Time - Chapter 2
My latest home was a small town called Oakmont, California, far from the hustle and bustle of places like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.
Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.
But nobody can run from their destiny forever.
After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.
Bronard, Missouri.
Home.
She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.
Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.
But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?
My latest home was a small town called Oakmont, California, far from the hustle and bustle of places like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most people think that the Golden State is all glitz and glamour, full of coastal liberal elites, movie stars, and beaches. Really, most of California was farm country, filled with farmers, truckers, and people who worked with their hands.
Sure, Los Angeles had an outmoded influence in the state, but even at a million square miles, it was a fraction of the total land in the state. Oakmont rested above San Francisco and east of Napa Valley, up where the slanted coastline turned straight for Oregon. I had worked up in Oregon as a waitress for three months before somebody caught feelings for me, and I left.
There were a few keys to being able to leave a place in the dead of night at the drop of a hat. First, you needed a crappy job that paid you in cash at regular intervals. You couldn’t spend two weeks waiting for that last paycheck. It also helped to have a job you hated. It was another bonus if they didn’t ask questions about your work history. Any job that needed a resume was out. Waitressing fit all those things at once. Almost all my wages were made in tips that I pocketed at the end of the night, and it was terrible work that I absolutely hated.
Nothing against the profession. I knew there were people who liked waitressing and were much better at it than me. I didn’t have the personality for it. Getting yelled at for getting an order wrong, standing on your feet for twelve hours, and smelling like greasy, sweaty, swamp ass after a long shift was not my idea of a good time, not to mention the pay was crap, even in bigger cities—though I almost never stopped in those since they were too expensive.
So that’s the first and second key to life on the road, I guess. The third, final, and most important, was that you could never form an attachment to anyone, no matter what. My rule was that I couldn’t stay in a place more than six months even if I liked it because just being around people enough made me like them, and liking somebody was a good way to build a past with them, and I didn’t want anyone to burn because of me.
I would never admit it to his face, but that’s the reason I left the last town. I liked a boy too much. His name was Tom, and I liked him enough that I was already considering leaving before he admitted the attraction was mutual, and it pushed me over the edge. If I was honest with myself, I probably stayed too long even before Tom confessed his love for me, all because of a serious bout of lonely, and he was the treatment. A stout, gentle, country boy, who always said “please” and “thank you” after ordering, and called me ma’am, no matter how many times I told him to call me Lizzie.
There were Toms all over the country, ghosts of lives I might have had if I stayed in Bronard, if I’d had the simple future I wanted. It seemed like at least twice a year, I fell for somebody in one town or another along the road, and it was happening more frequently with each passing season. It was a lonely life, and I was still a warm-blooded woman at the end of the day. It was all I could do not to act on my impulses…but I never did. I hadn’t even kissed anyone since my boyfriend, Pete, in high school.
He had been the hardest one to leave. We were together since middle school—since Anjelica taught me how to flirt so, I could get his attention. He would have graduated college already. I often wondered about what he was doing, but he was my past—a past I was trying to protect by being on the run. I wasn’t doing him any favors by keeping him in my thoughts.
I was in Oakmont now, and the present was where I needed to focus my attention. I had been working at Murray’s for four weeks since blowing into town and was just getting the hang of the regulars who came in for their morning breakfast before work and the ones that caught me on the way home after their shift.
It always amazed me how every town was the same. They all had their little diners, at least one that had the best pancakes in town and another that made its money by being open later than the others, even though their food was average.
Murray’s was the former. I had worked in dozens, maybe hundreds at this point, and every one of them had their own little customer base, and they always tipped better if you remembered their orders by heart.
“Short stack, over easy, with a cup of joe?” I asked a bearded man with long, black hair and olive skin. His name was Jeff, and I appreciated that his order was simple and consistent. There were bigger orders than Jeff’s, and bigger tippers, too, but Jeff was quiet and polite, with dark brown eyes that you could get lost in forever. Yes, I certainly had a type.
“That’s right, ma’am,” he said, and I bit the inside of my lip to stop from letting out a little moan. It got harder and harder to deny my body’s needs. We were pack animals, after all, and forced celibacy was driving me nutty. “And could you bring some sugar and cream, too?”
“Of course, sugar,” I said with a playful smile that oozed with unintentional flirtation. “Be right back.”
I wrote down the order and slid it into the queue on the kitchen counter. A big, gruff bull named Oscar spun the orders around the belt until he grabbed it, grunted, and then went to work.
“What are you waiting for?” Victoria, one of the other waitresses, the nosey one who’s always up in everyone’s business—every workplace I’ve ever been at had one like her—said to me. “He is Heaven on a stick.”
I shook my head. “He’s not my type.”
“Pardon my French,” Victoria said. “But that’s a load of bull. I see the way he looks at you, and I hear the lilt in your voice when you chat with him. Not to mention the bounce in your step when you walk away from his table.”
“There is no bounce!” I replied, indignant.
“You’re lying to yourself, kiddo.” Victoria shook her head. “That’s the worst kind of lying.”
The bell rang behind me, and an order came up. “Comforting lies are all I have.”
I grabbed the order and brought two plates to a couple of truckers in the corner that I didn’t recognize. Since it was a small town, ninety percent or so of the customers were regulars, and if I didn’t recognize them by now, it meant they were probably just passing through. The diner wasn’t far from the freeway, which made it convenient for long haulers to stop off for a meal while they were on the road. Once I served the truckers, I went to fill up water glasses for a family of four on a road trip, and a woman eating alone, drinking coffee like it was going out of style.
The whole time, I kept the side of my eye on Jeff, thinking about what Victoria had said. Maybe it would be okay to have a one-night stand with—no, that’s how it started. One night became ten, and before long, you had a past and a future, and then you were dead.
I spent a lot of time thinking about not risking anybody’s life, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit the biggest reason I was avoiding my prophecy was to prevent my own death. Yes, the past would burn, but when it did, I would die…and I didn’t want to die.
“Order up!”
I picked up Jeff’s order from the window and brought it over to him.
“Looks delicious,” he replied with a smile. “Oscar’s talents are lost in a place like this.”
“Yeah, they’re really lucky to have him, I guess.” I turned around. “I’ll be right back with your coffee.”
I rushed behind the counter; my breath hurried with teenage adrenaline just from being near Jeff. I needed to calm down. This wasn’t like me. I was cool, controlled, and focused. He was only a guy—one of a hundred guys I’d crushed on over the years, who vanished out of my brain the moment I was a hundred miles away.
I brought the coffee and set it down next to Jeff. He took it with a smile, and when I turned away, he cleared his throat.
“Yes?” I said, turning back to him but trying to avoid his fiery eyes.
“You forgot the sugar, sugar,” he said with a carefree smile.
“Dang it! Right.” I grabbed a handful of sugar packets from another table and brought them over to him. “Here you go.”
When I set them down, he slid his hand over mine, just for a moment. A flash of electricity flowed through me. I turned to look into his eyes and saw my entire life flash between us. I saw a wedding and children, and happiness…but I also saw a fire, and finally, my death.
I yanked my hand away quickly. I gave him a small smile and turned, taking a big gulp of air. Well, this town was nice while it lasted, but it was time to move on before beautiful Jeff became a casualty of my prophecy, and then, inevitably, I did, too.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.