Vision

Chapter thirteen

Chapter 13:

The Encounter

She rushes over to the door of the crushed house. She chokes on the smoke and remembers why she had given up smoking. Her lungs are fit to burst. She grips her five-year-old son’s hand tightly and tries to survive…escape this terrible encounter. She can feel her knees shaking, her heart beating faster, an adrenaline rush. She had escaped the arena years ago…now they want her back. Her poor sweet child’s body is covered in blood…her blood. The creature has struck her with its claws causing her to bleed…terribly. She puts her left hand on the wound on her stomach, still keeping her child’s hand in the other. She isn’t going to die…not if she has to take her child with the other. She tries to keep moving forward, growing wearier the further she goes. She doesn’t care as much for her own life as she does for her child’s.

They run down the stairs, collapsing when an explosion sounds and rings in their ears. She gets up immediately and picks her now-unconscious child up and throws his arms around her neck. Why are children always so heavy? She locates the door and runs towards it straight away, her eyes filling with tears. She reaches the door, making her way out of it hastily. She can still see the demons searching for her within the house through the windows. Her eyes widen in horror when one of the demons spots and crashes through the window, ready to take her life…possibly. She takes an Arm Micro out of her pocket and shoots at the creature as it flies towards her, causing it to crash to the ground. She races to the car and hops in, in front of the wheel, putting her child in the backseat as she cries out-loud.

To her horror, the demon slowly gets up and she starts the engine as fast as she possibly can, but is too late. The demon’s head comes crashing through the window and it tries to get its arms through. It wants to kill her. It wants to kill her. She pulls her gun’s trigger again, but is unfortunately out of ammo. She lifts her leg over the driver’s seat and kicks the demon with fury and frustration. Her eyes red from tears, she causes the demon to leave her. The demon leaves the window with a shriek and falls in front of the car. She instantly hits the gas and drives over the demon, killing it.

She arrives onto the road and drives wherever she can, however she can. Wait! The New York Police Department…maybe they would help her, if they would believe her. Unlikely. She still has to try.

Max looks through his stuff, searching for what he has to put in the boxes and what he has to leave. When he is finally done, he goes to his cheap (as he would call it, crap) car and puts his boxes in them. His boss, Howards, has fired the entire force being irresponsible and plain stupid, as he put it. Max decides to enter the offices one last time. When he is in it, he walks over to the picture of his boss that is next to his desk. It is a picture of him smiling.

“Yeah, yeah,” he slurs, “keep smilin’, ass-clown.” He takes a permanent marker out of his pocket and draws a moustache, a spectacle, to large elf-ears, a party hat and two goofy and long, goofy teeth on the portrait of his old boss. He puts the marker back in his pocket and starts to leave the room, a wide grin appearing on his face. As he approaches the room, a young lady bumps into him.

“Sorry, sorry…” they both say repeatedly to each other.

“I’m sorry,” she articulates, “do you work here? If you do I could use your help.”

At this, Max is intrigued by the lady’s wish, perplexed that she needs his…oh, yeah.

“Do you work here?” she asks.

“Well, it depends on the way you use the term ‘work here’… Do you mean ‘work here-work here’, or just ‘work here.’”

She shoots him a strange look and he becomes embarrassed. Then, she smiles at him. She decides to continue.

“You’ve been fired?” she questions.

“Yeah,” he answers.

“I could still use your help, Tiger.”

“Sure…what is it?”

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

“Trust me…you’d be surprised.”

“Right…I think that demons are assaulting me.”

Max stares at her for a moment, saying nothing. Suddenly, he lets out a scream of regret and then falls silent again.

“Not this, again,” he mutters, depressed. “The last time I did this I lost my job…like…three weeks ago.”

“Wait…three weeks ago? How come you’re only doing this, now?”

“I had to set up some pranks to get my boss back.”

She pauses, eyeing him very suspiciously, “Right… listen, can you help me or not.”

“Well, Jack told me to contact all our fighters and that we should go to the old warehouse near the department. He’s more of an expert with this kind of stuff than I am. He should be able to help me…I mean you get over this traumatic experience.”

“Wait, Jack, was it?”

“Yeah…that mean anything to you?”

“No…just seems to ring a bell.”

“So…what should I call you?”

“Emma. And you?”

“Max. Just… Max. Look, you can look through the offices if you want. I’m sure my boss will mind. Hopefully. You can stay at my place, tonight. I’m going to my crap car so long and visualising ponies and rainbows. Wait…what? Never mind. You just come to my car when you’re ready.”

“Um…we can go now, if you want?”

“Right.”

Max leads her through the exit to his car, where they confront her child.

“Wait…you’ve get a kid?”

“Um…yeah, I guess. His name’s Mike.”

“Aw, man…and just when I was beginning to think of starting a relationship with you.”

The child gazes at him suspiciously, unsure of him. He just keeps staring at him, saying nothing.

“Make him stop looking at me,” Max whispers in Emma’s ear.

“Honey,” she says to her son, “this is Max. He’s the nice man who’s going to take care of us.”

When she finishes saying this, she immediately gets into the car, hoping to avoid any other uncomfortable conversations. Max watches her as she does this and then turns his gaze to Mike, who just keeps staring at him. Max becomes agitated, leans forward to the kid and says “boo”. The kid stares at him some more and then he finally decides to stomp Max’s foot with his own, which causes him to shriek in pain, as the kid gets into the backseat of the car, sitting behind his mum and buckling up. He smiles slightly, seeing Max grab his one foot in pain and hopping on the other. Of course, he is unable to hear his unfortunate victim screaming.

Max opens the door and gets in, in front of the wheel, an irritated look on his face. He eyes the kid in the mirror as he starts the car and begins driving. Mike is pulling his tongue at him, influencing him to do the same. Unfortunately for him, Emma sees him, making her wonder if this really is a good idea.