A Destined Death (9 page)

A sparkle of interest danced in his eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know,” I said, not even caring how my face heated as my mind raced with the thought. “A kiss?” At that moment, I whole-heartedly believed it would fix everything, and the world would start to make sense again.

He stood and leaned down, his face only inches from mine. His musky smell filled my senses making me weak so I closed my eyes. He whispered, “Reconsider, Elizabeth.”

The bell on the door rang an instant later, and I opened my eyes to find him gone. Disappointment washed down my body before it turned into frustration. “Damn it!”

Brenda cleared her throat as she walked past with a pot of coffee. “Um…I think you’re losing it, girlfriend. Why don’t you call it a night?”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, grabbing the box and my purse from behind the counter.

After I changed into nightclothes, I sat down on my bed with the box. The cover read:
Krista Young, Commissioned 1964, London, England
. The writing and the gold lettering were the same as on the necklace case.

Besides being irritated because he kept giving me other women’s jewelry, I also wondered why. There’d been an obvious resemblance in my last dream. Alicia’s face looked like mine and the man’s looked like Draven’s, but I didn’t know what that meant. It obviously couldn’t have been him or me but I guessed people rarely dreamt about complete strangers.

The sturdy, wide metal band inside matched the necklace with the diamond teardrops attached solidly to the frame. In the center sat a small ruby heart. I slowly slid the bracelet over my wrist. Just as I did, a sharp pain hit my stomach so hard that it took me a full minute to recover. Again, it seemed like the jewelry was talking to me. Was that even possible? Could that be why he’d given them to me? Did he want me to know their stories? As crazy as the idea was, I found myself anxious to fall asleep just to see Krista’s tale. I carefully removed the necklace and returned it to its place below my mattress before crawling into bed. Then I lay there running my fingers across the gems on the bracelet. Before long, my eyelids grew heavy, and I fell into a deep sleep.

A woman hiccupped loudly before she started singing “Long Tall Sally” in a thick English accent. She wore high heels and stumbled as she walked, tripping over the smallest pebble. Her red tank top exposed the sharp bones in her shoulders and the short, black skirt revealed her paper-thin legs.

“You there! Come party with me tonight,” a voice called from a dark corner of the alley.

“Damn it! You interrupted my song! And of course I want to party! Just not with you,” she snickered, laughing as she continued to stroll down the alley.

When a man pushed into her back and grabbed her around the neck, she rolled her eyes. “Piss off!” she spat, struggling to break free from his grasp.

“Sorry Jack, she’s taken.” Another man with dark hair appeared and pulled her free from her captor. 

“What do you mean?” the first man mocked from behind her. “How could you even want her? The smell alone would gag me if I was picky like that. Look at her, she’s a waste! She’s so full of drugs and alcohol, I’m surprised she’s still standing. I was just going to do her a little favor.”

“Don’t forget the nicotine,” she added before she lit a cigarette and walked away.

“I can’t let you take her,” the dark-haired man said.

When she reached the end of the alley, she stopped and turned around. “A…hallo? Boys? I’ll be in the pub when you two get this all worked out.”

She sat at the bar with a drink and a cigarette both orchestrated in one hand. The bright, neon lights in the pub made her appear stunning; her Cleopatra look outdid the original. When the man with the dark hair sat down next to her, she smiled. “Now you I want to party with. What’s your name, love?”

“Draven,” he said with a smile. His eyes were chocolate brown.

She set her drink down and smashed out her cigarette. “Take me home straight away, Draven.”

“Anything you want, Krista.”

She laughed. “You know my name. That’s pritty good. Should I be worried about you?” The scene closed to darkness when she casually jumped into his arms.

In the next scene, she was lying on a bed, running her hands across the diamond and ruby bracelet.

“You’re not good enough for him,” a smooth sounding female voice said.

Krista sat up quickly and looked around the room, seeing no one. “Who’s there?”

“I’m the voice in your head, of course. The one you try to block out with all those pills.”

“No.” Krista shook her head. “I took my pills today.”

“He’s not coming back, you know.”

“Of course he is,” Krista said, failing to sound confident. “He’s only gone out to fetch me some ice cream. He’s going to marry me tomorrow.”

The voice laughed wickedly. “No. He’s not coming back. He doesn’t love you. You’re not good enough for him!”

“I am,” she cried out, but her voice was tiny.

More cruel laughter filled the room.

Krista rose uneasily. Grabbing her purse, she stumbled out into the dark alley. When she saw a dark figure walking toward her, she ran for him. “Draven, is that you? Did you come back to me? I told her you’d come back to me!”

Suddenly, a dim spray of light revealed a knife, glistening dangerously in the man’s possession, but she was running too fast and couldn’t stop herself. When she reached him, the knife plunged deep into her gut once and twisted before darkness swallowed the scene.

I gasped and sat up, holding my stomach and half-expected blood to be gushing from a wound there. My hands shook when I pulled the bracelet off and hastily tucked it back into its box. Tears streamed down my face, and my vision blurred while I typed out the story as I remembered it. When I finished writing, I called in to work, claiming that I had a flu bug. I sounded believable because my voice was sore and scratchy from crying.

I returned to bed. Nothing could erase the memory of the woman being murdered or the feel of the blade piercing through her flesh as if it were my own. The sound of the knife stabbing through her skin repeated through my ears, and the smell of fresh blood filled my senses until I could taste it in my mouth.

I’d always thought of myself as level-headed and rational but I couldn’t convince myself that what happened was just a dream. The tragic story and the brutal images stayed with me all day, and by nightfall I began to research old newspapers on the internet. I had to know if the dream was fact or fantasy. The investigation ended with an article that said Krista Young died at the age of twenty after being stabbed by a mugger on June 1
^st
, 1964.

The verification of my suspicions didn’t make me feel better at all, and the fact that she died on my birthday disturbed me on many levels. Did that connect her to me? My resemblance to both Alicia and Krista made me wonder if they had been me in former lives.
“It belongs with you.”
Maybe that’s what Draven was trying to tell me. But how could he know something like that? And why did he look exactly the same in both the dreams?

Having witnessed the deaths of two women who looked like me, I was more than worried about my own death sentence. They were so young…and the man each left behind had to be devastated. Even though the men couldn’t have been Draven, the fact that they looked liked him made my heart ache.

I tossed and turned for hours that night but eventually, sleep came.

Cough, cough, cough. I lay in a bed at the age of five coughing repeatedly.

My mom appeared worried as she put a mound of covers on top me. She looked different, more aged, like my surroundings. “Try to get some sleep, Melissa.”

I wanted to say, “I’m not Melissa,” but I just smiled. “Thanks, Mom.”

After she left, a man came into my room with a teddy bear in his hands. I glanced at the other ones stacked up on my bed and remembered that he’d come every night, ever since I’d gotten sick. He held my hand and helped me to fall asleep. He made me feel peaceful.

My chest ached from coughing, and I felt hot, feverish. I liked to lean against him because he was cool.

“I love you, Melissa,” he whispered. He appeared worried most of the time, even more than my mom and dad. He seemed to be in pain. He wasn’t my daddy but I knew I loved him. He would never hurt me.

I awoke with a smile on my face as if the peace I’d felt in the dream had stuck with me. I tried to think back to when I was five but I didn’t remember ever being sick for a long period of time. I didn’t remember my mom ever calling me Melissa either. I wondered for a moment if it had been another past life. When I finally pried my eyes open, I found a real teddy bear in my arms.

****

At lunch, I sat down on a bench outside while tiny raindrops landed on my hair. I stared straight ahead, enjoying the peaceful sound of rain. When it stopped hitting me, I looked up to see an umbrella above me. “You didn’t need to come,” I said.

“You did not want me to?”

“Do you know about the dreams?”

“Dreams?”

I turned to find concern in his eyes. “They’re nightmares, really.”

“No.”

“When I wore the necklace to bed, I dreamt of Alicia. I saw her death. It was the same with the bracelet. I saw Krista die, even felt the pain from the stabbing! Then I actually was a little girl, sick, and woke up with a teddy bear in my arms. You need to explain this before I lose my mind.”

His eyes closed and his jaw clenched. “Forgive me. I thought the bear might help you sleep, and I had no idea the jewelry would give you those dreams.”

“Were they really me?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes sad. “You’ve always died very young. I wanted to warn you. That’s why you must reconsider your plan. You have to enjoy your time more than you are.”

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “What happened to Melissa?”

At the mention of her name, pain shown in his eyes. “She was a little girl who got sick with pneumonia. She died when she was five.”

“You were there?” I breathed.

“Yes. There was nothing I could do.”

“How?” I demanded. “How did you look exactly the same in 1943?”

He shook his head, not meeting my eyes.

“You sent me the money and card every year for my birthday too?”

“Your parents would have gotten suspicious if I’d have sent you more. They seemed to be comfortable with the amount.”

“What are you, immortal?”

When his eyes met mine, they hardened. He didn’t deny it.

Feeling faint, I stood up and backed away. “I have to go.”

****

I wish I could see Draven.

Sitting on a bench in the empty park, I nervously fidgeted with my hands in my lap. The sun was going down, and the last of the kids had gone home for the evening. I stopped fidgeting long enough to soothe a couple of wrinkles out of my black skirt and plucked a long strand of hair off my green sweater.

I’d taken a couple of days to calm down before deciding to confront him. During that time, I also researched immortality. Some scientists and philosophers actually thought it was possible. 

“Elizabeth,” he finally said.

Turning toward the sound of his voice, I gaped at him. He was wet like he’d just stepped out of the shower. His hair glistened, his jeans were tight, and his blue dress shirt was only buttoned half way up. He looked yummy. I took three deep breaths, and tried not to notice his hard bulging pecks that peeked out from under his shirt. Damn hormones. Thoughts like that weren’t going to make our conversation any easier.

“Draven.”