Dirt explodes to her right and sends her flying into the nearest ditch. She’s struggling to climb to her knees and catch her breath all while calming the butterflies that are exploding inside of her. They are outnumbered now; her comrades are all but lying dead around her. It was a war they were convinced they would win, but once they got there, it was like the Natives with sticks fending off the English settlers with guns. Out manned and out powered, they fell, one by one. Sera is one of the few that remain. She has more pride than to just give up. She pumps her gun and takes a deep breath before peeking her head up over the mound of soil. She fires off a few rounds to approaching soldiers before she falls back down to reload her magazine.
Reaching into her pocket, she finds she only has a few more shells left. She shakes her head in frustration and peeks again to see soldiers rapidly approaching. Quickly, she fumbles to pull the shells out of her pocket and place them into the shotgun. Her hands are shaking with nervous energy. One of her last shells falls to the dirt in her rush. Suddenly, she feels hands pulling her up by the collar of her uniform. She struggles against it. Her fingers continue trying to cock her gun. The hands find their way to her throat. She flips the gun up, hears it click into place, and attempts to aim over her shoulder. Unexpectedly, she feels something jerk the enemy forward, the hands around her neck loosen, and she whips around to find the soldier’s body falling limp onto the ground. She glances up; her eyes meet bright blue ones. His eyes are all she can see as his black mask is hiding his identity. He must be a sniper or assassin because his black uniform isn’t one she recognizes. She takes a step back cautiously and finds herself sliding back into the ditch. She turns to dash away toward homebase when she feels hands on her shoulder. Reflexively, she whips around and punches him across the face, breaking free from his hold.
“Sera!” he screams after her. She freezes, taken completely off-guard that he knows her name. She turns to face the strange blue-eyed man. He slowly approaches her, slipping off his mask and shaking his chestnut hair free. Sera recognizes Nate’s handsome face immediately. How could she not recognize those impossible eyes?
“Sera, I’m on your side.” He lifts his hands indicating he means no harm. She inhales a deep breath as he reaches into his pockets to pull two extra 9mm’s and hands them to her. She smiles up at him and throws her arms around his neck.
“You’re a life saver Nate! Let’s go kick some ass.” As a soldier comes charging over the ditch, she whips around and shoots him straight through the chest. They charge up and over the mound to kill some enemies together.
She and Nate are fighting side by side making good progress through the hundreds of soldiers left. Against impossible odds, they are prevailing and making a huge dent in their numbers. She turns around to make sure Nate is still with her. He comes into view ahead of her after the body of a dead soldier drops at his feet. He glances up and winks. Even now, she still can’t help the smile that crosses her face as she begins to walk toward him. He’s all she can seem to see. The gunshots and explosions are going off all around. She’s almost to him when she feels something jab her between the shoulder blades. It pierces straight through her. She glances down to see the tip of the instrument protruding through her chest; stabbed in the back, literally. What a coward!
She looks up to see Nate running toward her. She collapses into his arms when her knees go weak underneath her. She can vaguely hear him screaming, “No!” as he shoots the enemy behind her that is causing her premature death. Nate is telling her something, but she can’t seem to focus. The pain is too much. Instead, she just stares back at his blue eyes. If she dies, she wants them to be the last image she will ever have…
Her eyes flutter open as the blankets around her throat are beginning to cut off her supply of oxygen. She rips them off and just lies there staring at the window in contemplation. The sun is just beginning to stream through her blinds. She doesn’t seem to need an alarm clock anymore. It could quite possibly be this new energy level; it won’t even allow her to sleep. Even at six thirty in the morning, she can jump out of bed and head out for a run, no coffee needed, and that’s just what she does.
Running through the old familiar streets of her small town, she seems to have more energy than usual. She finds herself pushing to limits she couldn’t have even dreamed about before. Closing her eyes, she lets her feet guide and propel her forward. She loves this feeling of the outdoors. The smell and ambiance of nature makes her feel so free. Feeling the wind in her hair, the beating of her heart matching her footsteps, she thinks about how she’s never felt so… alive.
Whatever Nate had done, it does make her feel… good. The thought of Nate makes her stop in her tracks. She remembers the hurt in his eyes last night; she can almost still feel the knife in her chest from her dream.
She had caused that look. Perhaps, she over reacted. She processes this and takes a seat on the stone wall alongside the entrance to the town’s cemetery. Didn’t he save her life? She has to be at least mildly grateful for that, doesn’t she? Staring out over the tombstones of various people that at one time walked this Earth. The gray stones stand out prominently against the frost on the grass below them. It’s eerily silent, and she can feel the cold slowly start to creep into her, realizing her feet are taking her through the cemetery.
She’s not sure if it’s the weather or where she is, but the cold seems to seep into her bones. Mindlessly, she continues to walk for a few more minutes until she stops. Before her looms her grandfather’s grave. The large marble stone foundation with the large angel standing above it reads, ‘CROSS.’ The angel is looking down at her, wings drooping at its sides with a serene face that almost looks like pity. The angel’s hands clasp in front, poised to hold something. Looking down at the Earth that holds the remains of her grandfather, a thought crosses her mind—it could have been her in here.
It finally dawns on her as the memory of the large pool of blood she left on the street springs to her mind. In that moment of clarity, she concludes she owes Nate an apology. Moreover, she has more questions about what she is and what exactly she can do now. Nate is the only one who can answer these questions. She kneels in front of her grandfather’s stone and whispers a silent prayer for strength and guidance before taking a deep breath and climbing to her feet again. She’ll text Nate as soon as she returns home.
*
Sera is at her desk when Amanda pops her head in to check on her. The concern shows all over her face. Suddenly, it dawns on her. The last time she saw her best friend she had freaked out at the mall. Amanda slips around the cubicle wall, propping herself onto Sera’s desk, a position she has taken a million times before. Only somehow, this time is different. She is different.
“What’s up hot stuff?” It’s Amanda that breaks the tension first.
“Nothing, just trying to get these claims out.” Sera returns to her computer screen. Great. Denial. It’s been working for her so far.
“How are things with the sexy blue-eyed stranger?” In typical Amanda fashion, she pries further.
“Good, that reminds me, I have to text him.” Sera leans over, digging through the drawers of her desk.
“Well, I just want you to know things with me and the orthopedist didn’t work out.” She informs. Sera hides a roll of her eyes at the dramatics, but she had already expected this.
“Why, what happened?” she asks only to appease her.
“Turns out he’s engaged! Can you believe that? He was totally flirting with me and the next day everyone is congratulating him on his engagement.”
“That pig,” she exclaims pulling her phone out of the pockets of her purse.
Amanda is still venting on about the sexy doctor that broke her heart, but Sera’s mind is a little distracted by a new text she has waiting for her.
I’m sorry about last night, can we talk about it? Sera finds herself reading and re-reading the text from Jack. She’s almost scared to reply. It’s not like she can ignore all the weird things that have been happening to her, but maybe she shouldn’t exactly go alone to see him.
Amanda breaks her train of thought, “Right, Sera?”
“Huh? Oh, right.”
“Is there something you want to talk about?” she places her hand over Sera’s phone.
Looking up to her friend’s big brown eyes, she wants to tell her the truth. She wants to spill her guts and tell her all the weird things that have been happening to her this past week, but something in her is holding back. Part of her is afraid that Amanda will believe her and their relationship will change forever.
“No, I’m just swamped with work and stuff.” She lies to her best friend’s face for the very first time and forces a fake smile to accompany that lie.
“Okay Sera, I’m here when you are ready.” Amanda makes a face knowing something is amiss. She scoots off Sera’s desk and heads back toward her own, leaving Sera to glance back to her phone.
Can I stop by after work? Sera finally texts back. There is something in her that doesn’t want to believe that Jack would hurt her. He has had her alone hundreds of times before and he never once laid a finger on her. Her phone vibrates with an incoming message; she glances down to see his reply.
Of course! See you later.
There’s that hint of anticipation again. She really doesn’t know what Jack could possibly say after Nate’s confession last night. Then it dawns on her, didn’t Nate tell her Jack was the one with the hold on her mind last night. He didn’t exactly get a chance to explain what exactly that meant before she flipped out and left him in a cloud of dust. She might be regretting that a little. The hurt in his eyes was sincere. Even stone faced Sera can admit she overreacted a little bit.
A few hours later, Sera’s stomach begins growling uncontrollably. With all her running, she must be burning major energy because she is constantly starving. Her hand slips into her bottom drawer to pull out her emergency stash of Easy Mac and heads toward the elevator. As she passes Amanda’s desk, she can only shoot her a wave because Amanda has the phone receiver to her ear talking to a patient while scrolling through her Facebook timeline on the computer.
“Hold on one second Mrs. Alto.” She puts the call on hold to call out to Sera, “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Break room.” She takes a few steps back toward Amanda’s cubicle, “You look like your busy.”
Amanda rolls her eyes, “She can wait on hold.”
“Amanda, I’ll be back in…” Sera glances at the directions on the side of the container, “Two minutes.”
“Fine, let me get back to Mrs. I-don’t-see-why-my-insurance-doesn’t-cover-my-boob-job.”
“Good luck,” Sera calls over her shoulder and continues to the elevator. That is exactly why she keeps refusing Mrs. Valentine’s offers of a promotion to Accounts Receivable/Collections. She doesn’t want to be the bringer of bad news. She takes pride in resolving billing issues, not pestering people that got caught in the system. In her eyes, that wouldn’t be a promotion, no matter how much money they offer her. Money doesn’t matter when you lose your soul.
The elevator doors close behind her. Her eyes dance around the enclosed space around her. Even years after the tree incident, it still haunts her. After what felt like an eternity of deep breaths, the door finally opens to the main floor. Opens to chaos as always: doctors walk by in lab coats, nurses whisper to each other, and patients pause while glancing at the numbers on the office suites. She navigates her way through them all to a door on her right and keys the code into the pin pad. The door beeps that it’s open and she swings her way inside. It clicks closed behind her before she heads for the microwave.
A minute feels like forever when you’re starving, so she passed the time by flipping through a gossip magazine someone has left on the counter. It seems like the world has become obsessed with the ‘American Dream.’ However, Sera has a feeling they are only distractions. The world is fighting wars that no one hears about, the world is bigger than who’s had plastic surgery and whose husband cheated on whom. The door beeps that it’s opening. She turns to meet the employee entering, but no one ever does. A shadow crosses over her, she glances up, but nothing is there. The room grows silent, the sounds of the hustle outside no longer audible. The beep from the microwave makes her jump slightly.
“You’re losing it, Sera,” she mutters to herself as she opens the microwave and stirs her mac and cheese. The smell wafts up to her, and she’s spooning a mouthful in when she turns and freezes. Almost choking on cheesy noodles she comes face to face with a defined chest in her face. She coughs a few times as her eyes slide up to face the new guy, Gabe.
“Gabe, you scared the crap out of me.” She places the container on the counter and wipes her mouth. He silently takes a step toward her; his eyes are weird… “Gabe? Uh, are you okay?”
A scratching noise fills her ears, the sound of something dragging against the floor behind him. Fear begins to flood her veins. Something is telling her to run, but her curiosity is making her stay. He reaches his hand for her.
Suddenly, the door beeps open and Amanda comes traipsing in. “There you are!”
“Amanda!” she’s never been so happy to see her best friend in her life. She turns to say something about Gabe being weird, but as she turns, she sees that he is no longer beside her. She almost thought she imagined it, but isn’t that his stark cologne tickling her nose?
“What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Amanda jokes closing the fridge behind her and opening a container labeled “Dana.”
“I just… I thought I saw… never mind.” She realizes how crazy she would sound. Anna told her not to get Amanda involved, maybe Sera should listen to her. She did predict the ‘changes’ maybe Anna knows more than she’s let on. To change the subject she adds: “Why are you eating someone else’s food?”
“Whaaa?” she mutters with a mouth full of food. She swallows, “Oh don’t give me that look. It’s only tuna, I’m doing the girl a favor.”
Sera rolls her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Why are you so hungry all of a sudden? Are you on that low carb diet again?”
“No,” Sera defends. She has always had a thicker figure than her stick skinny parents. She has tried every diet possible, read every health book she could get her hands on, yet her body never seemed to change. “And, noodles are a carb.” She lifts the cup for emphasis.
“A good carb though, right?” Amanda asks, her face full of pure ignorance. Amanda was born hitting the good gene jackpot. Her mother was a runway model, her father some prominent gentleman in London when her mother was overseas. To this day, she knows nothing about him, and her mother is a vault that will probably never utter a word. She has never known the pain of being on a diet or having to work out. She has never had a bad haircut because her oval face can make anything work. Even those bangs she’s sporting nowadays. Amanda was probably born walking in heels and dresses, she doesn’t look like a bumbling baby deer on stilts like Sera does when she attempts. Amanda has a grace and a confidence that Sera desperately envies, although she did seem to make it through an entire night in the city in boots… baby steps.
“No, not a good carb.”
“What about whole wheat pasta?”
“Cardboard.” Sera calls over her shoulder and sneaks out the door before the diet interrogation continues. Amanda was out for answers. Answers, to questions that would quickly turn toward Sera. At this moment, Sera didn’t have answers to any of them. So instead, she runs.