Enigma Black (2 page)

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he turned around to appease his unrelenting uneasiness by doing a quick sweep of the gaming floor and the remaining people on it. Not surprisingly, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary in either respect.
Oh great, I must be losing my mind along with my sleep
, he thought. Satisfied with his survey of the room, he hypothesized that his sleep deprivation was causing pure paranoia to take over his thoughts.

“Get a grip,” he mumbled under his breath, turning back around to walk down the hallway.

Then it came. A violent, earsplitting commotion erupted from behind him, instantaneously throwing him to the floor. In stunned confusion, he looked up from the pink and green palm tree-etched carpeting in time to see, to his horror, a wall of fire steadily overtaking everything and everyone in its path moving steadily towards him. In macabre slow motion, the casino’s plastic ambiances melted in the scorching heat as did its organic patronages, going up like dry kindling in a tidal wave of flame. Any screams escaping the mouths of the few in the path of the devastation were subsequently quieted by the fire’s wrath. There wasn’t any time for him to take evasive action, and he knew that any effort to do so would be nothing short of suicide.

Putting his faith in the hands of another, he remained face down on the floor, shielding his head with his arms as the flames consumed him.

Chapter Two

The Beginning of the Endof My Life

Like most seventeen year olds, I’d been completely oblivious to what was going on in the world around me and the inevitable ramifications the recent string of attacks would have on my life. All I knew back then was that I was happy in my own little world—as dull as it may have been.

On an overcast day in December nearly a decade ago, I sat in chemistry class, running my fingers along the grooves of the table, staring blankly at the world outside my window. The first snow was going to fall soon, or so they said.
Hooray
. Why my parents had chosen Maryland to live and not some tropical haven, I would never understand.

Next to me, my lab partner was studiously taking down notes like he always did. Derek was your average run-of-the-mill science geek. Feverishly documenting every bit of Mr. French’s more-rambling-than-informative-lecture, he completely ignored the fact that his glasses were sliding ever so precariously down his nose. Though, despite his nerd-like tendencies, he was still a pretty good-looking kid with thick, dark hair and piercing eyes the color of kiwis. What was especially evident to me, however, was the way his face had a tendency to turn various shades of crimson every time I even so much as glanced in his direction. From the beginning, I’d made it clear to him that I wasn’t allowed to date. Okay, so that was a lie…a lie made all the more interesting by confiding in him that my father was an avid gun collector with a split personality.

Although my aversion to dating seemed to be somewhat of a relief to my parents, I suspected they were nonetheless starting to wonder about their teenage daughter’s lack of interest in even broaching the subject with them. In fact, I was fairly certain that my mother was chomping at the bit for me to bring a date home to give her an excuse to take me shopping for prom dresses, makeup and all that other frilly, girly crap. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be for I had ulterior motives with my selection of Derek as my lab partner.

Derek was a science phenom; so, when it came down to choosing lab partners, let’s just say it was a no-brainer for me. And it never ceased to amaze me that, regardless of his academic intelligence, all it ever took for me to win him over was a simple bat of an eyelash and a lip-gloss infused grin. It’d been one of only a handful of times I‘d used my feminine wiles to my advantage. It wasn’t as though I were incapable of passing the class based on own merits. Quite the contrary, it was because I
was
perfectly capable that prompted me to select him. He was a genius and I was of slightly above-average intelligence, which translated into me not having to do too much to ace the class. Some would call it laziness; I called it efficiency.

I’d always been an honor student without even trying. I considered it nature’s way of making up for everything I wasn’t graced with: artistic skills, athleticism, and the uncanny ability to walk into a room without tripping over my own two feet. Classes were just an unnecessary formality for me.

“Ms. Stevens,” Mr. French called my name while leaning dangerously too far over the overhead projector near the front of the classroom.

His stomach was nearly as pompous as his ego. As he leaned over the projector, it brushed against the ink on the transparency smudging the glass, putting yet another stain on his two-sizes-too-small polyester shirt. He’d just completed his lecture and was scanning the jungle for unassuming prey to devour with humiliation. Today, I was his target.
Oh crap
.

“Ms. Stevens, what is reverse osmosis?”

I looked at Derek, giving him a big smile as I turned to face Mr. French. “Reverse osmosis is a method of producing pure water by forcing saline or impure water through a semi permeable membrane across which salts or impurities cannot pass.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Derek giving me the thumbs-up from underneath our table. Mr. French wore a clear look of disappointment, signaling that I’d again robbed him of the opportunity to reprimand me for not having paid attention in class.

“Very good, Ms. Stevens.”

“Thank you,” I replied in a tone peppered with a hint of smart ass.

“I think you just stole the wind from his sails,” Derek whispered to me in amusement.

“Nah, he has enough hot hair left to move the Titanic,” I replied.

Derek did his best to stifle his laughter but not before he received a warning glance from Mr. French. It was apparent that I was becoming somewhat of a bad influence on the future valedictorian. Giving Derek a sly smile, I resumed my descent into la-la land, staring out the window as a lone snowflake fell from the sky.

****

“I have this theory,” my friend Lucy announced from her aptly named “co-pilot” instead of “shotgun” position in my Taurus as we were pulling out of the school’s parking lot.

I’d basically been Lucy’s chauffeur since obtaining my license a little over a year ago. Her parents didn’t much care for teenage drivers and weren’t about to add to the problem by allowing their daughter to join in their ranks. But, for some reason, they had trusted me as I—

in their words—had ‘radiated maturity beyond my years’. I supposed it was a compliment seeing as how whatever exactly it was they thought I radiated was apparently enough of a reassurance for them to leave their daughter’s life in my hands.

“Oh, really? What pray tell is this said theory?” I asked Lucy inquisitively.

“Quite simply, the world is ending.”

Lucy’s proclamation nearly caused me to miss a stop sign, forcing me to brake rather abruptly, clearly annoying the person in the car behind me.

“Okay,” I said. “You have my attention. I would love to know where you came up with this theory.”

“Just look at all the chaos and destruction going on right now with these bombings taking place. I mean…what else could it possibly be? There must be some reason for this kind of erratic human behavior. All the attacks that have been going on, and they only seem to be getting worse. Someone or something has to be sparking them.”

“What? Because psychopaths don’t exist? Come on, Lucy. There are a lot of evil, psychotic people in this world. The only difference between now and, say, fifty years ago is the fact that people now have better access to more tools of destruction. Take the Internet, for example. There are websites devoted to the sort of chaos that has been going on lately. Plus, there’s way more media coverage than there used to be. We just hear more about everything that goes on now, so maybe it’s just that it seems like there is really more happening than there truly is.”

Lucy was my best friend even though she’d always been the overtly analytical, paranoid, conspiracy theory type of girl. These traits tended to wear thin on most everyone else who knew her, but I’d become accustomed to—if not somewhat amused by them—through the years. Whenever she suffered so much as a cough, she’d find herself on the Internet researching it, developing speculations as to its origin. Instead of the usual viral causes, she’d more often than not come to the conclusion that some freak pathogen had been released into the air. Over the years, I discovered that if I could reason with her by providing cold hard facts, or well spoken bullshit, she was quickly brought back down to reality.

“I suppose you’re right,” she finally agreed.

“As always.”

“So what are you planning on doing over Christmas Break?”A puzzled look must have overspread my face as Lucy immediately shot back, “You completely forgot that today was the last day of school before break, didn’t you?”

 “So sue me for not owning a calendar. Besides, I finished all of my gift buying weeks ago. I guess I just felt like I could forget about the whole Christmas thing.”

“You’re one strange creature, Celaine.”

“One person’s strange is another person’s unique. Now get out of my car.”

Lucy laughed, rolling her eyes at me as she opened the passenger side door of my car now parked in herdriveway.

“I’ll give you a call this weekend.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

She shook her head, closed the car door and proceeded up her driveway. It was nice actually having a friend who understood me. I’d made several acquaintances and quasi-friends over the school years, but none of them seemed to appreciate my dry humor like Lucy Pierce did.

Methodically, I backed out of the Pierce’s driveway, carefully avoiding the various ceramic pots and ornamental statues planted at the end of it. A minor infraction last summer on my part had forced Lucy and me to make a mad dash into town to quickly replace a couple of potted geraniums that had somehow mysteriously ended up underneath my tires. Narrowly avoiding another disaster, I backed out into the road, driving the two blocks from Lucy’s house to my parents’ split-level complete with white picket fence. My parents truly took the whole American dream thing to the extreme.

By late afternoon, the wind had picked up, howling in sheer protest. It all but took my breath away as I opened my car door. I absolutely hated this time of year, and that’s probably why I always allowed myself to forget about it so easily. The true meaning of Christmas, as far as I was concerned, had been lost years ago in the age of advertising and keeping up with the Joneses. Now, it seemed as though the holiday was becoming more of a time for parents to buy their children’s affections after a year of neglect masked by the use of television as a babysitter and having a “headache” when their children asked them to play catch in the backyard.

Much to my relief, I was the first one home. I threw my keys into the wooden bowl next to the front door that served as a catch-all for all of our miscellaneous junk. There were days when I treasured solitude, a fact of which my mother and little brother never could quite seem to grasp.

My mother, Carol, had yet to catch on to the fact that I was none too interested in the daily gossip around town. Nor did I care to partake in standard “girl talk” with her. Small talk for me consisted of a lively discussion of a novel or a stimulating debate about some hot topic issue. When I tried to institute such talk with Carol, it was like hitting a brick wall, inevitably prompting me to give in to her while patiently sitting and listening to her stories of how the dignitaries in town lived their lives. I knew everything about Mayor Anderson’s extramarital exploits and Sheila from down the block’s five hundred dollar pumps. I’d made half-hearted attempts at smiling at all of Carol’s stories when she regaled me with them and was always amazed that she still couldn’t understand why dances didn’t thrill me; why being a cheerleader never really appealed to me or, why I had no interest in befriending those daughters of the social elite in our town. The answer was quite simple: I would not allow Carol to live her life vicariously through me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d been dealt a decent hand in life. Carol and George, my father, always ensured that my brother, Jake, and I had everything we needed. George was head of the pediatric unit at Hope Memorial Hospital. Carol was a journalist for the local newspaper with her main expertise—surprise, surprise—being human interest stories. Landing that job had been like receiving manna from heaven for her as there was no one more interested in how others lived their lives than Carol.

George was the only thing standing between me and the loony bin. My father was a little more low-key than my mother, preferring to stay at home instead of attending social gatherings. Carol and George were complete opposites who miraculously fit together perfectly like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Jake and I were the quintessential brother and sister team. We pretended to despise each other, often refusing to be in the same room for more than what was absolutely necessary. However, if one of us were in trouble, the other would walk on hot coals to kick the ass of whoever warranted it. After all, if anyone was going to do bodily harm to my brother, it would be me.

Yes, we lived the perfect, all-American, white picket fence kind of life until one late December day everything turned upside down.

After grabbing an apple from our fruit bowl, I plopped down on my bed, wrapped myself up in my down comforter and turned on the television. While flipping through the channels, a news bulletin appeared on the screen quickly grabbing my attention. This particular bulletin detailed yet another bombing. This time the bomber had struck an Atlantic City casino. That would make twice this week and four times within the last month that an attack had occurred. Thankfully, this time the casualties were minimal since the casino was struck in the wee hours of the morning.

I turned the channel only to find yet another news organization replaying the same story. A perky, blonde anchor woman who appeared to have had numerous cosmetic procedures to the point where being surprised was the only expression she could muster, recounted the attack: