Just as I thought: he isn’t here. I guess… well I will wait.
I have been agonizing this day for weeks. It’s the day I learn whether or not I will see my life again. You see I have been living life as I normally would… well before the accident… and been living a life as a secret agent along with it, a double life. I don’t know what’s going to happen but… I won’t think about that now.
The Day Before:
The smell of fresh bread fills the air. Rotella: the local family-run, Italian bakery that has existed since who knows when. It is one of the most well known bread makers in town. I drive by it as the light changes. I soon come to a stop at the intersection of 108th and Harrison. I start to think. What if I won’t remember what happened? What then? I don’t want to live this life forever. I’ll find out tomorrow.
I will soon arrive at where I’m meeting my friend Joe. We haven’t seen each other in a few years. The last time I saw him was in high school. We recently decided to get together to catch up at a local restaurant: Zeroes.
A half hour later I arrive at the restaurant and causally run, yes run, to the front doors in the brisk cold air. I fiddle with my hair, making sure it’s back to its original state, and enter the building. I start walking up to the podium. Just as I turn around, waving at me is Joe D.
I walk over, greet him with a hug and we take our seats. It’s a causal restaurant with a quiet atmosphere kind of like an Olive Garden only this is an American cuisine restaurant, not an Italian restaurant. In our chairs we chat about everything. We talk about our current statuses: how we’ve been doing, where we live now, what we’re doing for a living and what we have been up to. Then a small silence falls on us. A waiter arrives to take our order, a friendly but serious man with a kind smile on his face. I order a Chicken Parmesan sandwich while Joe D. orders something that he usually orders, Barbecue ribs (according to him its his usual yet I’ve never seen him lay a hand on a set of ribs let alone steak in my life). Then we wait. After a while I wait for him to say something.
“It’s great seeing you again,” says Joe.
“Yes, I’m glad we got together,” I reply.
“Agreed.”
Joe, being big into the military but not at all involved in it, acts just like he did in high school: same old friendly Joe. I could tell he still had the same kind and understanding heart like he did in high school. Even though he was way more bulky, he still was the same person.
After a while we just sat there for our order to come. Neither of us said anything. Then Joe starts to say something.
“I’m just going to say it, I really like you,” he said.
An awkward silence falls on him and I. What the heck. Weird. I have to tell him the truth.
“Well,” I started. Just say it, say it!!
“I don’t like you like that,” I tell him bluntly.
Silence. Joe begins to blush. His cheeks turn a rosy red.
His lips quivering he asks, “You…don’t?”
I feel sorry about saying it but I had to tell him the truth.
“I’m sorry Joe,” I tell him from my heart.
“No it’s alright,” he insists. I know really he’s covering up what he really feels. Then he mumbles something, “Whatever.”
“What?”
“Be the jerk you are I don’t…”
I started to feel even more miserable and horrible about what I said but I felt it wasn’t necessary for him to call me that. I interrupted him.
“Jerk,” I yell.
“I didn’t mean to say that, I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.
“Jerk,” I yell even louder, overreacting.
“Wow, I never thought you could get so loud, rawr.” He made a hand gesture like a cat pawing at a screen door. Now he just really ticked me off.
I get up, march out of the restaurant, and hurry outside. What the heck was that? That’s odd of him to do that. Not odd to like me but his response to what I said. I thought he would have forgave me… I stop. A flashback occurs in my mind: my dark bedroom, a blow to the head, my limp body being carried out of my room and then dragged back in the house, mutilated.
I run to go back to where it all began. The fiery and fear in my mind of that tragic day, that horrific scary day when every single part of my life was changed. To get rid of the pain and sadness in my heart, a heart that doesn’t even feel like my own. I can’t even describe half of what I feel about that day. I get to my station wagon and I grab my key-chain loaded set of keys out of my purse. I turn around to see someone standing a few feet behind me. Then I slowly fall into darkness…
* * * * * * * *
The first thing I think about when I wake up is the Kennedy assassination. Why I think about this I don’t know. Dog man, I thought. I thought and thought then it hit me: the person, probably a man, looked like the dog man in the assassination tape.
I come to in a white room with no doors or windows. I’m strapped down on a soft surface, an ataman maybe? That doesn’t matter now. What matter’s is what is happening now and why I’m here: both really excellent questions I don’t know the answer to. I hear heavy, steady footsteps approach me. A head appears above mine. I’m nose to nose with the guy.
“We meet again,” the person says with a grin on their face.
“Excuse me…” I start to ask what the heck was going on when he grabs my head, jerks it back as to break my neck, straining it, and lets it hang. He then grabs my neck and holds it in a tight grip. I stare into the bright space before me with the person now with a black ski mask and gloves on. He holds a knife. My eyes start to glaze over, “Who… are you?”
He leans down, kisses me where his hands aren’t holding my neck. Before he can do anything, the room gets bright; so bright you can’t see anything. I see someone, Jesus? God? They walk through a door and hold up their hand.
Next thing I knew, I was in an infirmary. A kind looking nurse in a white nurses dress sat on the left side of my bed. On the other side of me was a large window with light streaming through it. Soon after, I went back to sleep.
The following day I am sitting up on a bed-like couch in a different room than before. As I look around there is a woman sitting across from me. She looks up at me from her newspaper. She is dressed in black dress pants and some kind of dress shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a bun like a ballet dancer. I check my condition: I am perfectly fine with the exception of three IV’s going into my hand with clear fluid running into them. I have marks on my neck from where I was being strangled as well as shooting pain going through the top of my spine. I look back up to notice the woman standing at the end of my bed with several other people dressed in scrubs. When I was fully conscious, they escorted me by wheelchair to a hallway.
“Down to the end of the hallway,” one of them said.
After what seemed a few steps down the hallway I was outside the lady’s office. Will I ever live a normal life again? Or I’m I going to live in this nightmare forever?
A nurse opens the door as I get up. I use what strength I have to get up, walk through the doorway and sit down in a chair across the lady’s desk. I collapse down into the chair, physically unable to stand my own weight, let alone move, anymore. I glance toward the lady sitting at the heavy metal desk. I can’t see anything but her face. The lighting is very dim.
“He is expecting you,” she said trance-like.
I remembered then, I was supposed to meet him today to discuss about what would become the rest of my life.
“You will get to see him, darling,” she tells me as if reading my mind.
How did she know? I try to get up when I’m hit with a massive headache. I still had trauma. I’m stuck where I’m at, planted in the chair.
“These people will escort you in a timely manner,” she approaches nodding at them. The people who I had previously seen walk in with my wheel chair. Suddenly a man picks me up, sets me gently back down in the wheel chair, then turns me around and takes me back into the hallway. The nurse comes and takes me out the IV’s then bandages my hand with a cotton ball and a basic bandage. I’m given an ice pack for my headache, then everyone except the one who carried me stayed behind as I was taken to another building.
The tall skyscraper, similar to an office building, was where my life would be determined. After we arrived to our destination, he picked me up, put me in the wheelchair, paid the taxi driver and thanked him for his service, and rolled me inside.
Inside the enormous building we took a private elevator to the top floor. I was rolled down the hallway to the last door on the left. The man knocked on the door and gently turned the doorknob.
“Right this way,” the man said amusingly, acting like I was royalty. I smiled and giggled a little at his joke. I gazed into his huge, handsome brown eyes. They sparkled in the bright lighting of the hallway. He is extremely handsome, I thought. His hair is dark and curly and his body is lightly toned to where you can just see where his biceps and triceps were in his good-sized arms. He smiled back admiringly into my glistening eyes. He then reeled me in and shut the door behind us. The handsome man glided up to the secretary’s desk and she told him I could go right in. He came back and made the heavy wooden door in front of us ajar. This is where my destiny lied.
As I was rolled in, I saw no one there. But then, a few minutes later he came, a very familiar face. A very professional man in a gray business suit, my boss, sat down at his glass desk with some paperwork stacked on it waited for me. This is the man that has my future in his hands. I’m situated halfway between his desk, in the center of the room, and the door currently ajar. With me finally in my boss’s office and my boss finally there, my escort leaves the room taking one last glance at me before he leaves. He smiles then slowly closes the heavy door behind him.
“Alright let us get down to business shall we. Ok. If you wish to stay with us your first project will be in Madrid, Spain,” He says. “But if you decide to go live a normal life, you may do so.”
Finally I can go back to my normal life before it all began: the bugler knocking me out and dragging me out of the house, waking up in my bed learning I’m ok until I discover I’m not living my own life anymore but one parallel to my own. Home…I’m finally get to go home, back to my old life. I am so happy to be finding out I can finally live again. Live without anyone following me, without regrets.
I smile and say, “If you don’t mind I would like to go back to my old life.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” He replies sternly.
“Why not?”
“You see you have been living a life separate from your own for some time, therefore you can’t go back to your old way of life.”
My jaw drops. What, after all this time? I stop and stare at him for a while. His face draws my attention. It was so peculiar; almost as if he were happy I couldn’t go back.
“You may,” He started to say, “begin a new life if you so desire.”
I thought about this: starting a new life, beginning anew, nothing would ever be the same again.
I made my decision.
“I will start my life over then,” I respond.
“Fine. You may go back to living a normal life.”
The moment I’ve been waiting for. The day I finally get to go back to a regular life has come. No more secrets, just me.
I waited for something more, something more than what I expected him to say. But he said nothing. My handsome escort came back in and took me out of the room. I smiled. No more. No more hiding, no more. Then I felt something. A kiss, on my cheek made me explode inside. I looked up to look at him smiling as big as I could. Who knew I would find love in such an unexpected place? It was the happiest day of my life. From that moment on I had nothing to hide.
That was seven years ago. Today I would have never expected to be married to such a wonderful man and to be with child. That man being the man who cared for me since I found out I could not go back to my old life, the man who lifted me up and carried me to where I am now, the man who first put me in that wheel chair after my life was almost taken. Now I have no more secrets, no hiding, no nothing it’s just me. I live a happy life with my husband in Omaha and am expected to have a child in a few months.
What if though I chose to live my double life? What if? I would live that life forever, living in all parts of the world, ruining top-secret illegal operations across the globe. I would live an action-packed thriller. A life of action, adventure, a life of absolute luxury with anything I wanted, everything I wanted. A life serving the world as well as myself… What if…