Something warm, wet, and incessant nags at your cheek, dredging you from the pit of unconsciousness. You groan and beg for more sleep, blindly grope for a snooze button nearby in hopes of delaying the beginning of this new day.
But the alarm whines and persists, reaches deep within your dream state, takes you by the collar and drags you out into the world. The kill switch on your slumber is a startling realization – soft fur at your fingertips instead of cold hard plastic, a machine with a pulse, powered by a beating heart instead of electricity... the alarm clock is alive.
You bolt upright, so sudden, it frightens the dog. As he scrambles out of the open ambulance doors, you can only watch in wordless confusion, the animal zig-zagging between tombstones before disappearing completely out of sight.
Odd, you think, and shake your head of all the fog. It's still unclear, though. This isn't the first time you've woken up in a strange place with no recollection of how you've gotten there, but this a little much. Zipped up in a body bag, thrown into a meat wagon abandoned in the middle of a cemetery. Overkill, when you really think about it.
The message reads death, loud and vibrant despite the overall gloom and lack of light. The only thing you have in common with the rest of the humanity, beginnings and endings are the same for everyone. Though, you'd prefer to hold off your last visit to the graveyard for as long as possible. You'd prefer the sender of said message find another way to illustrate whatever point they were trying to make.
You plant two feet on the hollowed ground, grateful in a sense, to be on the living side of the soil, but weary at the same time. Any moment, you expect the earth might weaken and crumble under your weight. You give it an affirming stomp and it doesn't collapse, the testing step doesn't sink in quicksand and that's good enough for now.
Today's sky is clouded in a high grey fog. Much like your head, light and clarity falls just short of finding this place. It's lost somewhere, diluted with the sun in the heavy overcast. What scarcely comes through does little to illuminate any understanding.
The shape of world is subtly skewed, you know this, but can't quite narrow down what's missing or what shouldn't be here. And before you can even begin to fathom what little you do know, the dog is back. He whines and prances circles around you, like he wants to play.
"Where did you come from, buddy?" you wonder aloud, lowering on one knee to scratch his head. He's a handsome dog, a breed commonly trained for defense. If that was ever his job, he's surely retired, resigned to attacking faces without the use of the teeth. You're practically knocked onto the ground by the slobbering barrage.
He's missed you, you think, though you have no idea why. There's a name tag on his collar, but reaching for it seems to be his cue to take off again. Your eyes follow his hurried path that ends at a cluster of gravestones atop the highest peak, between two figures standing still in the distance. Men, both in long black winter coats, both with their backs turned, unbothered by your presence or just completely unaware of it. The one with the hat reaches down to pet the dog's head, and the only part of his face you can make out are his glasses.
"I was starting to wonder if you'd ever wake up."
Quickly, you turn and see the woman leaning against the side of the ambulance, nonchalant, with a grin that says she's been here for some time, waiting. You almost don't recognize your doctor, as she's ditched the conservative uniform and taken to a look that seems to do her more justice. Black leather jacket, tight pants and heeled boots. Even her hair is different, flowing and free in the way she traverses through your mind. For a moment, you're relieved by the mere sight of her, by her familiar facing shining like the sun never will, not here at least. Like she's the only constant within this revolving nightmare, something grounding, something you can hold on to.
No, you think and let go of that idea, considering what happened the last time you laid hands on her. The whole world fell apart, you remember it more clearly now. The fire and smoke, tears and explosions, the great pit of hell had opened up and swallowed you in.
A near disappointed sigh puffs from her chest, as the only kind of greeting you exchange is a cold turn of the shoulder. You forget what little she means and focus on the three mysterious statues fixed like landmarks on the hill. Silent, save for the wind howling in your ears, rustling the branches of the only tree. It sweeps right through the thin material of your clothes, at a degree just shy of freezing, yet, it causes no shiver. You find it worrisome, the lack of feeling in a physical sense, the numbness non reliant on the weather.
Seconds or minutes later, you give her the breeze. "Friends of yours?" you ask, speaking over the impossible notions in your head blowing out of proportion.
Gravel crunches abaft. She dawdles closer to gaze alongside of you. "You could say that," she replies shortly, forthright of absolutely nothing.
You inquire further with a nod, "Who's he?" and something changes in her overall demeanor. You see it from the corners of your eyes, the spark of light in hers. Elevated, delighted perhaps, that you've taken even the faintest interest.
"Which he? The man with the glasses or his Australopithecine underling?"
"The dog."
She lets out a small laugh, a brief exhale that fogs and quickly dissipates in the air. "You're not at all curious as to who they are?" she asks, trapping you with a look, doe eyes and everything. "Not even a little curious about me?"
Yes, the stupid voice in your head says. Luckily, your faithful jaw remains stiff. She doesn't need to know what you think, what you make of her and all of this, whatever it may be. The truth is, you haven't landed on any solid theories yet. Maybe if you keep your mouth shut long enough, she'll fill in the silence with secrets. Though, it would mean being audience to her words, letting them lead you in a direction you might regret later. Trusting her.
"Are they the ones who set him- set me up?" you ask, and the expression she fails to hide is enough. No, she said with her eyes, and you answer her question in kind, wordless, with a turn of your heel in the opposite direction.
She refuses to register it though. Your beaten path to the ambulance is followed by her relentless nature.
"And where are you off to in such a hurry?" she nags in your wake.
You tell her you don't know, that you don't care, even though one of those is a lie. There's a path going out of the cemetery and into the horizon of a city, where all the answers are, you think. And there's a perfectly decent getaway vehicle that will take you to it, a mirage for all you know, but you're willing to find out. The people who did this to you, to Cole, they need to pay.
"But you should care, Sameen, where it is you're going-" she says, as you wrench open the door and climb in. "More importantly, how you get there."
You spare her one last glance, the whites of your eyes rolled far into the back of your skull. This woman: your doctor, your interrogator – the existential ache that won't go away.
"So long as it's far from you." And you slam the door shut. Her on the outside, you on the inside, the way it's supposed to be.
"That hurts my feelings," she says, from her new place – the passenger seat.
She was just smiling to you from the other side of the glass. How? You could ask yourself, what's more likely? If the passage of time escaped you again, if it's so relative it's unreliable on your observance. It's a much better theory than the alternative: that the atoms composing this woman have the power to materialize at will.
Something tells you actual physics don't apply here, that to her, they're merely a suggestion. A feeling of unease turns your stomach then, at the thought of having no say; in her presence or anything at all. Like death, she's permanent, stuck by some unholy adhesive, yet so free and fluid. You could ask yourself, how the hell is this possible, but something tells you, you're better off not knowing.
The key fails every time you turn it, and you think it's her doing as well. Up to the grey sky, down to the truck that refuses to start, she controls everything. But you keep at it in the off chance you're wrong, paint yourself the perfect picture of insanity with the same back and forth motion, hoping the engine will crank with one more go around.
"You try so hard to escape," she says, observing each of your failed attempts. "Do you know, a person most often meets their own destiny on the road taken to avoid it?"
By then, you had dived underneath the steering wheel, begun crossing wires together in hopes of creating the right spark. Hands busy with the task, but your mind stays in tune with everything else. The unproductive cough of the engine, the increasingly desperate rhythm of your heart, the hum in her voice summing you up. She's what you wish to avoid, you think. But if you spoke that aloud, she'd just twist it around, immerse herself in that subtext she enjoys so much. If there were such a thing as destiny, it would never be a person, it would never be her.
This woman, you know nothing about her, and yet, she claims to know everything about you.
"Maybe you'll find what you're looking for there," she says, eyeing the destination miles away. The city, if she sees it too, then you haven't just imagined it. "And maybe you'll find the ones responsible for your partner's death. Get even."
"That's the plan."
"Running off half cocked isn't a plan. Not when there's so much more to the story you don't know," she says.
"I'm not in the mood for stories," you tell her, but it's useless, she pretends she doesn't hear.
"Why was Cole targeted in the first place? More importantly, why does it bother you so much?"
The wires never make another pass. Your hands still and you pause to think. What bothers you the most, what's frustrating, it's this fucking getaway vehicle that won't fulfill it's purpose. Most of all, it's her, this woman who doesn't have a clue what she's talking about.
"Ever consider, maybe I'm just sore about my boss trying to kill me?" you tell her, even though you're certain it reaches deeper. Past the desire for retribution, there's something else coiled in the pit of your chest. A twisted nerve with no ease in sight.
"I'm sure you are, Sameen." She flashes a knowing look, sheer in disbelief, eluding to a scheme of grander things with a flick of her lashes. If she is indeed the operator of this living nightmare, there is no such thing as mystery to her. Nothing is sacred, perhaps not even your own thoughts.
"Stay a little while longer? Hear me out first?" she asks and places a hand over your own, solidifying all of her good intentions in one move.
A glimpse of light breaks through the clouds for only a moment, if you blinked you'd have missed it. And though the world is grey now, it can't be forever, you think. The promise of her warmth tells you so, the dormant and near death nerves reawakened by her touch convince you otherwise.
She weaves her fingers in like fine threading, with eyes as gentle as her touch. Her black nails, sharp as the teeth behind her smile, they graze the skin of your palms and you remember it all over again. You've felt this before, once, when you were dreaming, when you wanted to leave everything behind. It was her all along, she who reached out and stopped you, who sank her teeth down to the bone.
She touches you and you wait for something spectacular, to know that same driving rush of free falling, for the world to collapse all around you, to feel fine with any of those things.
But nothing happens. Soon, you find there's no obliging her, that you can do neither stay nor listen. Another alarm is going off, the one inside of your head that chimes when things are turning bad, it urges for motion. And though retreat isn't an idea you entertain often, the necessity for it is too overwhelming to ignore. You give up with the engine you'll never start, with the mind of someone you'll never sway, everything.
And you run.