I haven't written anything about Lola lately. I do apologize to the few people who follow that short story. My son was born this week, and I've been spending all of my time adoring him and my wife.
I've written some more this evening, letting my mind take me deeper into the life of Lola. I haven't plotted anything out still, just letting my mind take over and write what it feels. I find it so much easier to just write and write and write and not bog myself down with outlines. I find that the outcome is more real and a lot more personal, as things that happen are in some way significant to me.
Enjoy.
~KGB
“Stay away from me!” Lola snapped as she walked away from Gregoire at a furious pace.
She crossed the forest floor, leaving her cave behind and leading Gregoire away, ready to snatch the life from him if need be.
“Please. I need answers.” Gregoire pleaded, sounding more like an upset child than a frustrated man. “I’m lost here. I‘m... no one.”
Lola began to run, using her gifts to leave Gregoire miles behind in less than a minute. She hit several trees as she crossed the forest, not caring about the destruction, listening to the aftermath as the large trunks tipped into other trees and finally onto the ground.
It was obvious to her that her current “job,” to take Gregoire’s life, was not going to happen. Not today, tomorrow, or this week, anyway. Over ten thousand years on earth and she had never once failed to complete a job given to her.
Of course, she had often wondered who provided the names and locations of those that she was to take. Granted, she didn’t receive letters, emails, or text messages as to who was her next target. All of the information just came to her, mentally, and she followed the unspoken cues and directions until she came across the person, or persons, that she saw in her mind’s eye. Once she found the person, she took their life in any way that she possibly could.
She wasn’t a fan of conventional weapons, such as guns and bombs. Her canvas was the up-close and personal kind, using hand-to-hand combat, knives, or other various blades. Normally, she used the element of surprise while the person slept, arriving in front of them and bringing them from life in to death in as quick a way as she could. She was fast, cunning, and lethally accurate.
Lately, though, as she approached her targets, a feeling of gloom and dread passed over her for long minutes. She wondered why she did what she did. Why did she have to kill people? Why did she, a girl seemingly no older than eighteen years old, have to be the person who took the lives of countless humans over thousands of years? Why was she the blade of death?
Lola ended up on the shore again. She was standing in a secluded area past all of the hotels and bars that dotted the shoreline here. The sun warmed her body as it shone down on her, interrupted only shortly by a few small, white clouds. Her toes were on the edge of the water, where the dry sand and wet sand met, the tiny waves breaking onto her feet and wetting the bottom of her dress, changing it from a light teal to a dark blue.
Peering out into the water, she watched as a white sailboat skipped by sluggishly on the horizon. The whites and grays of the waves broke over the light blue of the water as Lola pondered her existence in this challenging world of death.
Meeting Gregoire and hearing what he had to say had spun her life upside down, inside out, and every other way possible. Was she approaching the end of this life?
She always knew that when her time came, at a point that was best for her to die, she would be allowed to choose how it would happen. As it was, each night she died the same deaths that she had given to those whom she had killed. She was well versed in how to die, and what ways would be noble and effortless. But it would be different, and feel different. She would be taking her own life, not that of another. She would be passionate, gentle, and swifter than any other time in her life.
Lola stepped forward into the water, wading up to her waste and letting her body adjust to the water temperature. When she was soaked through and through, she went farther out, this time up to her shoulders. The water washed over her long dark hair, causing it to flat around her like a cloud of silk.
The water splashed into her mouth, leaving a salty metallic taste in it‘s wake. She coughed once, clearing the water that she had swallowed, then took a final, long step forward, fully engulfing her head and face.
She noticed that her vision was foggy as she peered around her, the sandy floor of the sea a grainy yellowish-brown below her. She braced herself, closed her eyes tight, and took the largest breath that she could muster up.
Her lungs filled with the salty and stale taste as the water filled her lungs up. She involuntarily coughed, forcefully expelling most of what she had taken in. She breathed in again, letting even more water in, her chest and diaphragm burning as the water took over her chest.
Within thirty seconds, she was feeling dizzy and lightheaded as her head swam with drowning. Her peripheral vision was pulsating in purple, red, and black colors, mixing and separating as her mind fought to stay alive. She let all of the remaining oxygen bubble out of her nose. She was now, as far as she could tell, empty of oxygen and full of seawater.
One full minute passed and Lola thought that she was ready to pass out. She let her arms come up to her sides and above her, sending her body floating a few feet below the surface. She felt death coming, a familiar tap on her shoulder.
“Hello again, Lola,” a deep voice said to her.
She snapped her eyes open, looking all around her and bringing her arms down into a protective pose. No one was there, as far as she could see. She spun her body around beneath the water, using her arms as propellers, searching for the source of the voice. Still, she saw no one.
She closed her eyes again, chalking the situation up to nothing more than a dying mind that was playing tricks on it‘s owner. When she finally convinced herself that the voice was nothing more than a figment of her imagination, the voice sounded off once more, this time louder and more forceful.
“Come ashore, love, and we shall speak.”
Lola’s eyes snapped open again, and once more, no one was near her. Despite the impossibility of hearing a voice relatively clearly while floating beneath ten feet of water, she still believed that it was real. She swam upward, breaking the surface of the water and letting the oxygen flow over her like a welcome friend to her drowned lungs. She had been beneath the sea for nearly five minutes and deprived of oxygen, but she wasn’t dead, she wasn’t hurt, and she wasn’t scared.
When her head was clearly above water, she coughed one time, as hard as she could, and cleared a large amount of water from her chest. She rubbed at her eyes with her closed and balled up fists, feeling the stale water on her eyeballs. She bobbed where she was, floating for a few moments before she made her way to shore. Turning to look at the sand where she was going to end up, she saw the person who was speaking to her, patiently waiting for her while leaning on a palm tree.
Dressed in white cotton drawer string pants and a white cotton shirt, an outfit common in tropical regions, was a man with the palest of skin. A simple straw hat topped his head, covering his slicked black hair. Despite his choice of head covering, Lola could see that his hair ended in a loose knot at the nape of his neck. Sunglasses of the aviator style wrapped around his eyes, blocking the sun for him.
With no more than a thought, Lola appeared on the shore in front of the man. He looked so familiar, but she had never met him in her entire existence. It felt like déjà vu, or a dream within a dream. She was seeing someone that she didn’t know, but someone whom she felt a strong connection with. Throughout her whole life, she had made no significant connection to anyone for fear of having to take their life herself, so she lived as a beautiful hermit crab, apart from society, living on the outskirts of all things normal and human, biding her time.
Lola stood toe to toe with this man. He was much taller than her, standing approximately six feet tall, almost a full foot taller than her five feet. His arms were solid and sleek with rippling muscles beneath. His skin was so pale and smooth, as though he were brushed with the finest of talcum powder.
On his face was a faint scar, barely visible, running down the left side of his face from above his eyebrow and all the way down to his jaw. His eyes bore into Lola’s in an all-knowing way, like he was peering directly into her soul.
“Who are you?” she asked the man.
“My name is Marien,” he responded, though his mouth didn’t move.
“What do you want from me?”
“We need to talk.” Marien said, this time aloud, rather than telepathically.
Her mind was racing, despite her cool demeanor. Lola was stuck between staying where she was and talking to a strange man whom she had never met, or racing off and leaving him behind and never seeing him again. She chose the latter.
Turning on her heel, Lola sped off, running east as fast as she could on the shore. Sand flew up behind her until she suddenly turned, crossed a small road, and entered a wooded area. She blazed through that and came out in an open orange grove. On and on she ran, her mind racing as fast as her legs.
After fifteen minutes of running, she came to a sudden halt, stopping a hundred miles inland. The salty smell of the ocean was gone, replaced by the smells of cow manure and earth. She was standing beside a tree in the country, crops raising upward all around her, masking her from any on-looking eyes from the farmhouse standing strong just a few hundreds yards away on a small sloping hill.
“You are fast.” Marien’s voice said to her.
She spun toward the voice, watching in awe as Marien came walking toward her from behind several tall stalks of crops. His clothing was wind blown, and his hat was gone, but his sunglasses remained.
Lola ran at him, throwing her hardest punch into his face. Marien ducked the punch, then spun as another punch hooked at him. Lola threw punch after punch, putting more and more force behind each punch.
The two beings moved back and forth with each other, Marien always blocking and ducking but never striking, Lola always throwing more and more punches and kicked. Any onlookers may have seen two powerful people dancing rather than fighting.
When Lola decided that she would never manage to hit this man, if he even was a man, she stopped altogether and stared at him.
“I can help you, if you ever stop playing these childish games.”
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