NOTE: Sorry for the crazy long break, I got really really preoccupied on another story that has been extremely fun to write. I'm so sorry for not updating soon, but I'll get the next chapter up by tomorrow, I think that might be the last one. We're winding down, so leave some reviews if you'd like. THANKS! Chapter Eleven: It Means Hope?
"Hey chica, how's the head feeling?" Rosalie shouted in her chipper, enthused voice as soon as she walked into the room. She was followed by Mike and a young man in an EMT uniform.
"It's better. How are you guys? Did you get hurt?" I asked eagerly.
"Us…get hurt? I don't think so, darlin'. We're much too badass to get hurt!!" she replied.
"Isn't that what Ali always says?" Mike said sarcastically pointed to my bruised body.
"Oh, right. Well I'm sure we could get banged up if we were really stupid and run off to a mad sketchy farmhouse with the first hot guy that comes along," Rosalie chided.
"I'm sorry, okay. It was insanely stupid of me, but he had an Aston Martin DBS. What do you expect me to do? Not go with him?" I defended myself.
"Excuses, excuses. You're sooo lucky that we came to your rescue. You were about to get your head bashed in when Edward tackled that psycho. It was a pretty sweet take down, too. And of course, you had me being my bad self. Crazy-eyes was completely surprised by how bad a pair of Espadrilles hurt when they ram into your stomach. Even Mike got in on the action. He threw a pretty sick punch and knock Crazy-eyes out. Edward took care of the military guy. It involved a head through a really disgustingly dirty window," Rosalie recounted.
"Wait…Mike actually hit something?" I asked in awe.
"Always the tone of surprise with you!! I've been known to make myself useful once and awhile," Mike said indignantly.
"Actually, he was really helpful. His iphone's GPS saved us about twenty minutes of search time. It directed us straight to the sign you said you saw. Without it, we would have been driving around town searching for a random creepy looking farmhouse," Edward added.
"Iphone? Am I missing something here?" I asked remembering the broken remnants of the precious cell phone.
"You didn't expect me to go more than six hours completely cut off from human connection, did you? I called up my guy and he hooked me up with a sweet deal on a new iphone," Mike answered.
"Honestly, Mi you sound like your buying drugs or something," Rosalie said, rolling her eyes.
"Hey, if technology's a crime, then I guess you could call me a criminal," Mike said.
"Wow!! All the respect that you gained from punching Mr. Fake-Rhode-Island-Accent is now lost. That was by far the stupidest line I've ever heard," I said.
"Give me a break, I've been up all night!" Mike said in his defense.
"Whatever," Rosalie said as she flipped her hair over her shoulder. Her eyes caught sight of the man standing awkwardly behind her. "Oh, my God. Where are my manners?"
"Have you ever had any?" Mike muttered.
"Shut up, Mi! Alice, this is Emmett, he's an EMT I met him when we were at the Concord Hospital. Once you'd been listed in stable condition, your parents wanted you closer to home and some of the doctors thought it would be better on the kidnapped kids' nerves it they were farther away from the cabin. It was just easier to move you and the kids to one place until their parents could pick them up, and Robin and Fi live close by too. Jasper and Christine stayed, though. Their parents wanted them in Boston," Rosalie explained.
"Nice to meet you, Emmett," I said. It was just like Rosalie to be in a life threatening situation and come out of it with an extremely good looking new boyfriend.
"You too, Alice. I just want to say how impressed I am that you woke from that coma within thirty-two hours. You were pretty screwed up. Severe concussion, five broken ribs, a broken wrist, and bruising along you head, neck and stomach. Man, you can take punch! And I heard from one of my friends at Mass General that you did a serious patch job on that kid. Kudos." Emmett said.
"Thanks, I guess."
"Oh, Alice, I'm so proud of you. I can't believe you sacrifice your cashmere sweater!!" Rosalie interrupted.
"And I'm sorry that your secret got out. I saw it on the news," he whispered.
"Em, I told you not to say anything. She might look injured, but she's wicked feisty!!" Rosalie murmured to him.
"Sorry, but I don't think it's a fact you can avoid for very long, I mean, the hospital doors are swarming with reporters. We had to call the police chief down so that we can get ambulances through," Em whispered back.
"It's okay, Rose. Edward's told me everything. And thanks for your concern, Emmett. You'll fit right in with us. Rosalie flips out on us daily; you handled yourself well just now. Granted that argument was definitely at the lower end of the Ricker Scale," I said with a grin.
"Daily, try hourly!" Mike chimed in.
"Mike, why don't you shut up before I break you cell phone. I'm sure your guy won't give you such a great deal the second time around," Rosalie hissed.
"OOOO, good one. I'm soooo scared," Mike said sarcastically.
Rosalie made an attempt to snatch the cell phone from Mike's hands. Realizing that Rosalie was serious, he promptly ran to the other side of the room, clutching his cell phone to his chest.
"You're such a wimp, Mi!!" Rosalie laughed.
A voice sounded over the radio that was clamped to Em's belt. "I gotta go back to work. I'll see you tonight, Rose," Emmett said, leaning in to kiss Rosalie. He quickly ran out of the room, muttering into his radio.
"I'll leave you guys to your affairs," Edward said as he walked towards the door. "Oh, Ali, Rosalie actually got her facts straight this time. Hardly any exaggerations." Rosalie smacked Edward in the shoulders before she took up his seat in the vinyl chair. Mike furtively edged closer to Rosalie, still cradling his phone close to his chest.
"I can't believe I'm unconscious for like, what…a day and a half?, and you've got yourself a new boyfriend!!" I laughed.
"He's gorgeous, isn't he? And he's twenty!! Plus he has the whole helping out my comatose best friend thing going for him. So what do you think?" Rosalie asked anxiously.
"I think he's a keeper! He has gorgeous baby blues, too," I answered as Rose broke out into a grin.
"Will you two stop it, please? You're making me sick!" Mike croaked.
"Oh, shut up Mike, let us girls have a little fun!" she said.
"That's what I get for having girls as best friends!" Mike joked.
"You couldn't live without us. We make your life interesting!" I said.
"That's true…which brings us to our next topic of discussion. Rose and I were out next to the nurses' station and your brainwave monitor went crazy. They thought you were have a seizure or something, but when they came to check on you, you were perfectly relaxed. The doctors said that the brain activity was located in left frontal lobe, were a lot of the higher brain activity occurs. After Vikki's little investigative reporting stint, the doctors thought it would be beneficial to set those monitors up for research purposes. We tried to stop them, but your mother and father thought it would be a good idea. So…what did you see?" Mike finished off with a tone of pure curiosity. Rosalie straightened in her chair, readying herself for my explanation.
I looked at my cast-ridden hand trying to think of a way to describe the odd dream-vision that I had experienced before waking. "It was really strange. I've never had a vision like that one before. It was more like a dream than anything else. Normally, I see exactly what's gonna happen as a third party observer: the people, the place, sometimes I can even tell what time it's going to happen at, and I can't interact within the vision, you know? But in this dream, I was talking to Fiona, but she was an angel…" I explained the rest of the vision to her starting from the beginning.
"Whoa, that's seriously intense. Maybe it was those drugs that you got pumped with. You said that your abilities weren't working when you were in the basement, what if they screwed you up so that you could only see half of what was going on? The other half you could've substituted with fictional representations. Like, you thought you were dead, right? So maybe you thought you should be in heaven and you created angels to substitute certain people," Rosalie offered.
"Why could I see Fiona then?" I asked.
"Maybe you foresaw her in the near future and just thought that she must be an angel because you were supposed to be dead," Rosalie answered.
"Fiona is also the all-knowing book of gossip. Her angel representation could have just been a weirdly ambiguous version about the little tête-à-tête that just happened a few minutes ago," Mike stated. That sounded reasonable.
"But what does that poem mean? Incessant Sylph, you are incalculably culpable for the parade of caryatids adorned in their shrunken gorgets. They are heading towards the offing, towards metempsychosis. Wielding a cutlass as you pretend to be an avenging archangel, you, tricky Sylph, have pirated all expectations. Banished, you are, to the ninth ring!!! It's just a bunch of gibberish!" I shouted.
"Mi, do you know what all those big words mean?" asked Rosalie. Mike had gotten a 760 on the writing section of his SATs which was useful if we ever had a strange poem sung by an angel in a freaky premonition that we needed defined.
"A sylph is a spirit of the air. They're normally mischievous…like Ariel in The Tempest. If she's incessant then she probably keeps wrecking havoc on the world. She's guilty of causing that parade of caryatids wearing protective armor. A gorget wraps around the neck, it's has French origin, but I don't know what a caryatid is…"
"It's a statue of a woman used as a pillar, like the Porch of Maidens at the temple of Erechtheum in Athens," I stated. Rosalie and Mike looked as though the sky had fallen. "What? I know things, too!"
"Well, that's useful then. So this sylph caused a bunch of stone maidens to march around in armor. It sounds like she caused a war or something! An offing is where the ocean meets the sky…the horizon. Metempsychosis is when the soul gets transferred to another animal body, human or otherwise. It's kind of like reincarnation. But that doesn't make much sense. These maidens are heading off to sea to fight a war, but will be reincarnated?" Mike struggled to comprehend.
"Maybe they're not fighting in a war. Maybe they were involved in one already and have died. Then the sylph would have been guilty of their deaths. But now the caryatids are heading to the next life," Rosalie tried.
"That makes sense. In my dream the angels were wielding flaming swords, so maybe the sylph is pretending to be pure and good like the angels, but had an ulterior motive for evil and she steals everybody's hopes and dreams. The ninth circle is a reference to Dante's Inferno, reserved for the worst sinners, where they're unable to move for all eternity!" I finished.
"If this was one of your visions on crack, then the sylph has to represent somebody that seriously screws you over," Mike stated.
"Vikki," I said tersely. She had completely stolen my privacy and hopes for normalcy. From the moment I met her she had done everything in her power to ruin my life, and she accomplished that feat when she outted me.
"Wow, that was obvious! How did we not pick up on that before?" Mike said. I shrugged.
"But what about the caryatids? What are they?" Rosalie questioned.
"There my expectations. My plans for the future that got slaughtered by that little bitch. Now their dead and I'll probably end up being part of a government experiment within the week!!" I cried.
"No!" Mike said. I looked at him confused. "The caryatids don't die, your future isn't over it's just changed. Rebuilt, but equally as enjoyable. Those little maidens were heading towards hope, not death."
"So, it means hope?" I asked.
"Yup, and you're stuck with us forever, so you better not say your life's gonna suck!! And besides, you get your license next week!! That has to count for something!" Rosalie joked. The dark void that had been growing inside of my body had significantly faded. I could take on this cruel, messed up, boyfriend stealing world!!
A/N: One or Two chapters to go, so leaves some reviews while you can. Thanks.