A folder for my writing August 2017 & July 2016 |
Daniela got out of the car and opened the gate. This place fitted the description the red-headed gas station attendant had given him. She drove her Jeep through the gate, then got out and closed it reverently. Gliding down the narrow, fenced-in road, however, she felt a bit dubious about this errand. Could it be a hoax? But it was plausible enough to yank her away from an important meeting at the headquarters. The fence, intruder-proofed, stretched mile after mile past the car. She tried not to think about the text message in her inbox, but her brain would not stay away from the subject. Just then, a raptor appeared in the distance clutching the fence with its talons. When her jeep was nearby, it flapped its wings wildly before the car, rising in midair. Daniel hit the brake. The raptor had disappeared. Worrying that she hit it, she got out of the car and checked around and under the jeep. No sign of the raptor. She took an easy breath. What was it? she thought. An illusion? After all, the text had made clear that once she would pass the gate, she would be beyond the third dimension. She had to pass the gate, she reasoned, vexedly. Victor Kagi could be here, after all. Victor Kagi was the one who had been working with mass and inertia of the yet-to-become matter type of energy when he had disappeared. Victor had confided in her that, in the fourth dimension, it could be quite easy to make matter disappear into thin air and turn any kind of energy into matter. Did the incident with the raptor prove this, or was she thinking far ahead of herself? She shook her head violently and bit her lips. “No! No!” she muttered. She was driving on a private property because of a text message and a hunch she had about it. No way, should she let her imagination get the best of her. Since for a month and a half she had racked her brains and nearly gone insane trying to figure out where Victor could be. Maybe she had acted impulsively to rush out of the meeting at the first sign of him that had appeared in her inbox as a text message. While debating with herself, she noticed an unpainted wooden bungalow far ahead with a small barn next to it. She stepped on the gas. When she had come to a stop, a small figure of a man appeared from behind the bungalow, waving his arms emphatically. He was short, possibly five-four, middle-aged, and with shoulder-length graying hair. He had thin lips stretching across the lower part of his face. He lowered his arms as he yelled at her suspiciously. “How did you get in?” “I opened the gate,” said Daniela, annoyed. “Your name?” “Daniela Sharpe! Someone texted me about…” “Yes, we know.” “If you knew, why did you ask?” “I wrote the text,” said the man. The he pointed to his chest. ”Dimitri Alexopoulos.” “Hello, I am…Well, you know already. Where’s Victor?” “Good question. I asked you here to assist us in the cause.” “The cause?” Dimitri Alexopoulos cocked his head on one side and gazed up and down the barn. “You’ll soon find out. I can’t explain everything right here, standing. Let’s go inside, and you’ll see what I mean.” Daniela tensed up. “You wrote that Victor…” He stopped her words with a hand gesture. “I said, inside.” Then he took long strides toward the bungalow’s door but stopped before opening it. “Whatever you do, don’t touch the statuette in the hallway,” he hissed in her ear. “Victor may be in it.” Daniela was watching Dimitri Alexopoulos’ face intently. She was sure he had blinked. WC-626 words For the Undying |