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“Ahh!” I exhaled as I found myself rolling off the couch and onto the wooden floor gasping for air. Trembling, I tried to breathe even though nothing could stop the panic and fear of dying that had crept over me.
Rolling onto my side, I curled into a ball and laid there until the pain went away and the trembling stopped. I wouldn’t have known how long that took if I hadn’t watched the sun go down over the trees in the window in front of me.
“Why?” I asked rising from the ground. Expecting no answer and getting none I walked back into the kitchen and took out the coffeemaker and the packet of Italian Roast coffee. In the few minutes it took for it to brew I made myself a sandwich. Then I limped from the kitchen to my bedroom which contained nothing but my bed on the dark hardwood floor and dozens of covered canvasses that were all lined up against the walls. Placing my meal on the ground next to the painting I was working on, I sat down and cleaned off my paintbrush unable look away from her green eyes.
“You didn’t have to die too,” I said to her as I dipped the ends of the brush into the white paint and signed not my name but the name of Francis. You didn’t have to but you stubbornly run towards me each time…this time you need to stay away.
The paintbrush snapped from the pressure of my fingers. But I kept thinking If there is any connection between us you must break it and stay away!
/> 5. PERSONA NON GRATA
ESTHER
“Ah!” I hissed in pain as I grabbed my head.
“Sorry! The roads aren’t really paved this way,” The taxi driver said as I opened my eyes, but I immediately flinched at the sunlight.
“Oh no, it’s fine. I’ve had this headache since yesterday,” I said sitting up in the back seat of the car and adjusting the seatbelt near my neck. I checked my watch and saw that it was almost eleven a.m. I’d meant to be there bright and early this morning but somehow I ended up missing my first flight, which meant I had to catch the next plane out which, due to emergency weather conditions, ended up landing three hours away. And because this little town was in the middle of nowhere, Montana, there was no train station and I found myself paying for a taxi. Which was surprisingly still far cheaper than the fare in city. “How much further?”
“Not far, it’s just on the other side of the lake.”
Lake?
Glancing out the window I saw the very hard to miss unless you were jet-lagged, hungry and annoyed, bright blue lake which sat at the bottom of the mountain ridge. In the distance I could see a few houses and buildings in the greens that led up the mountain.
“Wow.” I’d seen things like this in movies and even had something exactly like it as the screensaver on my laptop but seeing it up-close and in person... The vast green treetops that went on endlessly, the beautiful ridged mountains, mountains that even had snow on their peaks.
“Ain’t no New York, but it ain’t’ bad either, huh?” He laughed nodding his head proudly.
“Yeah, it ain’t bad,” I whispered winding the window down which caused my hair to blow around my face but I didn’t care. Holding it back with my hand, I briefly caught a glance of a sign as we drove past.
“Welcome to Lieber Falls... Yours to Rediscover.” I read out loud.
“Kinda catchy right? Ten years ago not many people came up this way—what the—?”
“What?” I looked forward just in time to see the smoke coming out from under the hood. “No!”
“Sorry! Sorry, I’m going to have to pull over!” he said as he swerved onto the shoulder of the road and set the car into park before quickly jumping out. I watched as he waved away the gray smoke that was rising with his coat before he used it to lift the hood. In doing so, the smoke spilled into the car.
“Ugh!” I coughed and just as I climbed out the car my phone rang. “H…Hello?”
“Esther? Are you okay?”
“No, I am not okay, Grandpa.” I coughed again as I walked further away from the car. “Where in the world did you send me to, Grandpa? I think this place hates me! It was supposed to take four hours…and yet here I am seven hours…seven and half hours later still trying to get there! Why? Because my taxi broke down right in front of a lake. Not to mention I haven’t eaten anything today. My head feels like it’s about to split in two. And my cellphone reception keeps going in and out.”
“Breathe.”
I took a deep breath. “I am and it’s not helping.”
“Breathe again.”
“Grandpa.”
“Esther.”
Sighing I did as he said.
