But, oh my God.
When he walked up to the booth, something wild shot through me. Built the way he was, like a football player on steriods, and with some animal rage surrounding him, I felt disoriented. Hot and cold at the same time.
A raw chemical reaction blossomed inside of me. Something I’ve never felt before near anyone else. For anyone else.
But there’s something else. The reason it felt like I had to get out of there. I got this vision of two wolves, running together. It’s hard to explain, but somehow I knew that the wolves weren’t wolves at all, they were us.
That man, and me, and all I could think was that it was my brain trying to warn me; giving me a memory, twisted around in my head to make it make some sort of sense, but telling me that he was someone from my past, someone from that time back when my parents followed this lunatic who drew me into his circle. Claiming he had visions of the future. I had always had visions too, and until that time, I felt like a freak. Even as a child. He used me to further his own egomaniacal agenda and in the end, it blew up and almost took me from my parents.
It’s been ages since I had any sort of vision, but this one today…a wolf. Danger.
I panicked.
Not only that, but there was another image, an image that makes me blush and sends heat between my legs. There was this flash of us. Naked. He was on top of me, I was looking into these wild blue eyes and I felt like I belonged to him.
What is happening to me?
Part of me says it can’t be true. I couldn’t know him. Why would I?
I grew up on the road with my parents and led an unconventional life. No TV. No cell phones. I was homeschooled, and when we did have a home, it was a cabin built from straw bales in a sort of commune. Well, not exactly a commune. It wasn’t all free love and peace signs.
More paranoia and conspiracy theories. That’s what I remember most. I try to forget the early years when we lived in that other group A crazy, but charismatic leader my parents followed until the shit storm hit.
My memories of that day when it all blew apart still hit me in my dreams and moments in time that make me wonder if I’ll ever be able to be normal. Live in the outside world.
But that’s why I had to try.
I learned how to fire a weapon before riding a bike. I was taught the outside world is asleep and there’s a reckoning coming and we have to be prepared. I know how to make soup out of tree bark and which mushrooms will kill you and which will cure you.
It was fun, I guess, in the way that kids think any adventure is fun. My parents weren’t exactly loving and kind, but they cared about my safety.
But when I turned twenty-one my compulsion to see what else was out in the world became unbearable. So, I ended up here in Chaplain, trying to see what it was like to live in the world.
Enter my job at Stephenson’s Tavern. The owner, Thomas Stephenson, was the only one who would take a chance on me when I showed up in this town. No work experience. No résumé. No identification. No social security number. He even let me rent a room from him above the restaurant.
Now? Everything I own is on my back once again and I have nowhere to sleep. It makes no sense that I ran out like that, but it also felt like survival. Like I had no other choice.
With all the hardcore survivalist training I went through, not having a roof to sleep under isn’t really a problem. But that was preparation for the end of the world. Scavenging materials and staying alive after the apocalypse. That was based on the assumption that laws and society would no longer be functioning, and anarchy would be the order of the day. Not this, not homelessness in the middle of an average small town where it still takes money to get what you need.
My stomach flutters and twists, thinking of my predicament, sure, but also whatever the effect that’s been left over from the stranger that tried to come to my rescue in the restaurant. For a moment, I contemplate going back, apologizing and begging for my job.
I decide to forge ahead toward the state park. Oddly enough, I feel more at ease in this moment than I was there at the restaurant trying to live a more conventional life.
I admit, I wasn’t very good at being a waitress. In fact, I sucked at it, and what happened with me running away crying was most likely a relief for my boss that he didn’t have to fire me.