I know that something is wrong because Patrick starts barking — something he only does if he's under extreme duress. Looking back, there were several things that should have caught my attention and raised my guard before that moment. Because there was also the way the police had been acting strangely, like they had an itch they couldn't reach. Come to find out, the cause of that unreachable itch were bombs - set to go off in unnamed cities, at any time. But they weren’t acting strangely enough to bother me.
That night, I was sleeping with my hand underneath my cheek, so that when I awoke with a start as soon as Patrick started yapping, there was a blue X on my cheek; the same blue X that had been stamped on my hand at the club earlier that evening.
All I knew when I awoke was that my mouth was extremely dry, my head pounding within the confines of my skull. There wasn't any water on my bedside table, so I clumsily got to my feet and stalked into the kitchen.
Patrick followed closely behind me, and I tried to shoo him away on more than one occasion.
Living on my own meant he was my only companion when I opened the door, the one who came to the door and gave me wet kisses. But that didn't mean that I couldn't find him annoying. Like I do now.
I find him scratching at the back door when I begin walking back to my room, and I willingly let him out. I'd do anything so I could get more sleep, fall into bed and forget about this evening.
When I'm about to close the door, I think that maybe I saw someone in the distance. A man. A well fitted white shirt. Patrick comes running back in, the fastest I've ever seen him run. I chalk it up to him wanting a treat, preferably two.
I close the door, thinking that I'm going crazy because I've been lonely for so long. Yeah, mom, you heard me: I saw a man in my backyard last night. And then he came into the house and said he had been searching for me, I was his long lost love. Yeah, right, I grumble and plop onto my bed.
I jump to a few moments later when I hear Patrick yelp from the entrance to my room, followed by a long, low whimpering. I look up to see the man in the white fitted shirt, knife bloody in his left hand. He doesn’t say anything when I stumble out of bed, reach for my bedside lamp, and then brandish it as a weapon.
He just comes closer to me, that knife glinting ominously in the moonlight. I can see blood dripping from its tip.
“Get away from me!” I scream, waving the lamp in front of his face.
“Get away from her,” a man says from the shadows.
He comes forward, wearing jeans and a ruffled shirt, and I scream.
I can barely remember ducking out of the way as the two men start to fight each other, the butt of a gun making a dull thud against a skull, the knife glinting as white-fitted-shirt fell to the ground. And then it was over - and I looked up to see the man in the dark blue t-shirt. Posing? Is he trying to look like that as he bends down to search through the man’s pockets?
“I’m sorry, what is going on here?”
“I’m a spy. This man is searching me out so he can kill me because I’m trying to get to the bottom of a possible bomb. While you were out,” he continues, totally unfazed as he looks through the man’s identification cards, “I broke in to try and give myself some cover. He just so happened to see me behind you when you opened the door in the middle of the night, and promptly invaded your house.”
“And now what? My dog is dead.”
“I’m very sorry about that. Lots of casualties happen in this line of business,” he sets his gun down on the counter across from my bed. “I suggest that you take off from work, recover.”
“What about this guy? Are you taking him out?” I ask, hopping over the unconscious body and following dark-blue-tee.
“No, I have to get going. That’s why I left you the gun so that you can wave him out.”
“You’re leaving me?!” I screech.
“I have to. Otherwise, he’ll kill me and you.”
I’m about to argue even further with him when unconscious-white-fitted-shirt is suddenly conscious-and-pissed-white-fitted-shirt. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he answers, and we both whirl to see him squeeze the trigger, and then dark-blue-tee tackles me to the ground… and rolls me?
Before I can even wrap my head around it, dark-blue-tee jumps up and grabs a vase from off my table, wrenches the white-fitted-shirt arm up, so that he fires bullets into my ceiling, breaks the vase over his head, wrestles the gun from his hand, twists him to the ground, and then shoots him twice in the chest.
I scream when he walks towards me, grabbing my hand and pulling me along. But as we walk outside of my house, all I can think to say is, “That was my grandmother’s vase.”
“You’re coming with me,” is all he says in a gruff voice.
“Um, no.” I try to wriggle out of his grip but he just wraps his arm around my waist.
“You’re coming with me, otherwise they will think you murdered him. So either the police will throw you in a cell, or the people looking for me will follow his tracker, see the disarray of your house, and shoot you - or worse, torture you.”
“....So what is your plan?”
“The bomb I'm searching for is situated in Madrid, Spain. The others - like the one nearby - is being handled by other agents. You’re coming with me.”
“There's a bomb nearby?! Where?” I fight against him. “I don’t have my wallet. Not like I had enough money to go to Spain anyway but -”
“I’ll pay for you,” he answers, looking straight ahead.
“Wait, what?”
“I’ll pay for you,” he says again.
And that was when I realized I could use him... Much like he would probably use me as a human shield if anyone ever threw a bomb at him. But I could use him, get him to take me around the world on the search for a bomb. He could pay for me. He could pay for everything! So as he drags me along, and then onto a bus, and then onto a plane, while he waits for me to change into a dress instead of my torn PJ’s, as he tries to ignore me when I pretend to fall asleep against his bicep on the plane, a mischievous smile slowly spreads on my face.
