Storm Warning

The Smoking g*n

            It was a good three hours before Derek pulled up in front of a cabin… and three hours since I last spoke. Shaking my head, “Where are we?”

            Derek puts the truck in park and turns the key in the ignition. Derek loves his truck as evidenced by his current caressing of the steering wheel. Maddie and I look at each other and roll our eyes as we shake our heads. Maddie and I have always been in agreement about this truck. It was too big, too loud, and too much dude for us. The resounding silence was deafening after three hours of nothing but that noise, and this new silence was an omen in its own right. Looking at the dusty brown cabin, he responds with “Sorry. It took so long. Maddie and I could NOT figure out a safe place for us to lay low. Then, I remembered this place.”

            I arch my eyebrow at him. “That did not answer my question.”

            Derek nods but smiles at me. “This is my aunt’s cabin but it’s been empty since she passed 10 years ago. We have been doing upkeep on it frequently ever since though. I figured no one would look for you here for a while and with my parents out of town on a cruise, it will be extremely difficult to get them on the phone to find possible locations of where we could have gone. It seems likely that once the cops realize that you, Maddie, and myself are gone, they will start asking parents about possible places we could go. BUT lucky for us, only us and my parents know about this place. It should give us a couple of days before we need to leave.” Derek looks out of the window for a few minutes before turning back to us with a serious face. “Arielle. Maddie. Things are going to move quickly from here on out. Do you understand?”

            Maddie nods, but I stare at him. “What do you mean?”

            He looks at me as I am surprised to find that he and Maddie have both put their hands on mine. Maddie looks me straight in the eye and says “Exactly what you think”.

            Looking back and forth between the pair. Derek picks up the explanation. “You are hunted. If we weren’t sure with Sarah’s death…”

            I can’t help but correct him. “Murder…”

            Without a hitch, he continued “… murder, or with the dead man in your house, or the journal, we can be sure now. A cop or a fake cop attempted to murder you today, which the only reason you would have run from people that should be protecting you. Am I right?” I nod. “This tells us that we can trust no one, and there is no one to protect you but us.”

            I look at Maddie. “We will do what we have to do. We will protect you, Arielle. You may have lost Sarah but we are still your family. You are not alone.”

            Sighing, “Me.”

            Staring at me, Derek asks, “You what?” His tone is short, and his words are slipped short indicating that he already knows what I am going to say.

            “It gives ME a couple of days to do what ‘I’ have to do. I can’t involve you anymore than I already have. Things… things are really bad. And it is only going to get worse.” Maddie opens her mouth to argue, but I was not finished. “Listen. I lost Sarah. The one person that could come with me. I was not able to protect her. As I currently am, I cannot protect either of you either. It is like you said… you guys are still my family, which means I have to keep you both alive. You are my focal point. I need you alive so that I have something that I am fighting for. More than that, I need something or someone, two someones actually, that I am fighting to get back to.”

            Derek pulls in a breath that is pure agitation despite his attempts to understand and calm himself. As he prepares to respond, Maddie cuts in with an unexpected “Cut the s**t, Arielle.” Derek and I both turn our heads to her in the passenger’s seat. “You are my best friend and my family. I don’t know what you are to Derek, but I do know neither of us want to see you hurt. WHICH means neither of us are going to sit back and do nothing while you fight to stay alive. Your life got really dangerous really fast, and that is seriously unfair. BUT you need to go into this knowing that wherever we are, we will have your back. No matter what.” Swallowing, I nod. I did not know it until know but I was scared that the only two people I have left would also leave me. My life didn’t have to be intertwined with theirs. They could back out at any time. “Now that we got that out of the way, tell us: what the hell happened at the police department?”

            I look outside for several minutes… at the cabin, at the trees, at the skyline, at the floor, at my hands, ANYTHING that was not their eyes. Shaking my head, I speak as I continue to look out the window and tell them the truth. “I was questioned. I gave my story to Detective Marks.” I finally turn to look at Maddie and Derek as I remember something. “The man that was in the house. The one that I saw with the wooden chair leg in his neck was not there when the cops came to the house. His body was taken.”

            Derek mutters, “Damn. They are cleaning up their mess.”

            I nod and continue with my brief overview. “They put me in a jail cell so that I wouldn’t leave or disappear, but they did say I was not a suspect. A cop tried to kill me, and …” Looking between my two people, I finish with “I killed him.” I continue to watch them as they process that last statement. “And I don’t think I will be lucky enough for him to be my last kill.”

            Staring at me with open mouths agape, Maddie tries to voice her thoughts. “You killed…? A cop tried to…? What?!?!” Derek had voiced the possibility, but until I said the words, I don't think of them believed it.

            Patting her shoulder, Derek looks at me. “I think you need to start from the beginning. Let’s go inside and talk. My parents have kept up with place over the years; so, other than dust, everything should be in working order. There is no food but I can make a run to town when needed. Town is only actually about an hour away but there are food places all over I can get to, but I doubt any of us actually want to eat right now.”

            Nodding, I open the door and step down to the ground. Shaking out my legs, I wander to the decaying porch as Derek hops down from the truck and goes around the front to Maddie at the front passenger door. He opens the door for her, and she promptly smiles while tossing the bags to the ground. “Maddie, you brought our bags.”

            She shrugs. “I packed them before we came to get you. The reason is simple really. We can’t take anything for granted. We might not have been able to get back to the house for them.” I nod my head but quickly turn away. They had gone back to staring at each other and smiling.

            Deciding to give them a moment to stare lovingly at each other, I walk into the cabin. The door creaks as it opens, and my hands come away covered in a thick layer of dust from turning the handle. It appears that Derek and I have different definitions of upkeep. I cough from the dust particulars spinning in the air from when I opened the door.

            Getting over my coughing, I shake my head and walk deeper into the cabin. The cabin is permeated by a dark musty smell and is covered in dancing shadows as the sun moves across the sky. Finding a dusty light switch to the left of the door, I flip the switch only to fall into a coughing fit, which is only made worse from the dust on my hand from the light switch. After several minutes, my coughing finally stops, and I shake my head in agitation. We need a damn duster in here.

            Shaking my head and continuing to look around, I find that the cabin is filled with dull lights that barely dispel the shadows. All that coughing for barely-there lights. I would not survive in a place like this. The cabin is small – barely enough room for one person and has no walls to separate rooms other than a curtain to resemble a sort of privacy near the toilet. I feel my eyes widen as I realize. I run to the door and yell out to Maddie. “Maddie, this is some camping BS!!!”

            Maddie walks in behind me and quickly takes her surroundings before landing on the curtain with the white porcelain peeking out. I watch as Maddie’s eyes widen in surprise. Despite the horror of the last few days, I find myself wrinkling my nose and find Maddie staring at me with an identical look that was some mixture of “oh hell no” and “I’m not using that.” The laughter that followed was immediate.

            Derek comes in from outside with bags in hand. As he sets the bags on the floor, he looks to us startled. Derek glances between both of us and asks “What? What is so funny?”

            Maddie opens her mouth to explain but another burst of giggles interrupt. It is a solid five minute before she answers, and during that entire time, Derek only grew more and more concerned about us. “The bathroom… is a camping nightmare. Given the see-through curtain, I am betting most of us, if not all of us, are not going to be using this bathroom with others in the house.”

            Smiling, I shake my head as I walk to the table and sit in a chair. Immediately, a clouds floats up around me and enters the air, and I start coughing like a smoker… again. Laughing, Maddie comes over, pats my back, and whispers “attractive”. I shake my head at her as I fight to breathe past the dust coating my airways. Still, I smile at her. No matter how dire the situation, I can always trust Maddie to make me laugh. Thankfully, it eased some of the pain for the last few days.

            I look to Derek, who is still staring at the bathroom. As he turns to us, he asks “But… like, what’s wrong with it?”

            Maddie smiles. “Nothing if you live alone and are trying to earn a girl scout badge.”

            I laugh. “What?! It’s super functional. It does not take a lot of space. It does not use lots of electricity. She preferred to be off the grid, and never had any guests.” We shake our heads at him. “I am going out to get food. You two hurt my brain, and food will, hopefully, make girls make sense.” We watch as he heads out the door, look at each other, and shrug. Unlikely, but Good Luck.

            An hour later, we had shown Derek just how much two girls and a boy could eat and solidifying the fact that he will never be able to understand us as fully as he had hoped. “Who knew…” I turn to Maddie. “… that running for your life made you so hungry that no matter the crap you are dealing with, you will still have an appetite.” I look at the mess of our meal… wrappers and boxes for six double pounder cheeseburgers, four large fries, and three chocolate shakes. Between the three of us, there was nothing left. And I couldn’t be sure who ate most of it. It could have been Derek, but it may have been me or maybe Maddie.

            Having finished eating, I stretch my arms above my head as my fingers interlock, and I stretch my legs out in front of me with toes pointed. Sighing, I cross my legs at the ankle and work up the courage to start talking. Maybe courage is not the right word. More like, a hesitance to move us back into the life and death of my life after a slight reprieve. “They took me into an interrogation room…” Maddie and Derek look to me as I continue, and I take this as encouragement that they are right here with me. “The main cop, Detective Marks, was the one who was at the front door and the one y’all talked to. Um, he basically asked me what happened. I told him what I told you guys about what I saw and found when I got home. We were in the interrogation room for about 15 minutes while we talked. The other cop, the one that saw me in the kitchen, was a different type of cop than Marks. He was mean and hostile and voiced his opinions. He thinks I did it, but Marks believed me when I said I didn’t. He might have even believed me about the other man in the house even though they didn’t find his body. Marks even defended me against the younger cop.” Shrugging my shoulders, “Still… Marks did not trust me to run; so, he put me in a cell… with a p********e, a drunk, and, I think, a pimp. I don’t quite understand why they would put me in with those guys but they only seem to have had the one cell. Maybe that was why. It could have also been to scare me straight or the start to a bad joke… I can’t be sure. The whole experience was weird and not at all like you see on television.”

            Maddie gasped and jumped forward to interject when Derek put his arm up to prevent the movement. Shaking his head at Maddie, I continue. “The p********e thought I was pretty in a ‘you’ll make a lot of money’ kind of way. The pimp made a bunch of lewd gestures, but posed no immediate threat. Same with the p********e actually. It was the drunk I should have been concerned about.” I watch as Maddie squeezed Derek’s hand and as Derek grinds his teeth. I force myself to continue. “He woke up and cornered me. He wanted to “teach” me a few things, but I wasn’t interested. He got really close and grabbed me, but then he jumped back. He was yelping and snarling like an animal. He said I burned him, but I didn’t. I didn’t have a lighter or anything on me that could burn him. I didn’t even have anything in my hands. At the time though, I didn’t look at that too closely because the young cop, the mean one that was with Marks, came and got me. This is where things got really bad.”

            Maddie mouths “started to” to Derek in disbelief as if it couldn’t possibly get worse!

            “Marks said no rookies should be near the cell; so, I was cautious and confused but thought maybe he got caught up with something and didn’t want me to stay in a cell longer than I had to, you know? But I also didn’t care. I was cleared, and I just wanted to get away from there. While we were walking, he took me past the hallway I would use to leave. I thought he was going to take me back to the front of the station; since, he said I was free to go. Instead, he passed my way out, and I followed him. I mean, what else could I do? He wanted me to go into this empty interrogation room in the back of the station. I asked about it. He said before I could go, I needed to sign my statement. I remember not liking it. There were no other cops nearby, and we were at the back of the station; so, it was kind of isolated. I was confused, and I stopped moving. As I looked inside, he placed his palm between my shoulder blades and pushed me so hard. I ending up falling forward and catching myself on my hands and knees. As he closed us inside, I crab walked to the table and used the table to get myself standing again. I slowly stood up and backed away around the metal table. I didn’t want to move too fast. He was like an animal. If you spook him, he may attack. I needed to formulate a plan… not that that actually happened. I walked backwards until my back hit the wall, and the table was the only thing between me and him. The cop took out his g*n and said that I was a freak, and a mistake, and that I needed to die. As he pulled the trigger, my hands went up instinctually. A blue light came out of my hand. It was like a warm liquid. It started at my chest and moved throughout the rest of my body. My hand lit up in brilliant blue, and the man was thrown into the door. I approached him so slowly. I was afraid he wasn’t dead. I didn’t like wishing that someone was dead, but it is what it is. I saw a hole burned into the middle of his pecs. He was still steaming and smelled burnt. He was dead. His eyes were open and staring. I struggled to open the door with his body directly up against it. After a couple of tries, I got out and heard voices. I followed the hall back to the main area. As cops were running to him, I calmly walked out the front door and found you guys waiting. Brilliant timing really. I would have had to start walking if you weren’t there.”

            Maddie and Derek look at each other. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any time to rest before these adventures of yours.” I look at Derek, offer a slight smile, and shrug.

            Turning to me, Maddie asks, “A blue light?”

            Nodding, “it looked like lightning. Considering that hellish day, I think I would find myself if I don’t believe what Sarah said about me… and my past. I think it would be too dangerous to live my life as anything else but hunted. I would become too absorbed to protect myself or the people I care about. None of us can afford that.”

            Maddie looks at me. “Jenny? Remember? It’s Sarah’s real name.”

            I look at her. “No. It used to be her name. Jenny and Sarah are two completely different people with their own stories to share. One without the other is not possible. I get that, but she will always be Sarah to me. She was the closest thing to a mom I had.”

            Maddie nods her understanding while Derek paces. With a shrug, Maddie asks, “Now what do we do?”

            None of us had that answer.