Lethal Whispers (ML, MATURE) 10/29/15 COMPLETE

This is the place to post stories that significantly alter the show's canon or mythology such as prequels, backgrounds for the characters that differ from on the show, fics where different characters are alien, and alternative family relationships. These fics must contain aliens or alien storylines as part of their plot.

Moderators: Anniepoo98, Rowedog, ISLANDGIRL5, Itzstacie, truelovepooh, FSU/MSW-94, Hunter, Island Breeze, Forum Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
max and liz believer
Obsessed Roswellian
Posts: 821
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2002 10:45 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Lethal Whispers (ML, MATURE) 10/29/15 COMPLETE

Post by max and liz believer »

Image

Title: Lethal Whispers

Author: Josephin

Category: M/L and some M/M

Rating: MATURE

Disclaimer: These stories are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The characters of Roswell belong to its founder - Jason Katims, Twentieth Century Fox Corporation, Regency Entertainment, and Monarchy B.V.

Editor: Gigo

Summary: Elizabeth Parker was a gifted woman; her intelligence both impressive and unnerving to the people she encountered in her daily life. Ms. Parker was plagued by odd nightmares at a fairly young age, inhibiting her possibilities for a great life. The night terrors featured a strange terrain, a dying lover and herself - losing her baby over and over again. Unbeknownst to her, her life was about to become threatened in real life, her prospective dark future inadvertently sending warning signals to a stranger. The premonitory visions experienced by a man of alien ancestry would eventually bring the two together, introducing Elizabeth Parker to a world she never thought to exist.

Author’s note: I started writing on this story in 2003 - 12 years ago - and while simultaneously writing on a lot of my other fics, I lost my inspiration for this one. While being on RF, I always promised that I wouldn't leave any fics incomplete, so here I am with a remake of "Lethal Whispers". To jumpstart my inspiration I rewrote the whole thing, so even though there is still a version of this story in the "Dead and Buried"-section, this story will be slightly different and hence replaces the "old version". The fic is completed, because I didn't want to leave you hanging (again), so there'll probably be a weekly update schedule or something like that.

It feels really good to be back here. I've missed this place. I hope you'll enjoy this story; I certainly loved writing it.

Thank you’s: Elizabeth, I'm so grateful that I have you - editing my work even after all these years.

NOTE: This fic visits some violent acts. A warning will be posted at the top of the chapters this concerns.
------------------------------------------------
PROLOGUE

Max Evans was only five years old when he saw death for the first time. It was on the same cold day in early February as his adoption was finalized and the Evans family was about to celebrate becoming an official family.

“How about we get something to eat at that diner you like so much?”

His eyes lost their grip on the frost on the outside of the window and he looked over at his new mother who was smiling encouragingly at him. He felt his usually serious mouth tentatively move to mirror her expression and he cautiously eased somewhat on the lid he usually kept on his emotions to feel the elation of the day’s events. His mother. He had a mother.

Without a word, he nodded and watched his official parent give an affirmative nod in return. “‘Joe’s Diner’ it is.”

“I’m starving.” The voice from the back seat belonged to Max’s sister, Isabel. They had not yet confirmed that Max and Isabel were actually related, but the assumption had been made as soon as the young children had been found together, without a string of clothing on their bodies, walking alongside a graveled road five months prior. They were, however, as alike as fire and earth. Isabel, with her assertive and exuberant characteristics, were the opposite of Max’s quiet, reflective nature. Isabel’s light personality traits were reflected in her blonde hair and confident brown eyes, while Max’s dark coloring made him proficient at melting into the background. Isabel had been officially adopted a week earlier, a celebration which on her request had resulted in a trip to the mall.

“I think we all need something to eat,” Philip Evans inserted, seated next to his adoptive daughter in the back seat.

“I want a cheese burger and fries and ice cream and…”

“Whoa whoa,” Diane Evans laughed. “Let’s go easy on the menu, huh?”

“If anyone can eat all of that, it would be our Isabel,” Philip grinned, proudness coloring his voice at the idea of Isabel being their daughter, even on paper.

Max returned his attention to the window, tracing lines in the condensation with his finger.

“Maybe a smoothie too?” Isabel asked hopefully.

“You can have anything you want, sweetie,” Diane complied. “Today is a special occa-”

The sharp intake of air from his mother had Max quickly turn his head towards her.

Diane was watching the road, quiet words tumbling across her lips as she watched the scene unfold in front of the car. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”

Diane’s behavior caused ice-cold shivers to sprinkle down Max’s spine while adrenaline was heating up his blood. He was afraid to turn and look at the road; his mother’s reaction being the reason.

“What is it?” Isabel asked from the back seat just seconds before Diane slammed on the breaks.

“Jesus,” Philip mumbled as their car came to a sliding stop. “Isabel, don’t look.”

“Why not?” Isabel was craning her neck trying to see through the space between the two front seats.

Diane turned around in her seat, her face devoid of color. “Isabel, sit back and close your eyes.”

No one was paying Max any attention. Through his silence, he had managed to fade back into the background. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t present. Slowly, he turned his head away from his mother to look out the front window.

The blue car that had been in front of them looked like a barbecue stick. That was Max’s initial thought. There was a large metal pipe sticking out of the back window of the car and even though Max couldn’t see the front, he quickly assumed the stick was also sticking out through the car’s front windshield. There were more metal pipes on the road. The Evans’ car had stopped a couple of inches short of one of them. A large red truck had reached an abrupt stop diagonally across the road in front of the blue car and as Max watched, yet another metal pipe rolled off the top of the cargo and clunked heavily to the ground.

“Stay here,” Philip ordered his children and opened his door. He was running up to the blue car while Diane slowly got out of the car, taking the scene in with a dazed shocked expression.

Max watched his father get close to the car, stop, take a step back and put his hand over his mouth. His voice sounded odd, distorted, as he yelled to his wife, “Di, call 911.”

Diane turned around, her eyes searching for a pay phone. Spotting one not to far down the road, she turned to Max and Isabel. “Stay here, and keep your eyes closed.”

“What’s happening, Mommy?” Isabel whimpered. The chills intensified around Max’s spine. He had only heard his big sister sounding so scared once. When they had crawled out of the cave where they had woken up without a single memory and without knowing where to go.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Bell,” Diane answered, her voice sounding stressed and strained. “There’s been an accident, okay? Mom’s gonna call 911, but I need to find a pay phone. It won’t take long.”

Isabel had her hands over her eyes, not looking, as ordered. A sob escaped her lips and she nodded. “Okay.”

Diane looked over at Max, who was looking at his mother with large eyes. “Stay in the car.”

Without blinking, he nodded.

Max never closed his eyes. Instead his eyes watched as the shape of his mother grew smaller and smaller as she got closer to a phone booth not far down the road, in the direction from which they had come.

As she picked up the receiver, Max saw something in the corner of his eye. The quiet sobs from the back seat dimmed as Max’s searching gaze landed on a bundle a couple of feet away from the car. He squinted, trying to make out what it was. Then he quickly looked at his father, who had opened the door to the driver’s seat of the damaged car and was leaning into it, before his eyes flickered to his wife who was gesturing with her hands as she was talking to someone on the phone.

Max looked back at the bundle and was just about to categorize it as a bag of some sort when the cold wind blew across the bundle, lifting up strands of hair.

Human. It was a person.

Looking to his parents again for unspoken advice and still finding their attention elsewhere, Max’s hand gripped the door handle and pushed the door open. He shot a glance at his sister before getting out, but Isabel had now, with her eyes firmly squeezed shut, moved her hands to cover her ears instead of her eyes and was humming sobbingly to herself.

The ground was hard, frozen by the late winter, but Max’s steps barely made a sound as he moved closer to the person.

It was a girl. About his age. Her dark hair was billowing gently in the almost non-existent breeze, periodically revealing a bloody pale cheek and closed eyes.

Max swallowed and searched for his father again. His point of view had now changed and unfortunately, in searching for his father, he was exposed to the long side of the blue car, with the horizontal metal pipe sticking out in the front and back of the vehicle. He could also see that the pipe had not only speared the car, but also its driver. When he was older, he would find out that the pipe had probably killed the female driver instantly, impaling her heart.

At the moment, it was too much for Max to take in. The realization of what had happened would hit him much later, when lying safely tucked in, in his bed, looking up at the model airplanes hanging from his bedroom ceiling, trying to sleep. Right now, all he could process was that his parents were busy, so he would have to help this girl.

He knelt next to her prone shape and pushed the hair out of her face. Her face was broken up in cuts and there was blood seeping from the deeper injuries. It looked like she was sleeping. Except that her lips were an odd color. Max frowned. Blue. They were blue.

He rocked back on his heels and looked at her for another second or two. She didn’t move. The wind got caught in her sweater, rustling it. His eyes returned to the blood drying on her face and the wounds that were still seeping, albeit slowing.

Tentatively he put a finger to a deep gush over the girls left eyebrow, wanting the blood to stop.

Stop, he thought. Stop bleeding. Please.

He could feel the warmness of her blood coat the underside of his finger, but her skin felt cold.

He closed his eyes and couldn’t help but think about how this girl would look like when she was moving. How she would look like running, riding a bike, laughing, smiling… A strong chill went through him. Her coldness was scaring him.

Wake up. You have to wake up.

If his eyes had been open, he would’ve seen the pale hue of the girl’s skin warm with a visible glow, spreading out from his finger and fluidly igniting the rest of her body like a fire.

Please, wake up.

“No, Max…”

The quiet whisper behind him had his eyes spring open. With a touch of shame, he quickly turned his head and was met with his mother’s sad face. She wasn’t looking at her son, rather was staring at the girl on the frozen ground in front of her recently adopted son.

“Oh my God… Max. Was she laying out here?”

He nodded. “I just wanted to help,” he whispered.

He watched her swallow and attempt a strained smile, that looked slightly nauseous. “Of course you did, honey.” She sank to her knees next to him and managed to tear her eyes away from the victim in favor of her son. “But you need to let the adults take care of this. You shouldn’t see this.”

Her voice was soft, gentle, as if her words could soften the horrors Max had already witnessed.

“I think she’s asleep,” Max said quietly. “And cold. She needs a blanket.”

Tears spilled over and ran down Diane’s face as the truth of the girl’s doomed condition hit her. Something that her five-year-old son was too young to understand. It was the fourth time Max had seen his mother cry. The first time had been when she and her husband had found Max and Isabel wandering along a gravel road in the middle of the night. The second time had been when Isabel was adopted. The third time had only been an hour ago, when Max had become their son.

“I think so too, honey”, Diane whispered and took a gentle hold of his wrist, making him aware of the fact that he was still touching the girl. “We should get her a blanket.” Diane carefully pulled Max’s hand away, trying ignore the blood from the girl that had been transferred to his young innocent skin. “Let’s get you back to the car, okay?”

Max looked back at the girl, one last time, and noticed that her lips were pink. He frowned. He was sure they were blue before. Just then, there was a faint groan from the girl’s lips and her whole body seemed to move as she pulled in a sharp breath.

The sound was so sudden that Diane jumped and let go of Max’s hand. “Oh my God.”

She bent over the girl, brushing the hair away from her face. “Sweetie? Can you hear me?” Momentarily tearing her eyes away from the awakening girl, Diane told Max, “Max, get the blanket from the trunk.”

Max nodded, an urgency coming over him as he got to his feet and ran back to the car. As he got the trunk opened he could hear his mother calling for her husband and in the distance he could hear the sirens.

That was the first time he met Elizabeth. But years would transpire before he would meet her again.

TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Thu Oct 29, 2015 2:54 pm, edited 61 times in total.
Image
Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
Facebook Page
My Imagination

Instagram: author_josephin_ripa
L-J-L 76
Roswell Fanatic
Posts: 2543
Joined: Sun Oct 09, 2005 9:28 am
Location: grayson ky

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by L-J-L 76 »

Great Chapter!!!! Please please please please please please come back and post more really really really really soon? I can't wait to read what will happen next to Max and Liz? I'm glad that Max healed Liz. And I'm glad Philip and Diane found the house and Liz.What happened to Liz? Who hurt Liz?



From:
L-J-L 76
Roswelllostcause
Roswell Fanatic
Posts: 1992
Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2001 4:58 pm
Location: Motown

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by Roswelllostcause »

Great start! Can't wait for more!
Check out my Author page for a list of my fics!


http://www.roswellfanatics.net/viewtopi ... 1&t=155639
User avatar
begonia9508
Roswell Fanatic
Posts: 1125
Joined: Sat Nov 17, 2001 2:37 am
Location: Somewhere lost in chocolat Land

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by begonia9508 »

Hey, Josephin, so nice to have you back and thanks you: What's a fantastic start and I am looking for more...

I guess the little girl is Liz... and she has also lost her family! What's a sad start in life! :?

Looking for more and thanks! EVE :mrgreen:
- Les jouissances de l'esprit sont faites pour calmer les orages du coeur!
- On reconnaît le bonheur au bruit qu'il fait quand il s'en va!
- L'amour vous rend aveugle et le mariage vous redonne la vue!
User avatar
Natalie36
Obsessed Roswellian
Posts: 599
Joined: Sun Jul 30, 2006 12:06 pm

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by Natalie36 »

so glad to see this back
User avatar
ADreamerDestiny
Enthusiastic Roswellian
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:51 pm
Location: At Home ... Watching Roswell!

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by ADreamerDestiny »

This is great. Please come back soon and post more. What an awsome and newly inventive take on Max healing Liz. He did it as a little boy and without even realizing he did it. Very curious about how Liz's life turned out in your version.
~*HEATHER*~

DREAMER (Max & Liz) ~ My #1 Shipperdom
Generally support The other CC couples (M/M; A/I)
User avatar
HypnotiqBlueEyes
Enthusiastic Roswellian
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:53 pm
Contact:

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by HypnotiqBlueEyes »

I am absolutely enthralled by this story so far! I can't wait to read more so please hurry back soon!

-Sarah-
Liz to Future Max: Don't you realize what you are to me... what you're always gonna be? You're the love of my life. Everyone else is gonna be second best. There will never be another you!!! (The End of the World)
User avatar
Michelle17
Addicted Roswellian
Posts: 295
Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2003 10:19 am
Contact:

Re: Lethal Whispers (ML, some MM, MATURE), Prologue, 8th of

Post by Michelle17 »

ADreamerDestiny wrote:This is great. Please come back soon and post more. What an awsome and newly inventive take on Max healing Liz. He did it as a little boy and without even realizing he did it. Very curious about how Liz's life turned out in your version.
:D Please come back soon
Image

Special thanks too

claudialynn
User avatar
max and liz believer
Obsessed Roswellian
Posts: 821
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2002 10:45 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Lethal Whispers - Chapter 1

Post by max and liz believer »

Hello everyone!

I have to say; it’s so good to be back. And even better to see that some of my most trusted readers are still here. It’s really like coming home.

Thank you L-J-L 76, roswelllostcause, Eve, Natalie, Heather, Sarah and Michelle for reading and for your feedback!

The following two chapters were a bit short, so I decided to post two chapters today instead of just one. I hope you’ll like it.
—————————————————
CHAPTER 1
Liz

“Welcome to our firm, Ms. Parker.” His handshake was firm and Elizabeth liked him immediately.

“Thank you, Mr. Smith,” Elizabeth answered with a warm smile. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Her new boss, Eugene Smith, returned her smile with a slightly crooked one of his own. “Just let me know if you have any questions. Serena will help you to your office.” He gestured to a petite redhead who was standing quietly behind her superior and she took his gesture as her cue.

She extended her hand to Elizabeth with a welcoming smile. “Pleased to meet you.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Likewise.”

Moving her freckled arm in a wide arc to highlight the wide corridor leading to the south of the building, Serena requested, “Please come this way, Ms. Parker.”

The walls of the corridor were lined with architectural drawings of grand commercial buildings and impressive private homes. Elizabeth could feel a flutter in the pit of her stomach. This was her first real job as an architect after graduating with her Masters in Architecture only a month prior to landing the position. The firm was well-respected and had a large, and fairly wealthy, clientele. Which meant that there were fewer limits to the designs, something that was really exciting to the aspiring young architect.

The firm had been thrilled to have her. She had been at the top of her class and had received words of praise from her teachers as well as the people she had worked with as an intern.

“Here you go,” Serena said and opened a glass door to a fairly generous office.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, trying to remain professional when all she wanted to do was giggle with excitement. Her very first office.

“Let me know if you have any questions, Ms. Parker.”

Elizabeth turned around just as Serena was starting to close the door. “Please, call me Liz.”

Serena smiled and nodded in affirmation.

As the door closed behind her, Liz tried to take it all in. She stood there for about two minutes before taking a deep breath and taking a seat behind the desk, gently spreading her hands over the surface of her desk in wonder. She lifted the receiver to the red phone in the right top corner of the large desk and punched in a familiar phone number.

“Jeffrey speaking.”

“Dad, hi,” Liz smiled into the receiver.

“Oh, hi baby. I didn’t recognize the number. Where are you?”

“I’m calling you from my office,” Liz smiled, biting down on her lower lip to contain an exuberant squeal.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Liz could hear her father’s smile in his voice. “That’s so exciting. How does it feel? Is it a good place? Are they treating you well?”

Liz laughed softly. “So far, so good. I’m so excited to get to work.”

“Finally. After all of your hard work,” Jeffrey answered. “I hope you’ll have a blast.”

Liz couldn’t help but roll her eyes at her father’s attempt at being a bit ‘groovy’, as he called it. “I’m sure I will. I’m having a meeting with my boss, Mr. Smith, in about…” Liz glanced at her wrist watch, “four minutes, and he’s going to go through my first project with me. I can’t believe this is happening. I’m finally an adult!”

Her father was somewhat subdued when he replied, “My little girl is growing up.”

“Don’t get all mushy on me now, Daddy,” Liz smiled as she played with the spiral telephone cord.

Jeffrey cleared his throat. “I’m not. You should get prepared for that meeting, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” Liz replied. “I’ll call you later.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Liz hung up with a smile. Since the death of her mother, Liz and her father had grown really close. The emergency personnel arriving at the horrific freak accident that had killed her mother had told Jeffrey Parker that it was a miracle that his daughter had survived, something that had made Jeffrey treasure every second with his daughter thereafter.

The force of the impact of the metal pipe through the car, spearing her mother, had propelled Elizabeth through the windshield and caused her to end up several feet from the car. Elizabeth couldn’t remember much from the accident; she had only been four at the time. But apparently she had been covered in blood, without having a scratch on her. Except for a faint cut across her left eyebrow. The scar tissue over her eye was today the only remaining visible trace. The people working at the scene had assumed that the girl had been splashed with her mother’s blood before being expelled from the car. It wasn’t the most plausible explanation, since there hadn’t been very much blood spread out in a projectile pattern inside the car, but it was the only one they could come up with.

Apart from the bottomless grief from losing a mother, Liz’s life changed forever that day. To the sharp and attentive objective bystander, those changes all took effect the second Liz opened her eyes in the arms of a strange woman in the middle of a frozen concrete road at the end of February. But due to the young age of the girl at the time of the tragedy, her personality, traits and intelligence had not quite formed yet, making it hard to discern what had in essence been added on that day and what had already been there.

Elizabeth Parker grew up as a careful child and up until her teenage years she was considered introverted and attended a therapist on a regular basis between the age of 10 to 12. This was when the nightmares had started. The therapist preferred to call them night terrors because of their seemingly real texture. The concept of having nightmares after having lost your mother to a traumatizing freak of circumstances was perhaps not that strange. But Liz was not dreaming about the accident. She was dreaming of mud, blood, green skies and abortions. An odd combination of dreams for a young girl to have.

The night terrors abruptly stopped one day in October in Liz’s fifteenth year of life and hadn’t returned since then. In their absence, Liz blossomed. She tentatively tested her place in this life and started to make use of all the traits that had been growing inside of her but which had been subdued as a result of Liz’s conscious exclusion of the outside world.

Shortly after the cessation of the nightly terrors, Liz picked up German from a TV-show called Anna, Schmidt and Oscar which her father had brought home on a business trip. Her father initially explained Liz’s talent at suddenly speaking German as “Even TV can be very educational, I guess”, but in the span of merely two years Liz was effortlessly fluent in not only German, but also French, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Finnish and Mandarin. During this period, Liz was moved to a school for gifted children, where she excelled in everything that was thrown at her. By the age of 21, Liz had taken on ballet, played the piano, the guitar, the saxophone and taught a group of deaf 7-to-8-year-olds mathematics in sign language. At one point, Jeffrey Parker was even convinced that his daughter possessed telepathic abilities.

But she couldn’t stand the rain. Her reaction to this essential part of Earth’s water cycle could almost be compared to someone’s reaction to precipitation in the form of acid. The therapist never was very successful in finding the root to this phobia of rain. An ombrophobia which would have been traced back to a time before the day of the car accident.
*****
Liz was in the midst of placing pencils in the top drawer of her desk when there was a knock on the door. Looking up, she recognized her boss, who looked more like an old professor than an architect with his metallic round glasses and unruly white hair. Her smile froze on her lips as she spotted the man standing behind her most recent employer. Her eyes only momentarily caught the man’s gaze, but it was enough to send her heart into a nervous flutter. There was something about him that sent dark chills through her body. She forced a polite smile back on her face and rose from her position behind the large wooden desk.

“Ms. Parker. How are you finding your office?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Large,” Liz smiled, uncomfortably aware of the strange man’s intense stare. She decided to get the whole thing over with and walked up to the man, extending her hand. “I don’t believe we have met; I’m Elizabeth Parker.”

A slow dark semi-smile spread across the man’s thin lips and Liz felt the room shrink. She barely registered the man moving in to take her hand as she was distracted by the feeling of oxygen being sucked out of the room. The touch of his palm against hers jolted her back to reality.

“The pleasure is all mine, Ms. Parker.” His voice was dark, as dark as his black hair, tanned skin and black eyes. Those same eyes that still pierced through her very essence. She presumed that he was considered an attractive man by society’s standards, but Liz only felt danger.

“Ms. Parker, this is David Perkins. He’s one of our head architects and you’ll be working very closely with him on this project.”

Liz barely restrained the shudder that wanted to rattle through her at the prospect of spending a lot of time in the vicinity of this man. Similar to how she’d had a good feeling about her boss, she had a bad feeling about David Perkins.

“Oh, okay,” Liz said, relieved that her voice sounded neutral.

“Let me take you through the ropes,” Mr. Smith said lightly and gestured towards Liz’s desk. “Shall we?”
*****
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door and a blonde pretty girl peeked in apologetically. “Sorry for interrupting…”

“What is it, Ms. Evans?” Mr. Smith asked.

“Can I borrow David? It’ll only take a minute.”

Mr. Smith didn’t look too pleased with the request, but waved David in direction of the door. “Come on, Mr. Perkins, don’t let a pretty girl wait.”

Liz caught the girl’s eyes and the blonde smiled. But the second the easy smile settled into the red-painted lips, it started to fall. The girl’s lips turned into a question mark as she frowned, seemingly in deep thought.

David chose that moment to step into Liz’s field of vision and, taking a deep collecting breath, Liz refocused her eyes on the notes in front of her. What’s up with you today?

Mr. Smith got back to the matter at hand, but as he continued talking, Liz let her eyes wander towards the glass door, through which she could see David and the blonde talking. As if feeling that she was being watched, the girl turned her head and looked at Liz, making Liz divert her eyes towards her boss.

In less than a minute, David had returned to the office and the blonde girl had left.
*****
“I’m Isabel,” a voice said behind her.

Liz turned her head and saw the blonde that had spoken to David earlier, standing next to the table at which Liz had chosen to eat her lunch.

“Liz,” Liz introduced.

Isabel smiled, the ease having returned to her manners. “I’m sorry about before…”

Liz averted her eyes and poked the microwave-heated pasta bolognese in front of her with her fork. “What do you mean?”

Isabel gracefully slid into the chair next to Liz. “I have a feeling I was acting a bit peculiar earlier.”

Liz gave her an incredulous look, “You were?”

Isabel paused for a second, as if to gauge Liz’s response. “Well, good thing you didn’t seem to notice. I just… I just had a feeling that I’d seen you before. I guess my face went into this stupid gawking expression as I was trying to figure that out.”

Liz, slightly uncomfortable with the conversation, shrugged. “That’s alright.”

Isabel paused again and Liz could see how the easy smile was turning insecure. Liz cleared her throat. She wasn’t used to being stared at. Not so uninhibited. Well, not since earlier this morning when David Perkins had done so. Of course, while Mr. Perkins’ stare had installed something close to fear in her, Isabel’s presence was merely…uncomfortable.

Isabel sighed and Liz glanced at her long enough to see her guilty expression. “Sorry. I just did it again. It’s just so weird, you know. It’s just not only that I have a feeling that I’ve seen you before, it’s like I know you.”

Isabel had gained Liz’s full attention. What an odd thing to say.

“You really say what’s on your mind, don’t you?” Liz asked, trying to make her voice light.

Fortunately, Isabel took it in the right way. She laughed. “Yep, that’s me. Foot in mouth disease.”

“I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure I’ve never met you before,” Liz added.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re probably right. Where did you go to college?”

“Harvard.”

Isabel whistled. “One of those, huh? Nah, wouldn’t have met you at college.”

Liz was finding this whole encounter stranger by the second. Isabel seemed unnervingly certain that they had indeed met. It was only a question of figuring out where.

“Where did you grow up?”

“Um…” Liz started to look around herself, but didn’t see anyone else that was inclined to join them at their table and incidentally interrupt this interrogation. “Chicago.”

“Hmm…never been,” Isabel mused.

Liz’s light laughter interrupted Isabel’s musings. “Sorry, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never met before. I have, for the record, a fairly good memory.”

Isabel bit her lower lip thoughtfully and looked more closely at Liz. “So do I. I’m never wrong. Maybe you know my brother Max Evans? Or my friend Michael Guerin? Or maybe…maybe Maria. Maria DeLuca?”

Liz gave a short laugh. “Look. I’m pretty sure going through your contact book won’t make it any more true that our paths have previously crossed.”

Isabel pursed her lips. “Maybe…” And then shrugged. “Ah well.”

Completely changing tracks, Isabel smiled beautifully and started unpacking her lunch box. “You don’t mind if I sit with you?”

Liz returned the smile and shook her head. “Why not?”

Maybe Isabel Evans wasn’t so bad after all.

TBC… (in the next post)
Last edited by max and liz believer on Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Image
Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
Facebook Page
My Imagination

Instagram: author_josephin_ripa
User avatar
max and liz believer
Obsessed Roswellian
Posts: 821
Joined: Sat Sep 28, 2002 10:45 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Lethal Whispers - Chapter 2

Post by max and liz believer »

CHAPTER 2
Max

“Max? Maaax?”

Something was disturbing his nap.

“Wake up…”

He groaned and reluctantly opened one eye. His sister’s face was about an inch from his.

“Iz…” he moaned annoyed, having the faint brain activity to curse himself for giving his sister the spare key to his apartment. “I’ve worked the night shift, why are you waking me up?”

Isabel sat back, seemingly unbothered by the fact that she had disturbed her younger brother’s sleep, and looked at him patiently while he hauled himself up into a semi-seated position.

“Have you ever met a girl named Elizabeth Parker? From Chicago?”

Max yawned and tiredly rubbed his right eye. “Why?”

Isabel appeared to ponder this. “I just have this really strong feeling that I’ve met her, even though today was supposedly the first time I did. You know, kinda like when we met Michael. Like a…connection.”

Max sighed. “If I answer your question will you leave my apartment and let me sleep?”

“Why are you so grumpy?” Isabel questioned, her mood turning a shade darker. Everyone who knew Isabel Evans knew that her mood could change quite rapidly from one extreme to the other.

But Max couldn’t be bothered about not stepping on Isabel’s feelings right now. He had to get to work in five hours and he’d only had two hours of sleep so far. “Because I’m tired, Iz.”

“I thought you wanted me to tell you everything that might have a connection to our past,” Isabel objected.

“It’s been years since anything ‘new’ happened. Come to think of it, figuring out who Michael was was our last connection to our origin.”

“So just because a certain amount of time has passed, new information is not allowed?”

Max sighed. “Could we please have this conversation some other time?”

“So you could get back to your dreams?” Isabel taunted. “Who is it this time? The blonde? Or the brunette?”

Max swiftly picked up his pillow and threw it at his slightly older sister with a groan. If giving Isabel a key to his apartment was number one on the list of ‘Things Max Evans shouldn’t have shared with his sister’, number two on the list was sharing the contents of his dreams with her. “I haven’t had those dreams for years, so shut up.”

The dreams had been vivid, frightening, dark and suffocating. Most of them had his heart almost pumping out of his chest, some of them were more…romantic. Even though the essence of the dreams was the same, the lead characters were not. Some dreams portrayed a petite blonde with a seductive smile and alluring curves, while some portrayed a petite beautiful brunette with a soft demeanor and intelligent eyes.

“How about you meet this Elizabeth Parker before you discard the idea of a connection?” Isabel suggested tartly, interrupting Max’s line of thought.

He sighed, rubbing his palms down his face. “She’s in Chicago?”

“No, she’s at my job. She just started.”

Max glanced at the bedside clock, watching his minutes of sleep ticking away. If approving was the solution to getting his sister out of his bedroom, he would. “Fine. I’ll meet with her.”

“There’s a party coming up soon, for the firm. I’ll make sure she attends.” Isabel looked so pleased with herself that Max couldn’t help but smile.

“Fine. Let me know the details. Now, could I please get back to sleep?”

“Of course, dear brother,” Isabel said with a warm smile and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll let myself out.”

“Sure. You do that,” Max grumbled, already halfway back into sleep.
*****
“Ma’am? Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

The 83-year-old woman with the recently broken neck of the femoral head, known colloquially as a broken hip, replied with a weak and pained “Yes.”

“We’re going to put this oxygen mask over your mouth, so you can breathe a li- Max?”

Max had been working around the stretcher, clearing the way up to the ambulance when a wave of fatigue had swept through him. His colleague, momentarily distracted from her elderly patient, reached out with her hand in an attempt to steady Max.

Max waved her hand away. “I’m fine. Just haven’t got enough sl-“

Melissa Meyer watched the 23-year-old fall like a brick of cards, his legs folding beneath his weight, his head falling heavily against the asphalted ground, and had instantly temporarily lost a member of her staff and acquired yet another patient.


Max initial thought was I’m blind, as he looked around himself. It was pitch dark and the ground beneath his fingers was slightly damp. There was a faint smell of urine and warm garbage, the kind that had been left in the sun for too long. He lifted his head off the ground, briefly wondering what had happened before his thoughts became occupied with trying to figure out where he was.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he became increasingly aware of the fact that he was no longer helping his colleague load an accident-prone retired woman into an ambulance at work. Neither Melissa nor the patient were anywhere in sight.

He was lying on the pavement, surrounded by tall buildings. The distant siren of a police car reached him as he struggled to get to his feet.

Where am I?

Down the road he heard a rhythmic clapping sound, the intervals between each clap decreasing as the sound grew closer. Someone was running, he could hear the person panting with the exertion. He could tell from the subtle smell of strawberries that swirled through the air when the person passed, without seeing her from his position on the ground, that it was a woman. Her running steps was a light sound compared to the harder steps of the dark figure following her.

Max got to his feet and yelled at the masculine shape as he passed him, “Hey!” He reached through the air with the purpose of stopping the man who was obviously following the woman, whose shape had held a twinge of desperation and a bucket of fear, but his hand waved through the fabric of the man’s dark leather jacket as if it consisted of nothing more than air. Max paused and looked at his empty hand, having the oddest Patrick Swayze-in-‘Ghost’-sensation. Am I dead?

“Help! Please! Somebody help me!” The woman’s desperate cry echoed off the empty street and Max looked up to see her turning into an alley. The man, whom he had been unsuccessful in stopping, was closing in on her.

Dead or not, Max couldn’t just sit by and watch. He scrambled to his feet and started down the street, not far behind the man he had just seen turning the same corner as the woman. The alley was narrow, positioned behind a Chinese restaurant, cluttered with garbage containers and fire ladders. But even though there ought to be people around, no one was looking out their apartment window or opening their back door to the alley at the woman’s pleas for help. He saw the two people at the dead end of the alley. She was now on the ground, flat on her back, with her perpetrator straddling her waist.

“No, please. No, don’t. Pleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtmepleasedon’thurtme.” Her frantic mumblings were not quiet but not loud enough to be heard above the first level of the surrounding buildings.

“Hey! Get off her!” Max shouted and started running for the couple. Neither of them turned their heads at his command.

Max could see her light pink lacy bra, the man having ripped open her blouse, but his focus went to the blood slowly trickling down her throat, pooling between her collarbones. The man had struck her, a redness and swelling already spreading across the female’s left cheek, the blood originating from the corner of her mouth.

Max made a new attempt at pushing the man off the woman, pulling him, hitting him. He only succeeded in looking like a cartoon character exhibiting an elaborate dance with an invisible imaginary foe. It was as if he was not there.

In horror, he helplessly witnessed the tears of fear, humiliation and desperation drip down the woman’s cheeks as he could only watch as the man continued to tear at the woman’s clothes. At first she did her best to push him off her, her voice occasionally cutting through the desolate alley only to be cut off with a strike to the mouth, a punch across her cheek. Adrenaline, hot and painful, burned through Max’s veins as he could do nothing but watch. The bitter metallic taste of blood lingered in his mouth as he bit his lip in futility, continuing his air-fighting even though neither the woman, whose efforts to fight back were waning, nor the woman’s assailant were aware of his existence.

As the man pulled on the woman’s jeans, barely stopping to unzip them but instead forcing them down her ice-cold thighs, and she stopped her struggling and let her head loll to the side in resignation, Max sank into a seated position with tears streaking his own face.

“Make it stop,” Max whispered, his weight falling back on the heels of his feet. His hand closed in the space where he were supposed to feel the woman’s right hand and imagined holding it for comfort. His eyes were on her brown empty ones as he heard the perpetrator tear her panties.

He leaned over her, wishing for her to be able to see him, unconsciously trying to shield her from the man lying on top of her and whispered against her cheek. “Don’t be afraid. Fight. Fight him.”

But of course, she couldn’t hear him. He was nothing but air to her.

He lingered in the space above her tear-streaked face and pleaded, “Make it stop. Make it stop.”

It felt like being sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The air around him made an odd whooshing sound and then he was back on the ground. In broad daylight. Next to the rear tire of the ambulance.

“Jesus. Max.”

He met the concerned eyes of his colleague Melissa and inhaled sharply. Before he had time to say anything, Melissa pressed his efforts to stand up to the ground. “Stay down. You had a seizure.”

“A seizure?” he stammered and became aware of the wet spot of saliva on his chin. He brushed it off with the back of his hand.

“Foaming at the mouth and everything,” Melissa murmured. She seemed pretty shaken up.

“I’m fine,” Max mumbled. Or was he?

“Have you ever had a seizure before?” Melissa asked.

Max swallowed and attempted to sit up again. This time Melissa let him. Instantly shame hit him as he noticed the damp patch on the front of his pants. He had lost control of his bladder. A seizure, of course. All the symptoms made sense.

“How long was I…” he swallowed again, his mouth uncomfortably dry, “…seizing?”

“About two minutes. Grand mal.” Melissa was temporarily distracted by something, looking over her shoulder, before she turned back to Max. “I had to call another ambulance to take care of our patient. We were just about to get you onto a bed and load you… Christ, Max. You scared the living shit out of me.”

Max brushed a hand down his face. Ditto.

TBC...
Last edited by max and liz believer on Sun Mar 15, 2015 12:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
Image
Unbreakable (M/L, AU)
Facebook Page
My Imagination

Instagram: author_josephin_ripa
Post Reply