Jumpers

Prompts: (1) Character wakes up to find the whole world is changed (2) Character comes across and ex-lover and (3) Character is harassed by a stalker(s)


JUMPERS

“That will be two-hundred and fifty dollars.”


Lisa looked at the man across the counter and thought,Where the fuck am I?


“Ma’am, are you okay?” asked the overly fat and sweaty Neanderthal-like gnome behind the cash register.


Lisa ignored him for the moment. Her mind raced as it tried to find the missing pieces of life that occurred between her last coherent thought and her current situation.


What is the last thing I remember? she asked herself. Nothing came to mind. She could remember her name but beyond that, everything was blank. Maybe her surroundings would shed some light on the mystery. Looking around, she could see she was in a gun shop. Guns were everywhere. There was an extraordinarily large handgun in her right hand. She now remembered that she hated guns.


She turned back to the clerk. “I’d also like two boxes of hollow-points.”


Where did that come from? What the hell is a hollow-point?


“Good choice ma’am. One of these babies will cut a Jumper in half as if he were a stick of butter.” The gnome gawfed at his gruesome little mental picture. Lisa found that she disliked him immensely.


“That will bring the total up to three-hundred even.”


Lisa opened a box of bullets and with a deft movement, slipped a round into the chamber then gave it a spin. “How about double or nothing?” she asked, bringing the barrel up to rest on the end of the cashier’s nose. “If I pull the trigger and it blows your fucking head off, it’s free. Otherwise, I pay double.”


Lisa saw it was her hand on the gun and it was her mouth that voiced the proposed options. Even so, she felt as if she were watching events unfold from just off to the side. This was not her. She didn’t have a violent bone in her body. Again, she fought to find some sanity in her situation.


The gnome chose that moment to make the last bad decision in a life characterized by bad decisions. He went for his own gun under the counter. Lisa fired her hand-cannon once and thought, Just like butter.


She walked out into the night, looking around at the shadows with a smile that dared trouble to get in her way. Lisa could feel the excitement of the moment. There was something satisfying about the fatal brutality she had just inflicted. Pangs of guilt and self admonishment tried to find their way in but her “other self” was in control now. There was no room for guilt in this strange and new dominant persona.


As she strode down the dark, street, she could feel the eyes on her. They were wild animals stalking their prey, staying low and quiet; looking for their moment to strike. Lisa somehow knew them as Jumpers. These wolf-like creatures stood on their hind legs, propelling themselves forward in a kangaroo-type fashion.


At a particularly dark section, next to an alley, the Jumpers attacked. There were five of them in all. They would tear into her with an urgency brought on by madness rather than hunger. The odds of her surviving did not appear favorable. It would be over in an instant.


That was until the gun was brought into play. Five shots found the world’s Jumper population drop abruptly in the immediate vicinity of Lisa. The gun was reloaded before the last one hit the ground.


Gone was the gnome-splattered guilt. Everything was now justified. It was a kill or be killed world and she intended to survive. With a smooth motion, she flipped down the glasses she somehow knew were parked on top of her head. White images on a black background showed where other hot-bodied Jumpers were lurking. They were everywhere. It was going to be a profitable night.


A knife, retrieved from the folds of her loose top, appeared in her hand as she bent over to gather the ears of the dead. One of the ears had a double lobe. That was good news as the bounty for mutant Jumpers was even higher.


Dawn showed up right on schedule and Lisa made her way back to camp. The night had been a blur of kill, collect and kill again. Over the last hours of repeated brutality, Lisa had come to be one with her new self. She still did not know where she was or how she got here. The only thing she did know was that if she followed her instincts, everything would be alright.


Camp turned out to be a boarded up high-rise. The front door opened at she approached. She passed through a number of doors as she went deeper into the building; well aware of the eyes that targeted her every move. Should she show any signs of the infection, well, it would be her ears they would be collecting. One could never be too careful when it came to the Jumper virus.


She finally approached a half-door manned by a midget with a cowboy hat.


Boy this just keeps getting weirder and weirder, she thought.


She handed over her sack of ears.


“Wow Jasmine! It looks like you had quite a night,” said the midget as he counted out and then handed over her bounty.


Jasmine? I like that, she thought as she headed for her room.


On her way there, she thought she spotted Ben, her ex-partner-for-life, ducking into a side room where she knew he was now paired up will Leona.


Bitch, Lisa-Jasmine thought. I ought to feed her one of my hollow-points but I suspect that being hooked up with Ben is punishment enough.


Her room turned out to be a mini-arsenal with a bed stuffed into a corner. Her plan had been to go straight to bed but sleep proved to be too evasive. She could still feel the blood lust coursing through her. She needed to unwind.


Jasmine headed down to the communal room, acknowledging acquaintances along the way with a point of her finger or slight nod of her head. She didn’t feel like being social at the moment. She was on a mission of pure need satisfaction. She found it in the shape of a tall twenty-something-year old man who was hustling his trade on the market floor.


She took him quickly with little regard for anything other than her own selfish satisfaction. Such was the way of the hunter. Take it and it’s yours. Simple. Easy to remember. When it was over, she tossed him a few bills and then headed back to her room for some overdue sleep.


“Wake up Lisa, you’ll be late for school.”


Jasmine looked at the woman across the pink-walled bedroom and thought,Where the fuck am I?


Word count 1,125