The Sycamore Stop was a bar on the Eastern side of the city; it was a twenty-four-hour place, kitted out in light wood panelling. It wasn't the most upmarket place, but was better than a lot of the bars close by.
“Isn't it a bit early in the day to go to a bar?” he asked.
“Not the way I'm feeling, no” She replied, to which he agreed to meet her there.
He finished his coffee and started getting ready to see her. It was a short bus ride from his house to the East side and then a five-minute walk to the bar. He didn't have a car as he had no real need for one, everywhere he went and everything he did was either walkable or easy to get to by public transport. It was a very nice city to live in, more green spaces than concrete, so wherever you walked it was pleasant with ornate flower displays and towering blossoming trees. There were enough little parks dotted around that you could easily just dip into one when the traffic and hustle and bustle got too much. It was often just enough to recharge your batteries before you continued on with your journey.
Danny went through the motions and arrived at the Sycamore Stop roughly an hour later, as promised, although he noticed once again that five minutes seemed to have slipped away. He saw Monique sitting at a table, sipping what looked like a whiskey. A whiskey at 10 am? Something must be wrong. He grabbed a soft drink from the bar and hurried over to her, whereby they had a quick hug and peck on the cheek to greet each other.
“So, Whiskey eh?” He said pointing to her half-finished measure.
“Yeah, and it's not going to be my last” she said with a wry smile, “I’m sorry if you had other plans this morning, but I just had to talk to someone”
“That's fine; I had nothing planned except maybe catch up with Brandon later on. Before you say anything, can I just apologise for my behaviour Thursday night? I can't help feeling that I must have looked completely insane. I'm not sure what is happening with me. I've gone to see a psychiatrist and I think it's going to be okay, so, yeah, sorry and all that, I didn't mean to try and poop on Sam's parade”
She smiled at him with a slightly confused look.
“I'm not sure what you're talking about Danny” She replied.
“The Olivia thing” He said quickly, “It's all so real in my head, but it can't be. So, we'll just put that behind us if that's okay?”
Monique nodded, and she wasn't actually sure what Danny was referring to, but it sounded like whatever it was, was being dealt with.
“Okay, this is going to sound strange” She said resting her hand on Danny's arm, “and I'm not sure how to even start or quite what to say”
Danny touched her hand that was on his arm and smiled.
“I think I understand more than most at the moment about not knowing what to say, so just say it, I'll listen. Nothing can sound weirder than what's being going through my head for the last two days” He said.
So, she started trying to explain what she had been going through. It had started on the Friday, she woke up and was okay, but then throughout the day she kept getting flashes of images in her mind. They were brief at first but quickly gained in both intensity and duration, and they were accompanied by a high-pitched screech. Sometimes they were so strong she couldn't do anything other than drop to the floor in pain.
“What were these flashes?” asked Danny.
“Visions, of us, of this world and other things. It's hard to remember them all, there were so many” She replied, “I could see this world falling apart and dying. I had visions of great explosions in the sky and total devastation and it felt so real. It was happening to all of us, no one was safe”
This was quite a disturbing set of events that Danny was hearing and it seemed a crazy coincidence that he was experiencing things at the same time as Monique was having her own traumas occurring. There had to be some link between them, were they being drugged by someone?
“This is crazy Monique. First, I have these insane false memories that seem completely real, and now you're having strange visions too. This can't be a coincidence” He said frenziedly trying to piece it all together.
“I haven't told you the rest of it yet” She said as she gulped down the last of her whiskey before hailing the barman for another.
The barman brought another double measure over and she took a few deep breaths, trying to compose herself.
“I've seen creatures” She said nervously.
“Creatures?” Danny asked. This made him feel a lot saner than he had felt all morning.
EMMA’S JOG
Emma spent an hour and a half jogging on Saturday mornings, part of her fitness routine. She hit the gym four times in the week after work and on Saturday morning was a little extra push. She enjoyed it more than the gym work, as she was out on the trails that weaved their way through the city and out around the outskirts. It was a nice steady route from her home and enabled her to take in the scenery around the edge of suburbia, of towering hills and forests of green, a paradise close to home. Her boyfriend Alistair used to join in, but his knees had seen better days, so he had decided to call it a day. He used this hour and a half on a Saturday to sit and quietly read the newspaper. Emma only really ran for an hour; the other half an hour was where she often stopped at a friend’s house to see how they were. It meant she could take different routes each week and drop in and see someone
