Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar)

  I was exhausted once I was done. The sun had begun to rise, and I went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water before I would go to bed. As I stood by the sink and watched how our road slowly became alit and put the darkness behind it, I suddenly saw something that made my heart stop. It went by my window so fast, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been dreaming afterwards, or seeing more images, but I was pretty sure I saw my jaguar. It was running like the wind. It went faster than I had ever seen it do.

  I dropped my glass in the sink and ran outside only to realize it was gone. I walked up and down the street and around the house but there was no trace of it. Not even a paw print. Had it followed me home? Or was I again imagining things? Was it another vision? I kind of hoped it was just me being really tired and seeing things, because I knew if it was seen running through neighborhoods it wouldn’t be long before someone shot it or they captured it and put it in the zoo. It was damn hard to defend an animal that was running around in people’s backyards and scaring them.

  I exhaled heavily and decided it was time for bed.

  I slept until noon and then I tumbled out of bed with my article in my hand, put it in an envelope and then in the mailbox. I had put the negatives along with it, so now there was nothing to do but wait and see if they liked it and wanted to print it. I had my fingers crossed as I walked back into the house. I spotted Halona sitting on a swing in their yard. The swing next to her was swaying noticeably. It made me laugh. I waved to her. She smiled and waved back. Then I went back inside the house and dozed off again for a couple of hours, dreaming about Aiyana.

  I woke with a start and looked at the clock radio. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. I had to get up and get dressed. I had to go see Anna and somehow prevent this accident from happening. I took a quick shower and looked out the window as I got dressed. In the neighbor’s yard I saw Aiyana playing with her two younger sisters. They were laughing, childlike, and rolling in the grass. I wanted desperately to go over there and join them in careless play, but not today. I took one last glance at them before I hurried to the kitchen and grabbed a sandwich from the refrigerator that Maria had made for me. She was emptying the dishwasher, and I yelled at her that I would see her later. She replied by lifting her hand in the air and mumbling something about young people always being so busy these days, that we would all end up with sickness caused by stress before the age of fifty. I laughed and slammed the door as I ran towards my white Vette.

  Anna was still home as I drove towards their house on Eight Street. The police car was gone but the red Ford was in the driveway. I was lucky. Just as I pulled up their street, she came out of the front door with her purse in her hand. I stopped and waited for her to drive past me before I turned the car around and followed her. She drove over the Bridge of Lions that led to the beach. It wasn’t hard to guess where she was going. Moments later, she stopped the car in front of his house and he came out to greet her with a passionate kiss. They laughed and walked inside holding arms. I ate my sandwich while waiting and turned on the radio to listen to some music. My plan was to somehow get to talk to her today. I had no idea when this accident was going to happen so I figured it would be best if she knew about it. At least that would leave her with better chances of avoiding it, I thought. I couldn’t be around her for much longer, and even if I was outside of her house when it happened I wasn’t even sure how I could be of any help.

  The music made me tap my hands and feet, and soon I was singing along. The song they were playing gave me an idea to a new song I had been wanting to write. I found a pen and paper in the glove compartment and started writing lyrics. It was the first time I wrote a song when it wasn’t about losing someone you love. This one was about loving someone and daring to take a leap of faith into love again. It was about loving so much that you knew you’d die without her. It was about Aiyana. It was about me finally letting go and plunging head first into the greatest emotion of them all. Trustingly leaving my fragile heart in the hands of another person without any guarantee that I’d get it back in the same condition that I started with.

  I had closed my eyes and was humming the notes and murmuring the lyrics, when I suddenly realized that Anna had left the house and was walking towards me, staring directly at my car with a furious expression. I crouched in the seat but it was too late. Next thing I knew she opened the door to the car and got in. She looked at me as she closed the door to the car.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

  I was at a loss. I looked for a way to answer her so she would believe me and trust me. “Look, Anna, there is something I need to tell you.”

  She shook her head heavily. “Have you been following me? Did my husband put you up to this? Did he hire you to spy on me?” she asked. Her eyes were like fire. Fire of anger. I had no idea how I was supposed to tell her what I knew. She had no reason whatsoever to trust me, especially now that I just seemed like some lunatic who was following her.

  “No. No. It’s nothing like that,” I tried. “I don’t even know your husband. I mean I have seen him, but never met him. It's hard to explain.”

  She snorted. “So you’re spying on all of my family? Is that it?”

  “No. No,” I started. Then I stopped myself. I might as well tell her the truth, I thought. That was the plan, anyway. “Well yes, you might say I have been watching you.”

  Her face turned red.

  “But not because I am a creep or anything. It’s nothing like that,” I continued. She didn’t look like she understood where I was going or even cared.

  “So you have been watching my family? Observing us, maybe. That is exactly what creeps do,” she said.

  “So call me a creep. I don’t care what you think of me. The important thing is that I get this message through to you before it is too late.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “What message? What are you talking about? I don’t like this one bit. It is too weird.”

  “I know something … I know what I am about to tell you will seem hard to believe but I am asking you to keep an open mind about it, okay? This is a matter of life and death. Life and death for your daughter.”

  Anna seemed to calm down a little. She looked at me with great distrust. “My daughter? What has she got to do with anything?”

  “She is the one I am desperately trying to save.”

  Anna nodded. “Go on.”

  I breathed with relief. “See, I had this vision, dream if you call it. And it isn’t just some dream, it is very special, different. I have experienced it before and, see, the thing is … my visions come true. It is like I am predicting the future. They’re like premonitions.”

  Now she stared at me like I was insane. “I don’t know …” she said. “This is starting to sound a little too strange for my taste. You say your dreams come true?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I see images constantly and hear these voices telling me stuff. It is rare that I can actually make anything of them, but this time I can. With yours I can. They are very vivid. It's like ... like I'm supposed to do something. It's more a feeling really...”

  “How many times have your dreams or visions come true?”

  “Only once … but there was another time when I knew something …”

  “Only once?” she yelled. “Are you freaking kidding me? So you expect me to believe that you had some kind of vision, that some strange voices in your head tell you things about me or my family and it is going to come true, just because it happened to you once? Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

  “I do … but there was also another time when I knew this woman was pregnant before she did,” I said, but I could tell she wasn’t listening.

  Anna laughed out loud. “I do that all the time. Tell my girlfriends that they’re pregnant. You can tell by the look in their eyes or the big breasts that appear as if out of nowhere. That’s not psychic, that’s intuition. All women have that. Well, most do anyway. Either that or it is just plain old luck. A coincide
nce I say it is. Probably also with that other thing you believe you predicted. You’re not psychic. You’re just confused. That’s all.”

  “I am pretty sure about this. I have seen it very vividly. Your husband gets really mad about something and starts beating you while your daughter is in the room screaming that he should stop. Then your daughter goes for a knife and your husband tries to stop her. As he does he tips over a pot of boiling water on the stove and she is burnt all over.”

  Anna had stopped laughing. Now she was looking at me with fury. She leaned over while squinting. “Now you listen to me, you little rat. You know nothing about me or my family. You stay the hell away from me in the future, all right? Or I swear I will have my husband and his colleagues beat the crap out of you instead.” She opened the door to the car, then she turned and looked at me with disgust. “You are sick, do you know that? You are a very sick person.”

  Anna stepped out of the car and as she did a police car passed us causing her to freeze with a gasp. I looked at the officer as the cruiser drove by us.

  “It wasn’t him,” I said, thinking it would calm her.

  “What do you know about anything?” she said and looked at me through the open car. “It might not have been my husband, but they’ll tell him that they have seen me here. They sure will. They tell each other stuff like that. Like brothers that take care of each other, my husband always says. He’ll know I was here in a few minutes. I better get back to the house.” She looked at me one last time. “You leave me and my family alone, you little creep. Keep your nose out of my life before you ruin everything for me.”

  I watched her as she walked back towards the house. With a big sigh I turned the engine on in my Vette and drove away. I couldn't say I wasn't prepared for this. Aiyana had told me it was going to happen. She had told me that no one would believe me.

  But I wasn’t about to give up just yet.

  Chapter 24

  I went home for a couple of hours and found a box of books waiting for me outside the house from Jim. It was medical books and notes and stuff for me. I threw it in my room without any intention of picking it up and reading it anytime soon and then went into visit Aiyana in the big house next door. She came out to the porch and sat with me for a while on the couch while I told her what had happened. Her grandmother brought us herb tea and we drank in silence as I watched the rocking chair that never seemed to stop moving.

  “I am going back there in a little while. I just don’t quite know what it is I am going to do, but I can’t just give up,” I said.

  “Good for you, Christian,” she said. She sang my name so beautifully it made me almost melt inside.

  “She hates me, though. That Anna woman thinks I am crazy,” I said. “How can she not see that this is important? How can she not listen to me when I am trying to save her from something terrible? Something devastating in her life?”

  “You didn’t get this gift to become a hero, Christian. People will never like what you do because they can’t see it. They don’t know what you’re trying to spare them from. They don’t understand. You can’t expect them to understand. They think stuff like that only happens to their neighbors. Never themselves. They would rather think you’re crazy than realize that something that awful could happen in their lives. That it is actually possible. It is, unfortunately, the way people think. You can’t change that. Plus it is really hard for people to understand and believe that you could actually predict the future. They don't want to believe in anything they can't see.”

  I went quiet while nodding slowly. The voices had grown stronger in my head the last couple of hours and I needed to try to calm them down. “I have written a song for you,” I said, trying to think about music, which was the one thing that seemed to be able to drown the voices. That and thinking about Aiyana.

  “I know,” she said. “I heard you sing it earlier.”

  I laughed. “I forgot,” I said. “Do you hear everything I say and think?”

  “No, just some of it. Bits and pieces here and there.” She leaned over and put her head in my lap. I loved her so much I was grateful just to be allowed to be in her presence.

  “I loved it, by the way,” she said.

  I couldn’t stop smiling. “Then I will play it for you next time we see each other.” I reached out and grabbed my cup and drank of it. As I lifted my eyes, I saw Heather. She was standing in her yard looking directly at me. I swallowed the tea hard as she went inside the house. This wasn’t something that she would just leave alone. I knew that much.

  Aiyana got up from the couch. Her mother was playing the cello upstairs. “I think you need to get going now,” she said. “It’s time.”

  I got up and kissed her gently before I hurried back to my car that I had parked in front of the Kirk’s house in order to cover up where I really was. That was in vain, I now realized as I started the car with a roar. I backed out of the driveway and drove towards Anna’s home. I would deal with Heather once I got back. After all, she was going to find out someday anyway. I wasn’t going to keep my relationship with Aiyana a secret forever. Was that what it was? I suddenly thought to myself on my way through the old town. Was I in a real relationship for the first time in my life? I was so inexperienced with these things that I didn’t even know when you were supposed to start calling it a relationship. We were close, we shared everything, we were having sex, so maybe that was what it was? A real grown-up relationship? It was the first time in my life the very thought of it didn’t scare me or cause me to break out in a cold sweat. The thought for once made me feel happy and filled with hope for my future. I wanted to be with Aiyana for the rest of my life. I just knew it inside. I wanted to never let go of her again. Never leave her side. She was mine now and no one was going to take that away from me.

  I drove up Eighth Street and passed the house. The red Ford was there, but the police car wasn’t. At the end of the street, I turned around in the cul-de-sac and drove back towards the house. I parked the car in a new place and stopped the engine. Then I exhaled and waited while humming my song for Aiyana. It wasn’t quite done yet, it was like something was missing, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

  As the sun started to set, I saw the police car coming down the street. But this time it didn’t stop at their house. It drove towards me and stopped right in front of my car. I swallowed hard as the officer, Anna’s husband, stepped out and approached me. He looked into my car with a smirky smile.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  I followed his order and walked to the house. Anna’s husband walked right behind me every now and then pushed me forward. “What have I done, officer?” I asked.

  “I ask the questions here,” he said and pushed me towards the front door of his house. “Get in!” he yelled and pushed me.

  Inside the house Anna was at the stove as I entered. She put a big pot of water on the stove and turned it on. Then she looked up and stared at me and her husband with a scared expression.

  “John!” she yelled and threw away the spoon she had in her hand so it landed in the sink. “What are you doing?”

  John pushed me into the living room so I knocked into the dining table. “I’d like to know what you are doing,” he said to Anna. He walked towards her with menace. She backed up, just as the daughter showed up in the room.

  “Lillian, get out of here,” John yelled.

  But she didn't leave. She stayed and watched as her dad took a plate and threw it against the wall, then he grabbed her mother by the hair and dragged her towards me while the daughter screamed at him—the very same scream that had tormented me so many times. He lifted Anna's head up and made her stare at me. “Who is this?” he asked.

  She stuttered. “I-I don’t know who he is.”

  “Then tell me why I hear from my colleagues that they saw you with this guy in front of the grocery store the other day, and again today at the beach where you were sitting in his car. Tell me why I saw him parked outside our house ye
sterday and then again I see him when I got home from work today? Tell me why?”

  John hit Anna in the face and the daughter gasped while crying. “I don’t know why he is there,” Anna yelled. “He has been following me, us, and I wanted to know why. That’s why I confronted him today. That's why I was in his car. I thought you had sent him to spy on me or something.”

  “Spy on you? Now why would I do that? Because you’re an unfaithful little shit? And do you really think I would use someone who was just a kid and whose face everybody in town would recognize? Someone whose face had been in all the newspapers?”

  John loosened his grip on Anna and she raised her head.

  “I knew I had seen him somewhere,” she said. “You’re that kid that was attacked by the alligators in the swamps. I remember you from the hospital. I nursed you when you just got there. I am a nurse at that hospital.”

  John laughed out loud. I was getting more and more confused, but I felt relieved to know that there was an actually connection between this woman and I. She hadn’t been just a random person whose future I had held in my hand. She had touched me and been around me for several days.