Strange Meeting.

You moved through the house in a haze of drunken, fiery pain and sticky grasping fear. The lights of the afternoon sun cutting through the windows hurt your eyes after so long in the dark, but you squinted and hurried on regardless. A terrible feverish warmth ran up the back of your neck as a thousand different thoughts plagued your mind -your grandfather would be back any second, he had left booby traps around the house, he had servants waiting to jump out behind every door and grab you.

Breathing heavily, clutching the swollen and red claw of your hand with its misaligned finger, you shouldered out the back door of the kitchen and raced across the yard. You had no sense of direction, no notion of where to go, just letting your feet do the work and hoping that they would carry you as far away from that house as possible.

You couldn’t say how long you ran for. The adrenaline pumping through your veins supercharged your nervous system and rendered all thoughts into a stream of muddy sensation. Eventually something caught on your leg as you rushed through the thick of bushes and sticks, you stumbled, you tripped, and out of dumb instinct you put your hands out when you fell.

An explosion of pain consumed your hand and it crawled up your arm and into your core. You let out a shout of raw agony that gave way to a choked sob and that returned some of your awareness to the present. You rolled onto your back, clutching the offending hand, and staring up at the canopy of trees above you.

The finger was still misaligned and it occurred to you that it would need to be corrected.

“Fuck it,” you spat from between grit teeth, “already hurts…”

You pulled up a wad of your shirt, bundled it, and put it in your mouth. You took the broken finger in hand, counted one-two-three and snapped. The sensation was sharp and you let out a muffled scream, but you bit down hard on the knot of cloth and managed to catch most of the pain.

The swollen, throbbing hand looked marginally better than it had been moments ago and that brought a crooked, miserable grin. You took a few moments, sucked in a breath, then got up. You had to push on and find somewhere to lay low.

—

You ended up in one of the backstreets, as far from your grandparents home as you could get. Part of you wanted to return to the motel, but you had a horrible feeling that your grandfather would have sniffed that place out and had it watched. You had an idea that one of the old garages in the area could serve as a temporary shelter during the night, from there you would work something out.

“Rocko, stop! Rocko!”

You spun around at the sound of the voice and saw a small jack russell terrier come racing toward you with a jolt of dumb excitement, a lead trailing behind him. The dog jumped at you, though there was no aggression it, just pure joy as it went about licking you in cheerful greeting.

“Oh, Rocko, leave that young man alone you silly mutt.”

The woman might have been middle aged, but she was beautiful. Tall, dark skinned and with striking eyes, she approached you and scooped up her dog. She gave you an apologetic look. “He can get excited, sorry.”

Her voice sounded familiar, as did her face, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on who she was or where you knew her from. “I’m fine,” you mumbled, before correcting your stance and trying a smile, “little guy’s full of energy.”

“My kids dog,” she sighed. “But of course, they never walk the damned thing and it’s all left to me. Thank you for indulging him.”

You shrugged. “Little guy’s cute,” you glanced at her and despite the pain and exhaustion, felt a tug of attraction at the woman. A sigh escaped your smiling lips. “I’m Mike, by the way.”

“Jackie,” she answered, extending a hand (which took gingerly). “Jackie Woods.”

It came to you all at once, an avalanche of understanding. You suddenly knew who this woman was and where you had seen her before. It really wasn’t so surprising that you were confused, as she was significantly older in your time.

The woman standing before you was the grandmother of your friend Marcus, the mother of his dad. In your time she needed a walker to get about and was mostly deaf, but here she was still very much an active and beautiful woman.

Treacherous thoughts that were at once vulgar and absurd began to fill your mind, overriding the limits your exhausted body. Within your jeans you felt yourself harden, and a glow of warm and sinister energy began to fill the air. The ring glowed on your hand. Pain was forgotten, there was only lust.