Never Let Me Go

Chapter 1 - The Future

I remember him looking at me for the first time, on top of that hill in the summer. The sun was setting, I was only a young girl but I remember. Maybe it was a dream, where a man with black wings and markings over his skin stopped me from drowning in the lake. He carried me to the hillside and looking into my streaming eyes. Saying he would always protect me. I have been envisioning this memory or dream nearly every night in the past six months. I have never told anyone about this vision, for that is what it shall be known as. Not even my best and closest friend Luke (he preferred this name instead of Lucifer, though I loved his original name) , he has been through my childhood, school life and messy teenage years, all by my side. We’re now in our last year of college, wondering what the hell we were going to do with our lives. I wanted to help people, being a doctor or nurse was out of my intelligence reach. So I guess I wanted to join the army, helping wounded soldiers on the battlefield. In the heat of the action. An exciting and dangerous life. We were sitting around a lunch table in the canteen, Lucifer laughing at a joke his friend Jamie had made. I sat looking at his smile, he had a wonderful smile. I had watched that smile grow through his whole life. From the dimpled cheeks of a toddler to the handsome face of young man. I drank the last of my coffee as my course partner was telling me we should start walking to class; otherwise our tutor would push our faces through the floorboards. I threw my warm cup into the bin as we walked away. His smile still present in my mind.

Class was dragging, I happened to be the only one to hand in my assignment before the deadline. Thus resulting in many whining college students looking for mercy, during my valuable map reading time. Public and Uniformed services was a pretty extreme course, although when moments like this were in procession, I had a mad urge to pick up a fat stool and kill everyone. I finished the task as Tyler Wood sat down next to me, letting his head hit the table with a satisfying thump. He groaned and turned pleading eyes to me. 

“Don’t look at me like that Anita! It’s not my fault this time I swear.” I shook my head. Giving the eye, the one that said ‘like hell I believe you.’ he groaned and shut his eyes. 

“What’s your punishment?” I asked curiously. Paul (our tutor and course leader) was always vicious when it came to embarrassing punishments. That’s why I never gave in a piece late. 

I saw the pain behind Wood’s eyes as he opened them. A look of pure defeat. 

“We have to write a poem.” I thought that wasn’t so bad before he carried on slowly. “we have to read it in front of the Literature students and get feedback. If the feedback is bad we had to write a five thousand word essay on the importance of punctuality and time keeping.” He was right. It did sound grim. I patted him on the back sympathetically. 

Wood didn’t feel like doing a great poem, he even asked Lucifer to do it for him. I hit him with a book and told him to do it on his own. Many hours were saved due to Wood’s near concussion on the library floor.

Weeks often passed like this. The same routine and yet we were all thinking ahead, into the future. I had decided what I wanted to be now, I had always known one of the forces but now it was definitely the army. I wanted to be a combat paramedic. Strangely enough the moment I said this, Lucifer jumped up and grabbed my face and made me look into his eyes, they swam with worry. I could feel my tongue starting to bleed as it had been pressed against my canine. Lucifer let go of my face after apolagising, we sat down. The group all staring at the two of us before he cooly said “Me too. I guess you’ll need someone to protect you from those big baddies, it will give me something to do.” My jaw dropped. 

“You can’t be serious!”