Episode 4: The Vision and the Visitation

Episode 4
THE VISION AND THE VISITATION

The vision came swiftly. Carrie Hawkins staggered backward grabbing a chair for support. She didn’t know Nick Boyd was in the room until his hands caught her around the waist steadying her. The vision was too overpowering, too insistent.

She could see her sister, Kylie at a nightclub of some sort. The images flashed sporadically but always fixating on Kylie and hands of a female bartender. She watched helplessly as the woman without a face spun a bottle of run in her hands. The motion looked almost choreographed, almost practiced until honed to perfection. The smile of the faceless woman came to her. The smile was joyous, without fear.

Carrie came out of the vision shaking. The woman with the Mona Lisa smile was some how connected to her sister and yet some how also connected to her as well.

She leaned on Alexandra Maxwell’s bed and took a few refreshing breaths and observed the woman who had been forefront in her mind for so many hours now. In her sleep, Alex smiled -- the same smile as the woman in her vision!

***

Kylie Hawkins leaned over the bar motioning for Shawna Caryle. The buxom blond ignored her as usual, preferring to wait on the rich and handsome men hovering around the bar at Temptations.

“Come on, Shawna! This is important!” Kylie waved to her again and finally when there was no one else to wait on, she appeared before her. “Geez,” she muttered. “What do you have to do to get some attention around here?”

Yellow and blue lights danced over Shawna’s face making her seem more like an exotic dancer than a bartender -- and she wasn’t so sure Shawna hadn’t be that too.

“I need to find Alex. Do you know when she’ll be in tonight?” Kylie glanced at her watch. Time was running out.

“Won’t” The blonde washed a beer mug and placed it atop the bar. “She took some unexpected vacation time and Sal isn’t too happy with her. She’s making me and Mona work double shifts. If you see her, tell her she owes me big!”

Kylie nodded and walked away from the bar knowing she would tell Alex no such thing. Where was she?

As she walked out into the dark Chicago night, footfalls fell in step behind her. For a few blocks, she didn’t pay much mind to them. There was always people on the streets at all times of the day and night. But when she rounded the block coming upon her apartment building, the footsteps sounded much closer.

Kylie turned and noticed a hulking man in the shadows. He wore a dark trench coat that flapped in the breeze. He didn’t seem all that threatening, but for some reason her breathing hiked up a notch. Her intuition was tingling that danger was near.

Unexpectedly, she dashed for the front door and the figure took off after her in a dead run. “Please God, let me make it there safely!” she muttered as she tried not to scream and draw another innocent victim into the fray.

***

Nick watched in horror as the kaleidoscope of emotions played across Carrie’s face. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

“I ... I ... Feel connected to her. I can’t explain why.” She didn’t dare tell him about her vision and the important part her sister, Kylie played in it. She would have to call her tonight and find out more information about what was going on.

“More psychic insights?” Nick teased. He had been making fun of her “gift” for as long as she had known him.

“I’m not psychic, Nick. I get feelings... Impressions.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “That, my dear, is psychic in my book.”

“Not in mine,” she said sharply.

***

Kylie ran for the door hoping like hell she would make it in time, but the big man was much faster than she. He tackled her and they rolled together into the bushes.

“Stay down,” he whispered with authority. “Stay down or we’re both dead!”