Interlude I
(Ten Years Later)
(Lauren)
Lauren stood in the rain in front of a stone. The reason she chose to do this was personal. At first, she made multiple trips a year, but those times slowly stretched out, until now when it had been over a year since she last visited this somber place.
Looking down she saw a giant gauche stone with Cyrillic writing on it. Roughly translated the stone read as the following:
Here Lies Dr. Pamela Grier
Mother, Sister, Friend, Scientist.
Seeing the stone, it was clear that her mother had already chosen the stone and had it made years before her death.
The joke was on her, as other than the first word was accurate. Pamela’s sisters had all died, probably before the tombstone had been commissioned. The friends, well they all died as well, caught up in the same odd radioactive cancer that somehow took her own life. As for the last word, well that was the word that her alma mater probably wished they could take back, particularly right after the news of what happened began to make national headlines.
For years there, there was a scare for not only the people in the community, but for the University as a whole.
In the end, the school opted to bulldoze the entire site, burying chambers of what were believed to be radioactive secrets and diabolical research, if rumors around campus were to be believed.
Fortunately, Lauren’s mother passed away before the worst of the rumors could reach her, that likely would have been the final nail in her coffin. Not that she needed any more nails, whatever happened, whatever she and her colleagues were researching was ultimately deemed too dangerous to continue.
The group had the patent for a cure for cancer that had passed all testing, fortunately the school was able to transfer that discovery to a different division who took the lead, and resources generated by the discovery.
In the end, Dr. Grier was blacklisted, posthumously of course, as even on her deathbed no one would dare tell her off to her face. This of course caused issues for Lauren, who found that being called Dr. Grier in the same state where her mother once reigned supreme was even more of a curse after her death than it was while she was still living. Even if your chosen career is in a completely different field of study then that of your mother’s.
Of course, for a female with a name problem there is an obvious and easy, get married.
At first, she rebelled against the idea, but after finding an old grimoire of her mother’s detailing some of the simpler emotionally binding spells, the path forward was simple, if repugnant. All she would have to do was practice up on her craft, find a man that was suitable and moldable to her suggestions and forever change her life trajectory.
To avoid having to go down that undesirable path, she opted to pick up shop go to a new state and start up her practice anew. Yet, even the new start wasn’t enough, as ultimately ties to her mother were still easily found, forcing her to marry and remove any traces of her being Dr. Lauren Grier.
“You okay?” Dave Hill, her husband and biggest supporter asked, coming over to cover her with an umbrella after seeing that she had been out in the pouring rain for a bit longer than would normally be warranted in such a situation.
All in all, Lauren had to feel that she had chosen well, all things considered. Seeing him come out and hold open his umbrella over her, she couldn’t help but let out a smile.
“Yeah, let’s go home.” Lauren said, as she began walking back to the vehicle that sat with the lights still on, and the wipers going at full tilt in this torrential downpour.
“As you command Dr. Hill.” Dave said, excitement in his voice as he prepared to drive the seven hours back home so she could be back in time for her first appointment tomorrow morning.
“Thank you, Dave.” Lauren said with affection evident in her voice.
She had chosen well, and she often wondered whether the final bindings that her mother taught her were needed at all. Still, it was too late to take back the bindings, for a myriad of reasons. The most important being that once a binding was applied and reapplied, they either had to be let go gradually, or suffer the rage effect.
Lauren always promised herself that she would stop reweaving the bindings that bound Dave to her, but by now she was too attached, and couldn’t imagine her life without him. Maybe next year, she promised herself as she made her way from her mother’s tombstone. Then with that, she wondered if she would make the trek out here next year, as well. That seemed like it would be the perfect time to bury all past failures as it would be ten years since her mother’s passing, and seven years since she first bound Dave.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Both were important numbers, that is of course if one believed in numerology. Which Dr. Lauren Hill would never admit to, at least not before those that were Unawakened to the craft.
***
Andrea
To say that the last ten years were tough would be an understatement. At first Andrea had to tap down a lot on her pride to move back in with her parents. At the time she felt like she had lost at everything. She was a single mother who had a deadbeat husband who was MIA. Her special needs daughter was being stalked by a crazy professor, and her ex’s parents were apparently serial killers.
When she moved back in, she thought it was rock bottom.
Yet, she had managed to somehow stay afloat during it all. Now after ten years, she can safely say that moving back in with her parents was the best decision she ever made.
Her father, the person who was hard as nails and seemingly hated everyone was wrapped so tightly around Misha’s little finger that she was surprised the digit in question had not fallen off due to lack of circulation.
Phil was every bit the father and male role model that Misha needed in her life. Making sure that anything she could possibly want was taken care of. Misha needed a safe place to practice basketball afterschool, after there was a shooting at the local park where the girls used to gather. Say no more, with ten acres and plenty of time and money, granddad created a regulation size court, complete with two regulation sized hoops and a fence to keep the balls from rolling off in the fields.
That was fine at first, until it was clear that Misha needed lighting, also he hated the idea of her practicing in the rain, which she would, as she never missed practice. Another reason why granddad loved her, as she was “tough as nails, with grit. You can’t train for that. Either you have it, or you don’t, and my girl’s got it in spades.”
Yes, Andrea had been replaced by her daughter. At first, she tried to deny it, and was slightly resentful of the treatment she received, if she was being completely honest with herself. Fortunately, her mother set the record straight.
“You can’t be mad at Phil for loving your daughter. She is exactly like you, down to the stubborn, never back down attitude of hers. Rather than getting angry at Phil for treating her better than he treated you, try to think of it as his wishing he could go back in time and correct some of the mistakes that he made with you.” With that, Mom had once again saved the day between her and her father.
The other major change was the fact that Andrea was able to drop her last name and revert back to her maiden name, even getting Misha’s name transferred to her grandfather was surprisingly easy. Even the lawyer hired by granddad said, “this was one of the easiest cases of child abandonment I’ve ever seen get processed. Congratulations Ms. Tulley, to both you and your daughter.”
As easy as the divorce was, and getting the ability to change her and Misha’s last names back to that of her grandfather was easy. Despite clearly wanting it to happen, Misha seemed sort of unexcited when the news came.
For a moment there, Andrea could almost swear that Misha already knew that everything would pull through the way it had. Yet, ultimately Andrea chalked that up to Misha just being as emotionless as usual.
Still, there were times that she wondered where and how her daughter became so smart. In fact, she was incredibly smart, almost too smart for her own good. So smart that rather than constantly being told she needed to be pushed ahead in each grade level, they ultimately opted to homeschool her. Which was as simple as telling her which topics to study and letting her have access to the internet.
In fact, they could have likely avoided high school entirely, had it not been for the fact that Misha wanted to get a degree from an actual university. While granddad had already set aside enough money for her to get a doctorate, he never told her.
Instead, he always told her, “You need to start working on getting scholarships.”
Which was why this year, she would be going part time to high school classes, in order to be part of the senior teams, while also attending community college.
Which she somehow managed to pay for by fixing her friends’ and their families vehicles.
Andrea couldn’t complain about this herself, as she had been saved many times by her daughter’s seeming love for all things mechanical. A gift she must have gotten from her father, as that was clearly not something that she had any inclination for.
Yes, things were going well, almost too well. Which was why she felt like the other shoe was destined to drop here shortly.
***
(Captain Franklin Grimes)
Ten years, or the second half of an already impressive career ended just like that. Captain Grimes had managed to do a lot during his long career. Helped kids get out of a burning building before the firefighters showed up. Yes, he was aware that he filled the stereotype that all policemen really wanted to be firefighters with that act, but he couldn’t help himself. He saw children in need, and thinking nothing of his own safety, he charged forward and did what he needed to do.
Now that it was time for him to retire, he could safely say he had only a few regrets. There was of course the case where he found two teenagers parents dead from an apparent drug overdose, where if he was not delayed by a traffic jam to do the welfare check, he might have been able to save the parents. Then again the kid that he rescued had obvious lesions and bite marks from fleas, given that the infant was the one that survived it wasn’t a complete loss in his opinion. Yes, it was a terrible way to look at the sad situation of two kids who made a mistake, and then resorted to drugs rather than trying to actually become the adults they were supposed to be.
That case took many years of therapy to workout, but he did track the child who was adopted to a good home, and by all accounts seems to be doing well for herself.
There was also the time where he was forced to draw his weapon, fortunately he never had to fire the weapon as he was able to talk the man with his own weapon down and eventually get him to drop his weapon. Still, it had been touch and go there for a moment.
No, out of all the cases he had worked on in his career, the one case that would go down as his Eleanor would have to be the odd attack by space rock and subsequent disappearance of Misha Collins.
From everything he had gathered, the girl was gone, either she was a ghost in the system. Or she had been abducted by aliens who then purged all documents of her from existence.
Pulling out his old case files, he had always kept that one, despite its formal copy having long since been sent to the unsolved cases department. He still had all his handwritten notes related to the case. Even going back to the former company that the mother Andrea Collins worked for. There had been a lead that she found out later on, after talking to Walter Hargrove, Andrea’s former manager.
Seeing the note, Captain Grimes paused as he wondered why he never ran down that particular lead.
Witness (Walter Hargrove): Mentioned something about Andrea moving back home with her parents who lived in Jackson.
Seeing the note, he instantly realized why he had stopped, as there were dozens of states that all had Jackson.
Still, Grimes was now retired. He was not married anymore. While he still had cordial relationships with his ex-wife, he had no intention of staying in the same state as her. As such, he figured now that he had the time, might as well try to go out and look for Andrea and Misha Collins.
A quick search showed that Jackson Kentucky was the closest location. Realizing it was either solve this personal case and make sure that he could rest easier knowing that this little girl grew up healthy after changing her name and identity to hide from a cult of semi-religious nuclear nut heads or get fat sitting on his couch watching sports and drinking beer all day.
While the appeal of getting old and fat did appeal to him, there was one major reason he really wanted to solve this case. Ultimately, he wondered if this was his true alien case.
Deep down inside, despite not telling anyone about it, he secretly hoped it was aliens. To his defense the alternate, of the girl being hunted by crazy cultists with melting space rocks seemed like the less exciting option of the two.