Death Count

Chapter 2

    "We have to hurry before Jade runs out of time," Miteus said. "She's in trouble."
    I pulled his hand away from my mouth. "Will you explain to me?" I interrogated, puzzled. Jade wasn't just a co-worker to me, but also a friend. Miteus' concerned expressions were beginning to get to me.
    Miteus did not answer me immediately. Instead, he gripped my arm, and with a flash of light, I was in a familiar room. After a few moments, I recognized that it was Jade's living room. I saw her sitting on her couch, remote in hand, flipping idly through the channels.
    Miteus informed me as if he had read my mind,  "Don't worry; we're invisible to her, and she can't hear us."
    And then I realized why he was acting so oddly. Emblazoned in the air above my friend's head, the now-familiar letters read:

0 yrs. || 0  days || 0:34:12 

    She would die within an hour.
    With a second flash of light, I saw my friend driving in her car. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, but she didn't seem to be able to see me. Something began to to feel very, very wrong. Before I even had time to process my apprehension, Jade
slammed the brakes, and a car collided into hers. Yet another blinding flash, and I saw her being carried to an ambulance on a stretcher with blood pooling under her and her amethyst-dyed hair concealing her face.
    I snapped out of my vision, shaken up, but I sighed with relief as I saw my friend still sitting on the couch, completely safe. I felt like whacking Miteus for inflicting that fear on me, but his dark blue eyes turned to me and the pure seriousness that passed over them stopped me. He didn't show me the vision just to mess with me. And in that moment of realization, I somehow knew that Lauren was going to the grocery store for snacks. I had to act immediately, with the help of Miteus, of course.
    Miteus asked in concern, a completely different voice than his usual one of slight mockery, "Are you alright?"
    "Uh, yeah..." I whispered hoarsely.
    "Don't worry. We're going to save her right now," he reassured, "you have to imprint into her mind the vision that you've just seen. She won't actually see the vision, but her mind will be changed, and she'll just decide not to get any snacks. It's that simple."
    "How exactly do I imprint the vision into her mind?"
    "You'll see; it's second-nature to you now. Simply close your eyes."
    I closed my eyes. I felt a strange feeling of weight lifting off of myself. When I opened my eyes and glanced above Jade's head, the numbers had changed:

67  yrs.  || 20  days || 16:55:17   

I sighed in relief,  I could never imagine what my life would be like without my best friend. Since I was 15, she had always been like an older sister to me, and was the first person I would go to when I was feeling down.
No longer in trouble, I smiled slightly. Of course she would die from getting food.