Romance Fan Fiction / Realism Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ If you see her, say hello ❯ Oh Maggie, what have we done? ( Chapter 1 )

In the deserted town, blood spots and splashes stained the ruins like poppies and red climbing ivy. It was the only colour he could see in the fog.
As he advanced, those traces of rotten life appeared everywhere. Red monstrous eyes peering at him. It was horrific.
He was following a child’s voice singing a faint and indistinct lullaby that came somewhere from those ruins, always distant and moving away like a horizon.
He had to get any human beings left out of there. That's why he was there: to evacuate.
He was moving silently through the devastation. A stray bullet, a sniper, a bomb, a mine could have killed him at any moment.
All at once he heard footsteps approaching and stopped. It was impossible to determine which direction they were coming from. First they were heavy and rhythmic like mortar shots, then irregular like those of a wounded fugitive.

"Christopher!" someone called him in a dry, urgent tone. It was a vague sound, just an echo coming from the fog itself.
His heart started palpitating.
The footsteps seemed closer now and his name echoed in the air all around him, full of dust and smoke.
He quickly slipped into the first building on the right: the door no longer existed, it was reduced to some pieces of wood scattered on the floor.
He pressed his back and shoulders against the bare concrete wall, hiding and holding his breath, the heart in his mouth. He could see very little in there: it was a destroyed house with the remains of a table, the frame of a bed, a worn out and broken mattress.

"Christopher!" the same voice, now closer. It was the same child's voice singing the lullaby.
He whirled in the direction of the footsteps and found her there, a little girl.
Rachel.
She was lying on the ground, a pool of blood around her head like a hideous halo. Her short dark hair, her innocent face, the deep, black, glassy eyes wide open.
He was kneeling beside her body, looking down on her, looking at the eyes of death. He realised that the lullaby came from Rachel’s eyes, but he could not distinguish the words. It was her who was also calling him and somehow the footsteps were hers too.

"Christopher! Open this bloody door." the girl suddenly screamed in his face.

For a moment it was all dark.

Christopher woke up with a start in the bed, panting, sweating, quivering. It took him a few seconds to realise that Rachel had disappeared and the lullaby was gone too.
The mobile phone on the bedside table rang, making him jump. From the entrance, someone started knocking heavily on the door.

His heart was still pounding and reality was invading him without mercy, demanding that he act quickly: answer the phone, talk, get up, open the door.
He felt exhausted. The first twinges of a headache were one more reason to cut his head off from his body, the damn head.

He groped for the mobile phone to see who was calling him so insistently. Maggie.
He sighed: he didn't want to see her, or anyone for that matter.

He answered the phone only to end the pressure.
"I'm coming." he mumbled and immediately hung up not giving Maggie time to say anything at all. At least all noise stopped.

Christopher exhaled. The nightmare was still there, in his brain, along with the awareness that the other side of the bed was empty. He was tempted to look but he did not have the courage: he never had it.

After a minute, he stood up and went - or rather, dragged himself - to the entrance. He only cracked the door open, as if he wanted to protect himself from Maggie's fury. 
The woman's blue eyes scanned him up and down.

"I was going to call the police." she informed him curtly.

Christopher felt guilty, for everything: from making her worry to wanting to shut the door in her face.
"Didn't it occur to you that maybe I was sleeping?"
She gave him a stern look. "Sure. You? At 10 in the morning? It was more likely that you were dead."
The answer came straight and precise like a whiplash snap. If one thing was certain about Maggie, it was her brutal honesty: she almost always said what she thought and only on rare occasions and with very few people, she held back.

Christopher finally let her in. After all, it was her house now. However, whenever she set foot in there, she always moved with a pleasant caution, respecting his living spaces.

"I stopped by to see how you’re doing."

"Hm-mh. I'll make you a coffee."

He needed to keep busy and distracted; besides, a coffee would help him with the headache.

"Thank you."

Maggie walked to the small kitchen, without getting close to him. After all, what she really cared about right now was inspecting the pantries.
Christopher already knew that this visit was a lost cause for him. When Colonel Maggie was there, he did not stand a chance.
The determined way in which Maggie’s squat figure moved was in great contrast to his bearing, slow and listless despite the austerity and his natural elegance.

Christopher tried to focus on the sequence of actions needed to make the coffee, without getting lost in the still vivid images of the nightmare, and behind these, the intrusive thoughts.

Maggie closed the top pantry door, then quickly examined the fridge and sighed. He foresaw some upcoming comment about the pitiful emptiness of the kitchen and tried to spare it.
"I can manage."

"Yes sure, I see. Are you going to go out and buy something or would you prefer me to come later?"
It sounded like a veiled threat.

"You know, now there is something called food delivery. You don't necessarily have to go shopping or even cook or leave the house to survive." he replied.

Christopher took two mugs and poured the coffee without a word, then carried them to the table.
He sat down and motioned for Maggie to do the same.

For a while they were silent and did not even look at each other. The birds offered something to listen to as they sipped their coffee.

"Can I say something?"

Christopher shrugged. He already knew that whatever Maggie was going to say, it would hurt.

"Do you realise you can't go on like this?"
Christopher sighed nervously. "It's the only way I can go on right now, Maggie. I appreciate your effort, but you don't need to look after me."

Maggie chuckled and raised her gray eyebrows. The implicit message was that he would die of starvation within two weeks if she didn't look after him. They both knew it very well.

"I don't know if it was a good idea to come back here to your parents' house after all." she added thoughtfully.
"Sure, in hindsight I wouldn't have sold it to you and would have saved the rent now. But it wasn't exactly my plan to come back here. Or to Lochfern in general."
"I know, I know."

"I was thinking..." Maggie continued "One of these days I might come and get you at dawn - there won't be anyone around at that time. We can drive all the way to Dunkeld, spend the whole day there and come back at sunset. What do you think?"

Surprisingly, he did not perceive it as a bad idea. He did not feel comfortable at all, but at least it seemed to him that it might be worth a try, that he might be able to not freeze after going down a few steps and immediately lock himself inside the house again. Christopher swallowed and nodded uncertainly, fearing he was bound by a promise he would not be able to keep.

He watched Maggie take the last sips of coffee, rather satisfied with the outcome. It was strange to see her there and think back to when they were children. She had been his first love experience, innocent and yet profane, forbidden. He remembered his first kiss, during the village fair, in the gardens behind the church. It was a spontaneous memory but it inevitably brought Rachel with it and Christopher immediately felt sick.

He urgently needed to be alone to regain control of his thoughts. He began to line up the few objects on the table.

"Can you leave now, please?"
The hasty request took Maggie by surprise.
"What is happening?"
He was aware that he looked pale as a ghost.
"Please go away." he mumbled and leaped to his feet because of that irrepressible need to move: his body could not hold all that disgust, hatred and shame. Maggie had to leave, his head was exploding.
Christopher could see the flash of fear in his friend's gaze after the abrupt movement.

Maggie lingered for a few seconds to assess the situation, looking at Christopher as if she could really read and understand what was going through his head.

”Get out!" he commanded her, barely containing the fury that showed in his tone and his frown.

Maggie quickly grabbed her bag with tears in her eyes.
"Consider yourself lucky that this is your house, Christopher. I swear, I..." she said in an almost trembling voice, shaking her head.

She left the house quickly, slamming the door.