Minder: Secrets of Mind

Chapter 24

Eve feels a sudden rush as her body lands, she is in the darkness of sleep, but for a moment, she feels everything in the world. A rush of different memories, thoughts, people talking, and the effects of the world's day-to-day operations, followed by cold and warm panels all around her. For a moment, she thinks she is dreaming, as her mind snaps and vision comes to a place isolated from the rest of the world and in peace. But she is alone, there is peace in her as she sits on a log overlooking the world beyond, but there is loneliness in that peace. The loneliness she can't define. But in an instant, it is gone.

She opens her eyes. She is back in her room on her bed, unaware of the events after losing consciousness. But she is on the edge of the bed in a way that is only familiar to her from one person's resting state. Amari's hold when they would sleep together, his chest pitched forward as if trying to press himself into her back. One of his arms wrapped around her stomach and the other under her shoulder, his hand is waiting in place to prop up her head if her pillow ever found it's way free of her during the night. His smell floods her noise and confirms to her that it is him. She also hears a grunt from the groggiest individual in the morning outside herself, Lance. From somewhere in the living room.

"Fucking hell. He put you on the damn couch and placed my ass on the floor? What the hell? I thought me and her father were cool." Lance shouts.

His shout wakes Amari in a rush with deep gasps. Amari runs his hands along his chest and face as if looking for an insect.

"What's wrong?" Eve asks.

"Ummm...I...I was shot. I died."

"What are you talking about? We got away from those Seeker things. Wait, where are my mom and dad?"

A commotion of arguing erupts from the living room as Alison shouts variations of demands for answers and to speak with "that bitch." Amari and Eve barely have a second to sit up as the door flings open, the force by which Alison does so, completely crushing the doorknob and pulling the door off two of its three hinges! Lance comes in right behind her and finally gets a grip on her, stopping her from lunging for Eve.

"What the hell is going on with her!" Eve demands.

"Me! What is going on with me? And you think I am full of myself! Bitch I was ran the hell over while you were taking a fucking nap! I felt all of it!" Alison screams with anger that turns to pain.

Lance manages to hold her at bay long enough for that pain to break her, helping her to the floor while she cracks and begins to cry.

"What happened? We made it out; my parents got us out." Eve says, confused about the state and mood growing on everyone's faces.

Lance seemed to be the only one with enough strength to tell her, but he did offer Amari the chance, but he was almost a deer in headlights as he put his thoughts together.

"We all died. Everyone except you and your parents. It felt real. But then...after it. I was in some strange place. Felt like purgatory, for Christ's sake. I...and I guess them too, we...well we saw a world through your eyes. Like we were there but not. We were attached to you. Unable to move and feel. Then out of nowhere, darkness, and then we wake up."

Eve feels uneasy about the explanation, and not because she doesn't believe it. But because she can feel the truth in his words as if the verification rode straight from his mind into his words and through her ears. She felt his concern over her as if she was his blood sister—confirmation of their bond and the secureness of it despite all he just had to go to. But there was also something else, fear. A fear of Eve and what having this bond was about to mean to him now that he had experienced its dark potential firsthand. Suddenly she can feel Alison's pain emanating from her as well. Pain from not just experiencing death, but the pain from believing she almost lost her dreams of life after college. And the betrayal she felt came from Eve; her belief that Eve knew something about all of this and that she didn't tell her about it hurt Alison the most.