"You smoke?" Miguel asked, raising his eyebrows in astonishment.
For a second Liz just stared at him, then smiled. It was her break, two days after the explosion and she was sitting at one of the tables in another restaurant, she was working at. There were almost no guests there, though it was already past noon, but due to the fact that it was quite hot, many of them seemed to have made use of their free time, to go bathing or else. "What does it look like?"
He smirked. "Can I have one?"
"Actually .... this is one of yours .... the box lay here and I thought .... you wouldn't mind, 'cuz you always -"
"Hey, hey, calm down, it's alright, I'm not gonna call the cops or stuff." He looked at her concerned. "You're okay?"
"Yeah, of course, I'm fine, don't worry"; she answered a little bit too quickly, forcing herself to keep smiling.
"Aha", Miguel made, only half convinced, but realising that there was no use in questioning her any further, so he took a seat beside her, holding his face into the sun. "Oooh that's life, ain't it? Getting paid for sitting around." He closed his eyes. Liz didn't dare to do as well, because she knew too good what would happen then, so she just took another long drag, letting the smoke flow out through her nose. She didn't smoke much, all in all less than one box a year, so the strong cigarette dizzied her a little. A shadow fell over the table as somebody stepped beside her. "Liz?" She looked up, into the eyes of a colleague, smiling friendly at her.
"You need help?"
The girl grimaced. "Oh yeah, please help me, 'cuz I cannot manage to serve this mass of people in here. No - it's just - there are some guys, saying they were friends of yours, looking for ya."
Liz turned around to see who she was talking about but couldn't find any familiar faces, until - her smile started to disappear. A few metres away from her three people were standing, three people she had hoped never to see again. They stared back at her in silence 'til the dark-haired young man started to walk towards her, slowly followed by the others. "We need to talk", he demanded coldly, looking down at her. "Alone", he added.
"Do we?" she gave back.
"Okay, I'm out", Miguel grinned at her, glancing disdainfully at the dark-haired. "You sure I can leave you alone with them?"
"Guess so."
"Your friends like to drink something?"
"They aren't my friends and no, cuz they won't stay very long."
"Coke for me", the dark one said, sitting down. The girl just rolled her eyes as she and the other young man sat down beside him. Miguel went away laughing.
Liz folded her arms and leant back. "So?"
"So??" The dark-haired spat aggressively. "We spent fuckin' three hours at a police office answering stupid questions cuz some freakin' jerks didn't show up to -"
"Shut up, Carter", the girl interrupted him, giving Liz an excusing smile. "I have to apologize for him. At first: my name's Clear, this is Alex and Mr Daredevil over here is Carter and he's right, we really need to talk. I'm sure you remember us. It took us two days to find out who and where you are, but we finally managed."
"Listen, I'm really sorry that the whole thing caused you so many problems, and that you weren't able to escape the police interrogation as well, but I don't see -"
"C'mon Liz, you know it's not that simple", Alex interfered for the first time.
"You know my name?" she asked not being very witty. They had surely heard it in the restaurant.
"We found you, didn't we?"
Liz shrugged her shoulders. "So?" she repeated.
"You could've predicted it, couldn't you?" Clear continued hastily as she noticed Carter taking a deep, angry breath. "You had something like a premonition."
Liz remained quiet for a while, thousands of thoughts running through her mind. What the hell was all of that about? Why did they have to find her? She had had a pretty hard time during the last two days and everything had been welcome to distract. She had worked a double shift to become too tired to be able to think about the whole incident, but on the other hand she had drunk lots of coffee to stay awake because she was afraid of falling asleep. The chance of not being able to wake up from a nightmare scared her. She tried hard not to think, not to let her mind reach those secret areas, pass the doors she had closed and locked such a long time ago.
"Liz?" a voice broke softly into her thoughts.
She looked up, into a pair of gentle blue eyes. "I didn't want that", was all she could say.
"Of course not", Clear responded with a comforting voice.
Carter put down his glass which Miguel must have served within the last time - Liz couldn't have told when - and stared at her in disbelief. "I can't believe you did that!!"
"Carter, why don't you just -"
"Oooh, found a new best friend, Browning? A soulmate?" Carter asked in a mocking tone.
"Fuck you."
"Fuck you, Browning, first you 'n now her!! What is this? A fuckin' conspiracy of the clairvoyants? Club of freaks? Fright Night Special?? I'm really sick of it!! I knew hangin' 'round with you two would get me nothing but problems!! But ya know what? Not this time! Not with me, thanks! I'm not gonna go through this once more!!"
"So whatcha wanna do, huh? Sit and wait for death to come 'n get you? Great idea, Horton!" Alex snorted despicably.
"Sounds like one to me."
"Why don't you just buy some JD as usual, get yourself drunk and wait for the others to do all the work?"
"Calling me a damned sot??" Infuriated Carter jumped up and seized him by the collar.
"STOP IT!" Clear yelled. "Both of you!! Immediately!!"
Liz felt somebody staring at her back and turned around to see Miguel and two other waiters giving her worried looks. She shook her head to show that everything was okay.
"What the hell are you talking about at all?" she then turned to Carter, who obviously refused to give her an explanation, instead he gave her a furious look - that a girl from Mt. Abraham High School, DARK, now being a famous author, had once perfectly termed as *The Death Scowl*, which also was the title of her first best-selling novel. By now she's living happily in a huge old castle in Scotland, which she's sharing with some wherewolves and other creatures of the dark - and crossed his arms.
~What a baby~ she thought.
"You ever heard of a plane crash, 'bout seven years ago, flight 180 to Paris?" Alex wanted to know, studying her face while waiting for an answer.
She thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah, it as all over primetime news for weeks. "Followed by reports about some of the, I don't remember how many, survivors dying one after the other, afterwards. Committing suicide, accidents 'n stuff -" she hesitated, " you're not trying to tell me it was you, do you?"
"We were seven", Alex confirmed.
"I'm .... afraid I still don't see a connection ...."
"SHIT, YOU are the connection! It's all your fault, hope you're proud of yourself!!" Carter snapped. "I should've known. The way you and your friend were staring at me in the restaurant -"
"What exactly is his problem?" She pointed at him, now becoming quite angry herself.
"YOU are my fuckin' problem!!!!" Carter exploded.
"Will you shut the fuck up?!" Alex shouted at him. "This is leading nowhere, can't you see?? And your outbursts aren't very helpful! We already had that, didn't we? It's no one's fault, okay? It just happened! Like the crash! And if we want to stay alive, we - you know what to do."
"Oh yeah, you're right, I'm sorry", Carter answered in a suspiciously calm tone. "After all, we know who really started it."
"CARTER!!" Clear reprimanded him.
"What's up, honey?" he hissed with an evil grin. "Accusing me for telling the truth? C'mon, tell me I'm wrong, though I'm quite sure you can't!"
"Look into my eyes and tell me that the past seven years were so damned unbearable for you that you still wish you would've stayed on the plane." She took a deep breath. "We beat it. So don't you try to tell me that the only reason you stayed alive for was to keep us alive. That argument doesn't work." ~And concerning you, we all know that id never did that well.~
The young man didn't answer. He knew she had a point there. Fuck it. The truth was, that it infuriated him even more that he didn't reply anything. But it was too late now.
*Yeah well, a lot of F-words, but I'm not ashamed at all. Bad girl, huh? Seems as if Alex starts to become a really reserved person. Always the last one to speak. Not sure, where this is leading to, if it's leading anywhere ….*
*Geeze, I've forgotten some lines. Lookin' at the last chapter it suddenly seemed to be shorter than my original. No, really talkin' 'bout only three lines during the explosion part. Embarrassing (gives a slight cough). DARK: big mental hug (if one can say so)!!*
Liz stared at the three. She didn't get that. Usually it was kinda jinxed. Well actually this time it was as well. As empty as the restaurant might have been before, whenever one of her friends dropped by to chat a little, suddenly thousands of people – seeming to have waited outside for exactly that moment – came rushing in and left the restaurant only a few seconds after her friends had left. Where the hell were all of these people right now?? She didn't want to talk to these three. She had come here to work. To distract. Not to talk about it.
"So you guys are tryin' to tell me that there is a connection between the explosion and the crash or what?"
"Sounds like a bad joke to you, huh? Yeah, I know, but fact is, we –" Alex hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't know how to explain it, but for a second he was wondering - what if they were wrong? If they were mistaken this time? If they were supposed to get out? It had left them alone for so long now. Why should it start again? Maybe a few weeks later, a few months, but seven whole years?? Wasn't that a bit too long for an eternal creature? If it really had wanted to, wouldn't it have already started new attempts to finish off his strange and freaky plan?
"Yo freak!" Carter impatiently waved his hand in front of his face. "Get out of wonderland, okay? You're not thinking what I think you're thinking, huh? Face reality! We're just right back in the whole shit again!"
"I thought you refused to do anything?"
"You're so full of shit, Browning!"
"Guys?" Clear tried to achieve their attention.
"Yeah, ya know I know, cuz you keep tellin' me everyday."
"Hey! Guys!!"
They finally listened to her. "Thank you. Could you stop that? I'm really sorry to interrupt your private little conversation, but, tell me if I'm wrong, I suppose this is a little too serious." She turned to Liz, who was still trying to wake up from the weird dream this had to be. "I'm gonna try to make this as easy as possible, okay?" Liz nodded like a good girl the nurse had promised to give some candies to when she behaved well while getting an injection. "You know best what happened before the explosion. Call it whatever you want, you knew it before. So of course you tried 'n save people. Seven years ago, before the plane crashed, Alex foresaw it, too. So some friends of us and we were able to get out. But we really infuriated something. Death wouldn't let us go. It took one after the other, until we finally beat it, or so we hoped. Of course we can be wrong, it could be different this time, but I've seen too much of it to lull us into a false sense of security. That's the story so far."
Liz took a deep breath. "Pheeeew, okay. So you tell that me my life's just turned into a scary movie, I might not survive the next hours or – if I'm lucky – days and that everybody else that hasn't already died surely will."
"Smart girl", Carter derided her, "you got it pretty well."
"Just fuckin' leave me alone", she snapped at him. "This is just not true! Okay, where's the camera? Hellooo!!" She waved her hand grimacing, before continuing, "Listen, I'm still really sorry for whatever was my fault, but that's it for me. I don't believe in the big bad evil like you do, neither in any kind of predetermined fate nor an infinite plan. I don't even believe in God. And since some of us have other things to do than run around 'n try to frighten people –"
"Of course you don't believe us by now. Anyway, it won't start that fast" Alex said calmly.
"I surely never will. See, I'm sure you are - at least two of you – nice people and out of some reason I really believe you, that it had happened to you, because I couldn't think of any other explanation to account for all those strange deaths, but …. just no, okay? Sorry, my break's over, don't worry bout the Coke, this one's on me, keep an eye on yourselves, have a nice life, bye." Without any further word she got up and left them.
"Great work, Browning!" Carter ridiculed him as they stood up.
"Give her some time okay? I remember a special person that wasn't so willing to believe, either."
Carter leant forward, a wicked grin on his lips. "Yeah, cuz I know you are a freak! You were born as one, you will die as one."
Alex returned the grin, quoting something, Carter had said years ago: " 'As far as I know, this shit can circle around and get us all again. But for right now I'm the safest fucker in the world, because you're still NEXT!' "
"What the hell are you talkin' bout, you loser?"
Alex' grin became somewhat more evil: "Didn't you pay attention in class? This time it's your go first."
