Flirting with Disaster

1

      "Tueur! Tueur look at me!" My head turns involuntarily. "Tueur, honey, please listen to me. We can get through this together," she takes an unsure pause, "I promise." The feeling of disgust fills my stomach, her droopy eyes long for approval and I'm not about to give it to her. I stare at her cold dead in the eyes. Her eyes soften even more, "Please just talk to me." I slowly back up and look for a door or a window or anything to get me out of here.
      The house around me is dim and high in contrast. The black walls are covered in family pictures, none of which include me. A newly polished white coffee table holds blurry papers and candles. Behind it is a dark couch that looks smooth to the touch. A living room, it's a living room. One that lacks a television or a radio, but one that's full of memories. Game nights, laughter, and dancing. Memories that I can feel the presence of, but that I don't take part in. This is a foreign home and everything in it screams it. A home they tried to lock me in. A home they tried to contain me in. A home where I do not belong nor ever will belong in.
      I tilt my head slightly to the left, looking just behind the woman in front of me. Then I see it, a beautiful white door that symbolizes freedom, and my heart leaps. Without thinking, I run to it. Without thinking, my heart pumps blood faster and it rushes to my head. Without thinking, my brain tells my legs to fly and they obey. Without thinking about the consequences, about what I'll do next, about what I'll find out there. Without thinking, I open my eyes.
      I open my eyes to a new surrounding, to a fresh surrounding. One that embraces me, one that I am welcomed to. It is bright and white. Not that white that blinds you to a headache, but a white that is tinted slightly. A warm shade of yellow is mixed in. A yellow that differentiates a warm room to a hospital bed. A yellow that differentiates life and death.
      I sit up and stretch out my still muscles. The inviting room around me is all white. The floor is a dark brown wood that rests under white and brown furniture. There are only 2 pieces of finely polihed funiture. A dresser and a bed. Otherwise, the small room becomes huge and has a sliding glass door that leads to a balcony. I take a deep breath and smell smoke. I hesitantly run out of the room. A dark short hallway opens up to a kitchen and living room. A tall man waves a kitchen towel above his head. His frantic eyes connect to mine and smile.
     "I cooked breakfast!" he shouts over the smoke.
      "Looks delicious!" I slide into the kitchen and look at a pan on the stove. Inside there are 3 pieces of charred bacon. I pick up the pan by the handle and set it softly down in the sink. I turn around to the man who still looks quite panicked, "Go sit down. I'll finish this." I grab his flailing arm and give him a reassuring look. The message was recieved as the panick leaves his face and he surrenders the towel to me.
      "Morning." His low voice grumbles and he comes in for a hug. I hug back but its awkward, partly because I feel sorry for him.
      "Morning." I let go and turn toward the half open fridge next to the stove.
      "You could have at least closed the fridge all the way." I open it all the way and examine. There isn't much inside. Yogurt, milk, eggs, ham, lemonade, lettuce, and blueberries. In other words, I need to go grocery shopping.
      "Sorry. I'll remember next time. How'd you sleep?" I grab the yogurt, blueberries, and lemonade out of the fridge.
       "Like a baby. You?" I stand back resting my back on the sink and stare at the choices of cabinets I have. I pick the second cabinet to the left of the microwave and hydrator above the stove. Inside lay bowls and plates that lay on top of each other. I reach up and grab two bowls.
      "Definetly not as good as you. I had this crazy dream. In fact, you were in it." He follows up with a whole detailed story of me trying to kill him. I ignore half of it as I make parfaits out of vanilla yogurt, blueberries, and the little bit of honey left in the container I found on the counter. I bring it over to the table where he rests his head on his hand.
      "Well you don't have to worry about that now ok?" I rub his short hair and place the bowl in front of him.
      "Can you get a spoon?"
      "Yeah hold on." I walk over to the kitchen once more and open a drawer closest to the fridge. I grab a steak knife and a spoon and walk to him with the knife concealed.
      "Here." I hand him the spoon and walk behind him. I hug him around the neck as he starts to eat.
       "Aren't you going to eat?" He asks squeezing my wrist slightly.
       "I guess I should huh?" I start to stand back up and the knife concealed by my sleeve reveals itself to his neck. The knife makes contact to his neck but it won't cut that easy. I use my body's weight to lean back and the job is done.
       Luis Martinez was a twenty three year old Hispanic man who had a wife and a young boy, only 5. His mother is a widow to an abusive husband, Lorenzo, who died driving drunk. She lives in Puerto Rico with her sister in a small 2 bedroom house that Luis's older sister Sofia pays for. Lorenzo was a terrible husband and an abusive father to his family, especially to his wife, which left Sophia to raise Luis. As Luis got older the more he became like his father. He turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with problems from the lack of money and gangs he was involved in. He moved to Los Angeles to execute a major deal with a newer gang called Jaha Cartel. Here he met his wife Adrianna and married her on September 25, 2178. Together they had twin boys, José and Santiago. Just like his own father, Luis began to take out his problems on his family and Adrianna struggled to raise her young boys in a stable home. Soon after the children were born, Adrianna found out about her husband's constant infidelity. When he came home that night she confronted him. That argument led to the death of Santiago who was only 4 at the time. He died of blunt force trauma to the head. Luis Martinez was also involved in 12 other killings including murders, drive bys, and abductions.
       Luis Martinez is the same man that was waving a kitchen towel over his head. The same man who tried to make breakfast. The same man who told me about his dream.
       I walk to my bedroom with the knife still in my hands. I skip turn left into a connected bathroom opposite of the sliding glass door. I put the handle of the knife in my mouth and wash my hands. With my hands clean, I drop the knife into the sink from my mouth and look down. In a drawer just under me there are 3 syringes. One with a blue filling, another with a purple filling, and the last with clear filling. I grab all three and head back into the bedroom. I toss the syringes softly on the rustled bed and move around it. On the side of the bed, there is a small black backpack with a bunch of small writing in colorful ink on the outside. I open the smallest pocket and pull out a little blue case. Inside the case are two contact lenses. With one finger, I lightly touch the highest point of the concaved contact and lift my finger to my eye. I widen my eye, look up, and place the contact on my eye. After blinking a few times, I repeat the process with my right eye. After both are in, I grab the syringes on the bed and head back to the living room.
     "Lenses on." My vision lights up with information and times before I can comphrend it all. I walk over to the body and an arrow points to the date and time of August 12, 2179, 8:52. I look at the colored syringes in my hand and use my other hand to take the clear one. I inject the clear syringe into the cadaver's neck that holds the major artery. The lenses now change to August 12, 2179, 10:52.
     "Lenses set a timer."
     A small voice in my head whispers, "For how long?"
      "One hour."
      "Setting timer for one hour." The lenses bring up a countdown that starts at fifty nine minutes and fifty nine seconds and it moves to the corner so I can see whats going on. There are several caution marks and arrows of information. The next arrow points to the blood that is on the table and shows that it first touched the table at 8:52, which contradicts Luis now dying at 10:52. So, I take the syringe with the blue filling and lightly stream, a little at a time, out on to the spotted blood. Both of these liquids do the same thing in different circumstances. The clear syringe spreads itself out throught the body to basically tell all the cells to freeze. Freezing the cells means that the body won't deteriorate like it would if you were dead. In a sense, it keeps the body 'alive' as long as you want it to. The amount you put into the body determines how long it will tell the cells to freeze. Once it wears out, the cells will deteriorate at a faster speed than normal, but I tweaked the formula to make my own that will keep the cells deteriorating at a normal speed.
       I stand back and look over the cadaver and its mess. The two arrows now resemble each other and say 10:52. I move on to another arrow that is planted in the kitchen. The drawer was left slightly open and shows my finger prints. Only they aren't mine. They are another woman's fingerprints whom I met while picking up groceries at the Super Mart. Her name is Alina Barrin and she's lived in Los Angeles all of her life. Thats about as much information I can pick up off of a small conversation. When she turned to pick out an oatmeal box, all I had to do was take an item out of her basket.
      Anyway, I turn around to look for more arrows. One last arrow points to the fingerprints on the bowl, which I'm not worried about. There is only thirty minutes left on my timer. I take the syringes and walk to the bedroom and go back into my backpack. I grab a smaller bag that is decorated with black and blue flowers. I take it into the bathroom with me and set it on the counter. I take the purple syringe and inject it into my arm and look at myself in the mirror. I wait for about five minutes before the change begins. My eyes turn from black to a blue-gray and my eyelashes get longer. My cheek and jawbones sharpen as my skin forms tighter around them. A few freckles appear on my nose and cheeks. Lastly, my hair turns brown and wavy and gets three inches longer so it falls to my shoulders. I am a whole new person now and i try and think of a new name. Avanna? No, that sounds like a hippie name. Ashley? No, too last century. Everybody's name nowadays are always mixed together. For example, Oliann (all-ee-an), which is a common girls name, is a mix of Olivia and Anna, or Jaryan (ja-re-an), which is a common boys name, is a mix of Jack and Ryan. I close my eyes and try to think of what a fitting new name would be. Jennibeth. It suddenly hits me like the warm sun on a cool day. Jennibeth is perfect.
      I feel my wrists for a rubberband and I'm pleasantly surprised to find one. I put my hair back and start cleaning my things. I pack it all back into my bag and run through a checklist in my mind. I have to be careful not to leave anything of mine behind or I'm completely screwed.
     With everything in my backpack and my checklist complete, I take a look through Luis's stuff to look for cash ammo or anything useful. I only find three stacks of one hundred dollars and a few twenties in his drawers and pockets. I take a small switchblade off of his nightstand and head to the front door to put my shoes on. I look back at the cadaver and all the arrows in the kitchen. The timer on my lenses reads five minutes. Satisfied with my work, I open the front door and nonchalantly walk out of that little white door that means freedom.