Death in Her Eyes

by ERIN BEDFORD

  Death In Her Eyes

  Children of the Fallen Book 1

  By Erin Bedford

  Chapter 1

  Officer Rhoades couldn't have been much older than me, too young to be standing on my doorstep. His young face had that fresh out of the academy look. The kind of look where everything was still separated into good and evil with no grey areas in between. His baby blue eyes had too much pain in them giving away that it was his first time delivering bad news.

  He really was too young.

  I suppose I could have put him out of his misery and tell him ‘It’s alright. I already know’, but that would have changed his sympathetic heart into a suspicious one. How do you tell someone you already know your mother was dead?

  Even as he told me how sorry he was for my loss, the squealing of tires and the crunch of metal could still be heard in the recesses of my mind. I’d known for a while this day would come. But then again,I’ve known a lot of things I shouldn’t.

  A gift. That’s what my mother had always called it. To be able to witness it all before it ever happened. Maybe if it had told me the lottery pick for that week or helped me pass a chemistry test, then maybe just maybe I wouldn’t have minded. But knowing the six-year-old boy you babysat every other Thursday would grow up only to die from drug overdose was not what I would call a gift. I wonder if God did returns.

  Officer Rhoades was staring at me again. Why was he looking at me like that? Oh. He asked me a question. What did he say?

  “Miss Richmond, are you alright?”

  I cleared my throat and hoped I looked like the distraught daughter he expected. “Uh, what? Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little bit in shock.”

  Officer Rhoades quirked an eyebrow at me. I don’t think he believed me. “Are you sure? You don’t want me to call someone for you?”

  “No. I’m fine.” Maybe if I said it enough it would have been true.

  I tried not to move back when he held his hand out to me. I looked down at it and my stomach clenched. Touching was a bad idea.

  Most of my visions were random occurrences. Sometimes they were triggered by a word or a phrase. Sometimes something as small as a flower on the ground. But every time I touched someone new, whether I wanted to or not, I would see it.

  Death.

  More often than not my visions are always about death. Theirs or someone they love, and never just as simple as when, but how. If they are going to dying drowning, that’s where I’d find myself. Submerged, lungs burning as I struggle to find the surface. And the fear. The gut clenching, throat closing fear that always washed over me.

  I wasn’t brave. I didn’t pretend to be. Was everyone afraid to die? I didn’t know. But never have I had a vision where someone was dying with a smile on their face and joy in their heart. Yes, I knew fear very well and the hand stretched out to me encompassed the very definition of my fear.

  I ignored the hand in front of me and looked up, a small smile forcing its way onto my face. “Thank you, Officer Rhoades. I'll be okay. I have people to call.”

  He hesitated for a moment but then with great reluctance withdrew his hand. The clenching in my stomach relaxed a bit. He cleared his throat and glanced back at his squad car where his partner sat waiting before he surveyed me with a relieved sort of look that he quickly forced into a concerned expression.

  “Well, if you’re sure, but you really should call someone. You shouldn’t be alone now.”

  “I know. I will. Thank you.” I backed up and closed the door before he could say anything more.

  I leaned against the door and held my breath as I listen to the sound of Officer Rhoades’s footsteps on the porch. They pause for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he should leave yet. Eventually, his boots pound against the three front steps that lead up to our house and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Staying there against the door for a moment, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do next. I had years to become accustomed to the idea that my mom would die today, but the pain was still there. The throbbing in my heart still ached as much as if I had just found out.

  I didn’t know when exactly it would happen. My visions didn’t work like that. But I could speculate based on what I saw, the weather, the clothing she wore. Usually, I push my visions to a special place in the back of my mind that I like to keep locked tight, but not hers. Hers, I had gone over a thousand times. Was there anything I could do to stop it? No. Could I have told her not to go out that day? Yes, I could have, and she would give me one of those looks. The kind she always gave me when I tried to change the future.

  “You can’t save everyone Elle, somethings are just meant to be,” she’d say.

  Then I would have crossed my arms and scowled at her. “What is the point of having visions if I can’t do anything about it?”

  She’d give me this little smile, like I was silly for asking, then say, “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Laughing as if it was some kind of private joke and go back to whatever it was she was doing, leaving my question unanswered.

  Now, I would never know.

  I took a deep breath in, then let it out in one rush. Pulling myself up off the wall, I lifted my head, and straightened my back. Enough self-pity, there were things to do.

  I walked to the desk in our small living room and tried not to look at the walls. The floral print always made me a little nauseous. I pulled open the dark wood drawer and I searched for the folder that mom always kept in case something like this happened.

  Grabbing the folder marked ‘In Case of Emergency’ and I flipped the vanilla cover open. I scanned over the first few pages, ticking them off as I go. Will. Funeral Home. Logins. There. Call List. Looking over the list of friends and relatives that needed to be notified I stopped when I saw the name at the bottom of the list. The one name I wasn’t sure what to do with.

  Bart Richmond. Dad.

  I sat heavily into the chair near the desk and stared down at his name. Should I call him? Would he even answer? He wasn’t the most reliable man in the world. I hadn't seen him since my thirteenth birthday and that was five years ago. It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone. But when he did happen to turn up, he was usually distant, only ever saying a few words to me before he has ‘a work emergency.’

  Mom told me he was a big shot adviser for a multi-million dollar corporate head. If she was here, she’d say he loves us and would be here if he could. I don’t buy it. What important advice could he give that would cause him to only visit every few years? No, if he wanted to be here, he would. Tucking the loose strands of blonde hair behind my ear, I grabbed the cordless phone from the top of the desk. Let someone else call him.

  I glanced back at the top of the list. Aunt Sue. Mom’s, too intuitive for her own good, younger sister. She would know what to do next, but she would also be able to tell if I didn’t sound surprised. Upset. None of us ever told her about my gift, but somehow, I think she had always suspected.

  “Your eyes are so old.” She’d say with a bewildered look in her eyes.

  If she had to see death and carnage all the time, she'd come out scarred too. I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a shaky breath. If she found out I knew she’ll want to know why I didn’t stop it from happening. She wouldn’t understand.

  I need to sound devastated. I looked down at my hands and watched the tremors that start to envelope them. I really didn’t want to do this.

  The door in the back of my mind was hard steel. The cold silver metal was closed shut with a heavy steel lock, a key tight in its opening. I inhaled deeply and twisted the key in the hole where it lived. A resounding click rung throughout my mind and for a second, I hesitated. But then with one sweep of my mind’s hand the doors flew open and I was en
gulfed.

  The images that poured out almost caused me to forget myself. The crunch of bodies smashing against the pavement. Blood spilling out of fresh cuts. Gun shots fired. The sharp deep pain of a knife slipping in. Then there was the screaming. The screaming was unbearable. High pitched wails of unspeakable terror and gurgling breaths. Any sane person would have gone insane by the chaos of images that played havoc in my mind. They barely cause an emotional reaction from me anymore. It sometimes made me wonder if that makes me a sociopath.

  I dug my nails into the palms of my hands and the physical pain of them biting into my flesh pulled me back into myself. I shoved all of the images back into the room and slammed the door, the force of it vibrated through my mind. With the visions safely behind the metal door I could finally breathe again. I took a deep breath and clicked the lock back into its place.

  Touching my face, I felt the wetness there and almost glared down at it. I never cry. I learned a long time ago that crying didn’t change anything. It didn’t bring people back. It certainly didn’t stop the visions from happening. But today, today it was necessary. I glanced back at the list and started to punch in my aunt’s number.

  It almost felt good to cry.

  Chapter 2

  In my short eighteen years of life I have seen more death and destruction than most war veterans. I would rather face an onslaught of bleeding soldiers than face the crowd of mourners before me. Death I could handle, people…not so much.

  Mom would have been happy so many had come to mourn her death. She has way more friends than me. Which wasn’t exactly hard since I’d only ever had one friend. Nicole Berman. Or Nikki to her friends, meaning me. Nikki actually was the only one at the funeral home I was happy to see. The rest could go find a shallow grave to lie in.

  Unlike my somber personality, Nikki was a breath of Jewish sunshine. From her dark curly mass of hair all the way down to her sensible “got them on sale” shoes. She really was my lifeline in this world. She’s helped me more than once from getting completely lost in my own sinking pit of carnage. To top it off she was completely aware of my little ‘gift’ and had no problem telling me where to stuff it when I tried to warn her off of any guy who was doomed to die in the foreseeable future. We actually met because of a guy, back in sixth grade when all the other kids avoided me like a bad case of cooties.

  I’d been hanging out by the swing sets watching the other kids playing kickball. I’d never been a joiner to begin with, but it would have been nice to be asked to play sometimes. But by then I had already been labeled as that scary blonde girl. I had made the mistake of telling this one girl, Jessica, that her new puppy was going to get its head chopped off by her dad’s weed whacker that weekend. Ever since then not too many people talked to me if they could help it.

  Nikki wasn’t like them. She had been a transfer student, so all the boys were in that new toy phase with her. This one boy in particular, David Bartelli, who was like the Joe Jonas of Ms. Johnson’s sixth grade class, was hard core for Nikki. He even brought her flowers one day. It would have been sweet if I hadn’t already known that David would die later that year from a bad outbreak of measles.

  I probably should have kept my mouth shut. Probably. Who knows maybe my vision was wrong that time and David would have grown up to be a charming man who would have married Nikki and brought her flowers every day for the rest of their lives. But at that point in time David was a conceited little brat and stole Twinkies out of my lunch box every day.

  So, when I saw Nikki heading over to where David was hanging out with his other equally stuck up friends I had to intervene. I mean, it was my civic duty to let Nikki know just how short term of a relationship she was in for. When I told her she just looked at me like I was the most fascinating thing in the whole world. From that point on we had been inseparable.

  “Great party.” Speak of the devil. I loved her sense of humor. It was one thing we actually had in common. She liked to see the glass as half full, but most of the time it comes out as demented as me.

  I smirked at her when I thought nobody was looking. “Killer.”

  She giggled causing the older adults around us to glare back at her. She glared right back at them. “Livin’ up would you, it’s not like we’re at a funeral or something.” She turned her head back to me and quirked a brow. “So, how long did you know?”

  “Jeez Nik, get right down to it, won’t you?”

  She snorted and waved a hand at me. “Whatever, like you haven’t had enough people coddling you already.” She gestured to the group of relatives fawning over my mother’s coffin. “You could use a break from the sympathy wagon.”

  She grabbed my hand and led me toward one of the side exits of the funeral home. I tried to dodge people the best I could, but a few brushed me here and there causing my vision to blur out momentarily. As we burst out the side door and out into the open air, I made a mental note to spend more time with Uncle Bob. Liver failure. Didn’t need to be a psychic to figure that one out. Though, I’d be an alcoholic too if I had to live with Aunt Kate’s criticism.

  I leaned against the brick walls of the funeral home and dipped my hand into my clutch, my pack of cigarettes soon finding their way into my hand. Sweet reprieve. I didn’t know if I could have handled one more nugget of the future today without a nicotine fix.

  “You really should quit, you know?”

  I gave Nikki a pointed look as I light the end of the stick in my mouth and took a big inhale. She has never approved of my smoking. Cancer and all that.

  “When I no longer have near death experiences on a daily basis, I will gladly give up my nicotine, but until that day comes you can kindly fuck off.” I blew smoke in her direction to punctuate my point.

  She let out a small cough and waved her hand in front of her. “Hey, just because you want to die young doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

  I gave her an apologetic shrug though she knows I was anything but. It’s no secret that I didn’t want to live longer than I had to. I would have gone off and ended it already if it hadn’t been for mom and Nikki. Well, only Nikki now.

  “So has your dad showed up?” Nikki tucked her hands in the pockets of her long black dress pants. Her long legs really did astound me. Being five two most of my teenage life had me accustom to always looking up, but at nearly six-foot Nikki dwarfed me.

  I took another drag of my cigarette and stared down at the ground. “No.” I wanted her to drop it. I didn’t really want to see him. Didn’t know what I’d have said if I did.

  “Well, what did he say when you talked to him?” My eyes snapped up to hers, I could feel my gaze harden. She wasn’t going to drop it.

  “I didn’t.”

  Nikki threw her curls over her shoulder and scoffed. “Meaning you didn’t try. I keep telling you, sometimes you have to be the first one to reach out if you ever want to have a real relationship with the man who helped create you.”

  I flicked the cigarette and watched as it bounced across the pavement. She was on that kick again. Nikki was always working on a new self-improvement project and this year was repairing personal relationships. This was a conversation I definitely didn’t want to have right now.

  “Can we not talk about this right now? I have enough to deal with today.” I looked down at my right hand and rubbed at the bent in c-shaped scar on the back of my hand near my thumb. I didn’t remember getting it, but lately whenever I start getting irritated it would start to burn like it had happened recently.

  “You can’t hide your feelings forever Elle.”

  “You know I think I’m starting to remember how you die. I think it had something to do with bees.” I tapped my chin, pretending to be deep in thought.

  “Bees! But I’m not even allergic to bees!” The door to the funeral home opened and the pallbearers lead the people out with my mother’s coffin in hand. I moved towards Aunt Sue and away from Nikki’s squawking.

  She has been hounding me since day one to l
et her know how she dies and every time she asked, I gave her a different answer. A hit and run. Suicide. A freak accident involving a blender. And now bees. She was more obsessed with death than I was. Really why would you want to know when you die?

  It’s not like I didn’t know. I just didn’t want to think of her that way. If I let myself think of the way she goes then that was all she would be. A label permanently imprinted on her face every time I saw her and there would go my one and only friend.

  I let myself be ushered into the black limousine reserved for immediate family and leaned against the door. I knew her. If I told her she would never let it go. She would be looking over her shoulder all the time, more worried about dying than living. I couldn’t do that to her.

  Nikki’s small hand pounds against the glass of my window. I tried to school the emotions on my face to show nothing as I rolled down the window. Giving her my best poker face, I waited for the usual explosion of questions.

  “Come on Elle! You can’t be serious! Bees?” Her face would almost be funny if I hadn’t seen it so many times before when I had fed her one of my previous lies. I rolled my eyes at her and started to roll the window back up.

  “You’ll just have to wait and find out like everyone else.” I bit back a grin when she smacked the glass and let out another muffled “Come on,” before she marched towards her own vehicle.

  “You really should be nicer to that girl. I don’t know how she stands to be around you as it is.” Aunt Kate snide remarks always made my day. It maybe mean and unkind, but the fact that I know exactly how she dies fills my step with a little bit of a pep whenever she got into one of her tirades about my character.

  “Oh Katie, leave Elle alone.” Aunt Sue glared at her sister and reached over to pat my hands with a small smile. I quickly moved it out of her reach and stared down at her own paused in midair. She cleared her throat and dropped the hand. She knows not to touch me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…well anyways, don’t listen to her. She’s just a bitter old woman. You’re perfect the way you are.”