A hard buzzing reverberated throughout the crown of her skull.
Is he doing that thing again? That thing where he looks at me and makes my head ache?
Many random pictures flashed before her mind's eye. She experienced many different emotions at once. She felt fear, anger, despair, very little joy. Much frustration. Images of sand stretching out for miles, an alien shore who's origins were not of her own memory. Many people collapsing, piles of bodies, gunpowder, blood draped as if some endless, fetid sheet, sullying the atmosphere til it became all dank and sour. The sense of being invaded, abruptly followed by a bloodcurling screech that belonged to a young woman. Despair, fury. Open flesh, cold and stiff with frost. More gun powder, the stink of iron filings. Then nothing.
"Well well...that's quite a talent you have. Although, I'm not altogether convinced yet."
The blonde man's tone of voice had shifted subtly. Where earlier he was deadly cool, now he was merely removed, flippant even.
So he's not contesting anything I said.
"But if I am to give you the benefit of the doubt, then tell me...what stocks did I invest in today?"
And he is so pale. That just isn't natural. I remember my classmate was an albino, but you saw the pink beneath her skin...
Closing her eyes, she emptied her mind and allowed the vastness of space and time to fill the empty, quiet places appropriately. Foreign memories still tugged sporadically at her consciousness. She will them to leave her be as she sought the answer to her detainer's question.
"Some kind of microchips, sir?"
He drummed his slender, white fingers on the aluminum desk.
"Yes indeed."
Diana thought hard, the space between her eyes throbbing slightly.
"If I may, sir...you'd be better off buying up macadamia nuts."
"Macadamia nuts?" he mused, albeit suspiciously, scratching his freshly shaved chin. The more she observed him, the more uneasy she felt.
One time this girl knocked herself out on the diving board. When the coach brought her out of the water, her lips were the same color as this man's are.
Nervously she averted her large, dark eyes. It must have become apparent to him that she was scrutinizing some aspect of his person, for his tawny eyebrows furrowed and his willfull, condescending force of personality impacted her guts, making her heart leap up into her throat. Somehow she was not frightened too badly, however. Deep within her solar plexus calm had been cultured by nervous tensions as rich, yellow butter is cultured by force of the churn. Blibs of serenity gathered in ripples and spooled throughout her being. The immense pressure that had been compacting her spirit after months of just trying to survive on nothing but the half hearted affections of some disenchanted, hungry youth, the episode of suffering from last evening; the weight of it all had rubbed away her reserves til they were as her velveteen, champagne colored boyshorts worn threadbare betwixt her inner thighs.
There was calm acceptance. If he were to kill her, then so be it. It could not be any worse than all that she had endured for her time on this wicked, burnt out planet. No worse than any trials she would suffer for this faded, maligned city carcass , chaotically teaming with defiant, aimless spurts of life even in the most futile, eaten out places as did the many jewels, car lights and tower lights and window lights, manically announce themselves to the encephelitic, yawning Los Angeles night time horizons.
But something told her that death was not in the cards today. Because if had been, she was sure that he already would have killed her. She didn't know who or what he was, but she had been around his kind before and knew that the spark that animated her slender person was air beneath his fingers. This was someone who have no qualms about doing her in for whatever reason.
He just might be a vampire of some sort. I'm sure that he was planning on shooting me in the head earlier. But he would have done it by now.
"So...I'm going to invest in macadamia nuts today. And if it looks to be a sound decision, I will further seek your counsel. Until then..."
Standing up to his full height, he opened the door and motioned for her to leave.
"...you will stay in my guest quarters. And the position you hold at your company shall be terminated."
Diana's heart sank to her feet. She trailed his dark outline numbly all the way up to the penthouse.