Episode 58: Scene Seven
"Have you ever felt really odd and not known why?"
Jessica nodded her head emphatically. "Oh, yes. Like my first day in the locker room at the Academy, I was still in my wheelchair and all of the girls were looking at me funny. I think it was because I was strange, but it was really because they were just stupid and didn't have anything else to occupy their time with."
"Um, that's not exactly what I was talking about. I mean feeling really strange, Jess," Kate's eyes became larger as she tried to get her message across to Jessica.
Jessica stared at Kate in confusion. "I did feel really strange, Kate. It was the strangest feeling I've ever had in my life."
Kate rubbed her temples. "Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"Is something bothering you, Kate?"
"Yes and no," Kate answered. "It's too difficult for me to explain let alone for you to understand."
"We can try."
"Let's just say I got a message that obviously has some kind of meaning to it but one that I don't understand."
"Okay, now you're starting to sound like my English lit. teacher. He always rambled on about how we had to look for deeper meaning in stuff, and it was just really confusing to me. I mean, how on earth does some dead guy's poem have to do with searching for meaning in life by means of-"
"That's great, Jess," Kate managed to interrupt, "but that's not exactly what I'm talking about either. I mean that I got this note, and it had a picture on it."
"Okay..."
"And I have a feeling that the picture was a riddle."
"Ooh, I love riddles!" Jessica exclaimed, clapping her hands wildly. She quickly settled down. "Sorry, I just get pumped about problem solving stuff."
"That's good, because I can't figure it out for the life of me." Kate pulled the wrinkled sheet of yellow paper out of her pocket. She'd chased it down a couple of minutes after she'd cast it into the wind out of sheer curiosity.
"That thing? Here, lemme take a look at it." Jessica took the paper out of Kate's hands. She bit her lip and thought as she attempted to decipher the obvious message hidden within the picture. After only a few moments of thought, Jessica handed the paper back to Kate. "It's obvious that it can only mean one thing."
"And that one thing would be?"
"Well, if there's a watch running out of a door marked out, then someone's trying to tell you that time's running out."
"What?!" Kate shouted. She hugged herself tightly in nervous tension, an idiosyncrasy that she had never been able to rid herself of. "You can't be serious, Jess. You're joking with me, aren't you?"
"It's right there, Kate. I don't see how it could mean anything else," Jessica's eyes were sad as she looked up at a nearly hysterical Kate.
"What am I going to do? Someone's after me and they're not that far away!"
"Calm down," Jessica said, placing a hand on Kate's shoulder. "We don't know what it means. It could be just one of those stupid jokes like you said earlier."
"I just said that because I didn't know what it meant. This is serious, Jessica. I could have a...a-" the word caught in Kate's throat.
"Oh, come on. Kate, you do not have a stalker. Nevertheless, I think we should go talk to a teacher or someone. People don't need to be going around scaring others like this."
"Okay." Kate began walking with Jessica. Her arms were still wrapped tightly around her because she knew in her gut that it wasn't a prank. Something was seriously wrong, but Kate still had not grasped exactly how wrong it was.