APEX - Season 2

Ch. 4: The Storm Brews

Calla

A warm breeze blew sand over my bare legs as I lay on a fluffy pink towel. Next to me, Vicki sat in a striped yellow and blue beach chair, her eyes hidden behind heart-shaped sunglasses. In one hand, she held the paperback I'd finished this morning, and in the other, she grasped the stem of a cocktail. She laughed at something she was reading and took a sip of her drink.

"You'll never guess what the heroine in this story does for a living," she said, forgetting that I'd read this book already.

"She's a mortician," I said. "She notices the bruises on the victim's neck as she's preparing her body for her open casket funeral. She'd supposedly died in her sleep, but the bruises indicated that someone had strangled her and then tried to cover it up with makeup."

"Hey!" She hit my shoulder with the book. "I haven't gotten that far! No spoilers, please."

"You asked."

Vicki laughed and then I laughed with her. I refrained from telling her that a romance would develop between the young mortician and the handsome but troubled police detective who she would try to convince to open up a murder investigation.

"You really know how to spoil things," Vicki said, no longer laughing. "Why do you do that?"

"That's rude." A sickly feeling formed in my stomach. "I could have told you who the murderer is too, but I didn't, did I?"

"It's not about this silly story." She tossed my book onto the sand and stood. As she rose, the wind picked up as though she was summoning it to her. "You don't just spoil things, you're spoiled, right down to your core. You're rotten, Calla."

My insides swarmed. An acid taste forced its way up my throat. "Jeez, Vicki, what's gotten into you?"

"The truth," She kicked over her chair. Caught in the wind, it rolled down the beach. "I never saw it until now. Who you really are. What you really are."

"What I am is your friend, Vicki!"

She shook her head, and again, the wind kicked up around us. The other beach goers gathered their blankets and picnic baskets, called their children out of the sea and hurried up to where sand met the tall, dry grass that formed a barrier between the beach and the parking lot. "You're nobody's friend," she said, a storm brewing in her eyes. "You're a monster."

I crawled backwards, away from her, the threat in her words making me tremble. "I'm not!"

"You are," she said, stepping towards me.

The sea had grown to a tempest by this time. The sky darkened to coal gray. I glanced at it and then back towards Vicki, gasping at what I saw. She'd become the storm, a swirling mass of sand and stone and hatred that spiraled up a hundred feet into the air.

"You're a rotten monster," her voice boomed from the raging squall. "If we don't get rid of you, you'll destroy us all."

The spiral swirled towards me, and I screamed, clamping my pillow to my mouth. My face wet with tears, it took a few minutes for me to realize I was no longer on a doomed beach, but safe in my bedroom. The storm of Vicki had only been a bad dream.

"Just a dream, just a dream," I repeated to myself to ground me in the present. A knock on my door nearly made me go catatonic.

"Miss Bardot?" The voice of one of my half dozen bodyguards sounded muffled through the wooden layer that separated me from it. "Is everything all right in there?"

"Yes." I slid my legs out of bed, stretched, and then walked over to the door and opened it a crack.

The face of my youngest bodyguard, Evan, barely out of his teens but built like a Clydesdale, glanced at me with concern. "Miss?"