Part 1: Deven
"Good gravy!" was all Danni Carter could utter under her breath when she first spotted Megan Lacey. She approached the distraught, nervous young woman cautiously, struck by the agonized expression she wore, and those eyes. Her eyes were black and dull and uninterested. How could the woman's face emote such distress yet her eyes remain so unemotional? Danni's thoughts were a mental racket, stumbling over one another in their flurry.
"Should you chance standing on that chair? It doesn't look very stable." Good going dumb ass, the last thing she's worried about is a rickety chair!
Megan hadn't heard Danni's first exclamation, but the second time she spoke, Megan swept her eyes in the direction of the voice for a brief moment and then she went back to her task. In her mental agitation, she was reenacting a depressing past, twisting it into a nightmarish future, giving herself the will for what she must do. She was already dead inside; there would be no need for fanciful notes, or good-byes. She had her plan orchestrated already. She knew each fine detail. There would be no modifications.
"Look, Ms. I can't just stand here and watch you go through with that." Danni stopped a few feet away from Megan, staring up at her. Careful now, no need to go all Xena on the woman, she can so easily slip her head into the noose and that would be it. Keep her calm and get her down from there.
Part 2: LissaDanni swiveled her hand-held radio and pulled it free of her belt. Without taking her amber eyes off of the young woman, she pressed the talk button and whispered “Unit 3 to base.” No answer came.
Urgency filled her voice as she repeated “Unit 3 to base!” Shit. Danni, realizing she’d spoken a good deal louder the second time than she had the first, visibly cringed. But the woman standing on the weathered folding chair never moved a muscle. She stared straight ahead clutching a new nylon rope tightly in her white-knuckled grip. Her shoeless feet stood perched perilously close to the edge of the now teetering chair.
“Please . . . please don’t fall. I couldn’t stand to see you hurt.” Danni froze, still staring up at the vision in front of her. How could anyone this striking consider taking her own life? Mentally, she shook her head. Well that was stupid. Beauty’s no guarantee of happiness.
Suddenly, the rectangular black box Danni held tightly in her right hand squelched loudly. “This is base, unit 3; sorry Danni, I was in the can. What’s up? More teenagers?”
“No Al.” Danni could barely find her voice through the pounding of her heart, not to mention the fact she’d nearly dropped her radio. “I need some help down here by the Tilt-A-Whirl. Call the locals and tell ‘em we have a possible 11-45.”
“Will do,” came the happy-go-lucky reply from her completely oblivious co-worker.
Danni sighed heavily. He has no idea what an 11-45 is.
Somewhere in Megan’s painfully clouded mind the uniformed woman’s voice finally registered. Is it possible? Does someone in this cold, manipulative world actually give a damn if I live or die? There was something in the auburn haired woman’s voice that had begun to splinter Megan’s unwavering resolve to see her well-constructed plan through to fruition.
