could talk to it but unless it was a "pretty bird" it normally couldn't talk to you. And who wants to hear "pretty bird, pretty bird" all the time. But, she was lonely, no doubt about that. Agnus had considered adopting another child for awhile. Maybe one of those adorable bristle-haired black babies from Africa. She had always wanted a black child for some reason, they just touched her heart, and all the film-stars nowadays seemed to be adopting babies left and right. Of course, no adoption agency in their right mind would give an 83 year old woman a baby, or so her son insisted. And the problem remained; she was an old woman with grown children and grandchildren that had no time for her, always called away with the beepers and boopers of todays world, leaving her with no one to love and care for. And then, her little house-guest showed up.

Agnus had noted by the additional light on the clock that the girl had set her alarm for the morning. Agnus flipped the switch off, it was a weekend and the poor little dear deserved to sleep in as late as she liked. Her house guest was such a pretty little thing, no bigger than a penny; like her own children, she took delight in watching her sleep. One arm sprawled against the pillow on the opposite side of the bed where a husband or lover would be, her other arm curled up to her chest cradling an old teddy-bear of her son's clad in a Florida State T-shirt from when her daughter was in college. She was mid-twenties but she still held the smooth, unblemished and unlined skin of a child both on her face and the flat softly-arched planes of her stomach where her pajama shirt had ridden up from turning and the tan thighs under the pink cotton shorts leading down to the knees where the covers had cut sight off matched except for the dimple on the bent knee. A smooth little dancers body; not cold and cut like that Jane Fonda woman with all her videos, or harsh and boney like Twiggy had been in the 60s, just a smooth, pleasant , healthy little body, softly curved and with just the right amount of fat, maybe some baby fat that hadn't melted away, maybe would never melt away.

Ribbons of shoulder length russet hair cascading in subdued waves over the edge of the bunched up pillow where a full rose cheek rested. Her lips softly pursed, the color of a sweet rosé wine . the girl's eyebrows were a tad on the thick side but that hadn't stopped Audrey Hepburn or Liz Taylor any from being America's sweethearts as Agnus remembered. She had the same sharp expressive eyes as Lizzy Taylor that could warm you or cut into you if they wanted, green. There was nothing remarkable really about this girl; the only thing setting off all the combined features (like a diamond in just the right setting) was the long neck and elegant shoulders, but there had been nothing remarkable about the two actresses either. Hepburn had never been anyone's pinup girl like Monroe or Ginger Rodgers, but neither had Grace Kelly and she had ended up the Princess of Monaco. There was a cleanness to their looks, wholesome. An all American, classic, girl-next-door beauty.
Sometimes Agnus liked to pretend that she housed the next Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, or at least until the prince came.
Went down stairs and made breakfast.

What Audrey-Elizabeth (after jumping up to turn off the smoke detector) found when she turned the corner from the stairs into the kitchen was a mess. A well-meant mess but a mess all the same. She often wondered how someone who walked so much like Tim Conway's old man on the Carol Brunette show and only covered to inches of ground at a time could do so much damage in such a short time. "Agnus Bueller" she thought "one of God's great mysteries; a mess that only took fifteen minutes to make that takes an hour to clean." The first thing to do was to get Agnus seated down, off her feet before her knees and back flared up beyond the point where pills would help and an emergency appointment for a cortisone shot would have to be made.

She moved swiftly, touching both the old woman's shoulders gently as not to scare her and make her jump or jolt in surprise any more than she would either not hearing Audrey-Elizabeth had come in, or forgetting that she lived there all together. The shoulders were both frail and sharp against the contrasting young palms. "Aggie." Audrey-Elizabeth coaxed softly, hopefully. There was a long dreaded moment (that in real time only lasted a few seconds) before a light of joyful recognition lit the shriveled face of the old woman as she looked up at the girl who was a few inches taller than her, pretty with concern and genuine care. "Theres my sweet girl!" the old and vain ridden hand enclosed around one of the young ones on her shoulders. "How is my sweet girl this morning?"
A small piece of worry chipped off into something like relief in Audrey-Elizabeth. Agnus remembered her. Not only was that a personal relief that in a world where she was otherwise a literal nobody that someone remembered her, but it also saved Audrey-Elizabeth a long, very convoluted conversation on how she came to be there and a phone call to Harry Bueller at Tampa General (Agnus' son) as reinforcement. When Agnus remembered her it was a small victory and blessing for the day, one that she carried with her.

Audrey-Elizabeth gently guided Agnus to one of the chairs of the kitchen table like an usher at a wedding and helped her sit carefully, marking the coral-colored clown grin that went far beyond the region of thin lips that were almost not there anymore and the purplish, blackish burn on the wrinkled forehead due to helplessly shaking hands. It made Audrey-Elizabeth want to cry sometimes with just how hard Agnus Bueller tried.

She went over to the farmhouse style sink and reached up in the cabinet for the round pill holder sorted by the days of the week, dumping the contents of W into her palm after getting a glass of water and taking them over to Agnus to take and then getting a napkin and dipping the corner in the glass of water and gently cupping Agnus' chin in her free hand, crouching before her and gently tending to the access lipstick with a loving concentration. Like a mother getting food off her child's face before sending them off to school. Agnus had once been a Miss Florida in 1954, looks had always been a matter of pride for Agnus, her livelihood, it came before anything else and that was what Audrey-Elizabeth tended to first, and then with more water the burn.
Agnus looked up at the girl and said feebly. "You are so good to me honey, thank you."
This too, made Audrey-Elizabeth's heart pang with the urge to cry. It was such a little thing. Such a simple thing that she didn't feel she needed thanks for. Wouldn't anyone have done the same thing?

"Always, Aggie." She gave Agnus a smile and straightened, turning to see just what lied ahead of her as far as clean up. She bit her lower lip as she always did when she knew she had work to do.
It was a well-meant mess, but it was a mess all the same.

The smell of burning marshmallow fluff and Karo syrup in two separate pans was sickeningly sweet and crusting onto the pans themselves (they were lucky the sugar contents hadn't caught the house on fire), the sunny-side-up eggs that had been plated ran in transparent goop with a yellow yokes suspended like great yellow suns. The sausage that were cooked in the Christo oil (or rather the Karo syrup) were on a separate plate in brown caramelized stacks and bacon cooked in lard (or the marshmallow fluff mistaken for lard) was still semi-sizzling in the pan) and the toast (which had been done over three times and was black as crows) popped. Not to mention the dusting of Foldgers coffee grounds on the counters and on the floor, and more importantly wedged in the freshly bleached grout.

That was why no one ever said "the best part of wakin up is Foldgers in your grout!" no indeed, that was not the best part of Audrey-Elizabeth waking up this fine morning.
And all this could have been prevented if she had gotten up fifteen minutes earlier, stupid, faulty alarm!

Her teeth released her bottom lip from captivity and she sighed, going to work in what little time she had before the Nordstrom's jewelry department demanded her attention. Dish towel in hand, she would see to the toast first.

The old 52 pick-up Chevy Ford truck glided along the highway easily. Calling it "her truck" would be insulting and presumptuous. Nothing was hers. Everything belonged to the Bueller family; it only took one look from Stephanie Bueller (Agnus' barely visiting, leachy daughter with the equally leachy, awful, self-absorbed children) for Audrey-Elizabeth to remember that. She was a second rate citizen. A foreigner without papers or cards…and hell wasn't that true in some respects?
Stephanie Bueller wasn't a frequent visitor of her mother (and maybe that was a blessing) but she was a frequent caller of her mother, especially since her mother's "little charity case" had moved in. Audrey dreaded that hour, when 6:00 would roll around and she and Agnus would just be settling in to watch Vanna White turn letters or someone who would like to buy a vowel. That phone would ring and it would be a like a pick axe in Audrey's spine. Stephanie had the kind of voice that carried in deep bellows beyond the pigeon holes of the receiving ear piece of the phone and into the actual room. "Hello honey-bunches, how are you? I was just—"

"Ma I want to go over your accounts again, I called the bank today and they said you had a few withdraws. They said you spent money here, here and here, is that right?" She didn't even bother to greet her poor mother, who was just glad that the phone rang at all and it was one of her kids, and not one of those scam calls or collecting calls that came so often. Audrey noted bitterly to herself that it was both kinds of calls rolled in one. Oh sure, Stephanie wasn't collecting now but later on, later when her mom was six feet under Stephanie would collect in abundance through crocodile tears and then send Audrey-Elizabeth off packing, and thank Christ that she didn't have to fake anymore family holidays with her holier-than-thow brother and his family like a bad orgasm. But right now her only concern was the joint-account and the fact that it was touched and not by her. she asked the question like a wife-beater husband who suspected his wife of fooling around.
Audrey-Elizabeth supposed she could understand the initial worry about their situation of having a stranger life in with their mother; Harry Bueller had certainly showed a reasonable amount of concern about it at the start (i.e. money and if his mother was getting treated right, if she was a good girl) Audrey didn't need knowledge of her past to realize that there were sleazy people out there and they had taken a big chance on her. but that was now three years ago. Hadn't she proven herself, that she loved Agnus more than anything, that Agnus was the only thing she could love on this earth and that she would rather let the awful black imp in her dreams catch her and defile her over and over again before she let anything happen to Agnus?

It had certainly been proven to Harry who now waved the ugly spewing of his sister off like the theory of bad juju when you knock over a salt-shaker, or coming across a black cat, or walking under a ladder. He had seen the way the girl was with her mother. Spending hours at the floral department of Yard Birds, Home Depo or Lowe's as his mother puttered around and chatted endlessly about the same five subjects she had talked about yesterday and the day before, without a trace of boredom or impatience. Holding his mother's checkbook with her palm flat as a sort of portable desk so Agnus wouldn't even have to bend even a little at the counter. On her knees in the front yard or the garden planting till the light was lost, only to go in and cook a full dinner, then draw a fancy bubble-bath, help his mother in and out of the tub. Stop in the middle of grocery shopping to help her reapply chap-stick and then go off arm in arm.

As for the girl's own expenses she had started the job search as soon as she was far enough out of her coma to read listings in the paper and knew she was going to be back in the world (before she even knew where she was going to be settled) and that was what Harry had first admired about the coma patient, self-reliance. The start of his urge to help get her back on her feet. She had gotten the job at Nordstrom's two months after she had moved into the little cookie-cutter retirement community that only housed people age 55 and up with the exception of disabled children and caretakers (which Audrey was going in as the ladder). After she had started getting paid regularly she had paid back all the expenses they had taken care of such as clothes and food, then continued putting her paychecks toward the household thereafter and didn't ever take pay from them as a caretaker, just the roof over her head and Agnus' company. Hell, Harry often wondered what Stephanie was complaining about? Wasn't a former coma patient cheaper and overall safer than hiring one of the food stamp junkies from the state and kinder then shutting the woman who had changed their dirt nappies into a home? saving them the hassle of putting the house up for sale? Dealing with bullshit real estate agents and faulty buyers? Or at least putting it off for a few more years until it was absolutely dyer?

Harry wasn't going to pretend and neither was Audrey-Elizabeth that the Buellers were going to care or help her after Agnus died. Harry had gotten her this far and it was further than most recovery doctors would do. He had given her a home (however temporary it was remained to be seen) and a letter of reference from himself and some of the other people on the medical board to get her any slightly above minimum wage job she wanted, she picked a jewelry clerk. That was better than most average pimply, American teenagers flipping burgers (full past and history intact) could hope for. Dr. Harry Bueller had done his good deed for the day (maybe for a lifetime if he was lucky) and was done with it. After this; like the rest of the world… Audrey-Elizabeth Gleason was on her own.
Darn lucky. That's what she was and she owned up to it everyday by doing all that the bible said, she was darn lucky. She might even look back on this part of her life… this start of her life and call it "the lucky years".

But now, driving on High 80 in Irving Bueller's old Crest green Ford, to her job at Nordstrom's while her dear Aggie was safely tucked away with a neighbor she changed the station on the radio away from a popular song that she had heard all too many times since it hit the top 40s charts to stand to hear it anymore .

"Baby can you dig your man? he's a righteous man."

With a laughing roll of glen-green eyes she had no idea that her luck was about to change.
That the whole God damn universe's luck was about to change and not for the better, as Trips… Captain Trips to be precise entered stage left, and with a bang.

First cometh plague.

An old verse came to her mind randomly as she passed a man walking up the other direction of the highway, a blur of denim blue…but no,…not a blur at all. Even with as fast as she was going she swore the universe slowed down just so they could come face to face. His eyes. met. Her eyes. and he smiled. Facelessly. Relentlessly. He smiled. At her. right. At. Her. Audrey-Elizabeth. He waved.
A shocked chill ran down her spine and the verse flooded to her like an old standby.

"I fear not those who kill the body and cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body."

Everyone's luck was about to change

*(*

I hope you guys liked it- I kinda wondered what it would be like to have an additional supernatural being like John Coffey to face off with as Mother Abigail is more of a prophet. This is book based but I'm going to break it down like the Miniseries and I'll be bending the timelines a bit. First sections will be establishing Ocs as The Plague is my least favorite section, more cannon characters later. Rating will definitely change later

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