~

~

She glared at the art hanging on the wall. It was some sort of abstract painting and Talia was determined to figure out what the painter had been imagining as they created it.

The hubbub of Venice outside her hotel window was distracting and Talia walked towards the balcony to view the streets below. They were full of people and tourists. They identified a few locals, people who seemed to know exactly where they were going and walking with purpose.

Talia sighed, she loved travelling and modelling but sometimes she missed Paris.

She watched as a larger gondola began to move down one of the canals until, suddenly, it collided with a smaller boat. The crash sounded like nothing Talia had heard before

Her first thought at the sight of the woman was, 'how is she alive?'

Talia stared in horror at the woman's pale, sallow, skin and the way it wrinkled and stretched over her skull.

The building must have been a church. Talia had never been particularly religious and thus wasn't so familiar with the space, actually it made them quite uncomfortable. Their eyes flickered between the fallen cross and the woman, feeling like this was nothing but a bad dream.

A very bad dream, it seemed as the woman held a gun to her head.

Talia tried to reach forward and yank the gun from the woman but it was too late.

BANG

Their hands were gripping the railing at the edge of the balcony so tight that it hurt to unclench them. Talia stared at her hands. She had just seen– Well, you know what she had seen.

There was nothing she could do about it, right. It had to have been a dream. Nothing was really wrong, she was fine, everything was fine. But if everything was fine why did they feel a crushing fear looming over them.

She was terrified.

Talia turned her back on the city and walked back into their room, shutting the balcony door behind them.

~

~

~

~

His computer screen was giving him a headache. It was dark where Henry sat and the light from his monitor was too bright for the space, illuminating his face. Pages and pages of files were laid out on the rest of the desk.

Henry sighed, locking the computer and grabbing a few folders from the table. He packed them into his backpack and swung it over his shoulder, looking like a typical college student. The man walked out of his office and waved goodbye to his boss, Agent Lightman.

Lightman waved back as Henry turned his back to the office and walked into the elevator.

He exited the building and hailed a taxi, sliding into the backseat and offering up his address to the woman in the front seat.

Henry leaned back, sitting up sharply as he heard the tell-tale sound of two cars smashing into each other outside, a large 'CRASH'.

Henry took in the space, a church, maybe Catholic or Episcopalian, clearly abandoned for anywhere from 5-8 years.

The woman laying on the mattress in front of him was blonde with striking blue eyes and thin skin. She was anywhere from 40-50 years old. There was a large possibility she was homeless, her clothing was ragged and the dress she wore was torn at the bottom.

Henry took in every minuscule detail of her face as the woman sat up with a gasp.

He tried to open his mouth to ask her if she was okay but Henry was frozen stiff, sort of how newbies froze with a gun in their hands on their first operation. Henry had never done that, not even when he was first recruited into the CIA.

The woman raised a pistol to her temple, a classic Smith & Wesson. Henry tried to reach forward, to take the gun from her or move her hand away from her head but his body stayed frozen still.

BANG

Henry jolted up in the cab, his eyes wide and his chest heaving.

"You good back there?" The cabbie asked.

Henry nodded, "Yeah. 'm fine, thanks."

His heart was pounding and his head was spinning, it was almost as if he had just been jump-scared. Henry almost laughed, he had just been jump-scared.

The woman's face stuck in his mind as Henry tried to calm the vicious fear he felt flowing through his veins.

~

~

~

~

Valentino watched the screen that displayed the security camera footage. He watched a large man yank a gallon of milk from the refrigerated area in the store.

Val had to smile at the look an older woman gave her husband as he tried to sneak a boxed Halva into her basket. It was a look Valentino was quite familiar with because of Amarah, his older sister.

He looked up from the monitor to ring up the sweet older couple. They came in most Sunday nights to stock up before heading back to work on Monday. Val liked them, the Santos', they had two grandchildren, Anita and Sebastian. Mrs Santos loved to brag about them.

Valentino smiled as he bagged their food, highly amused by the boxed Halva he rang up. Mr Santos thanked him and the two left, leaving Valentino alone in the store with the Milk-Man.

The man stepped up to the counter and Valentino marvelled at how large he was, definitely taller than Val but mostly wider.

The man moved to lift the gallon of milk from the basket to the counter and it slipped from his hand, crashing to the floor and bursting, sending milk all over the ground.

Valentino hadn't been to church since he was a child and his sister wanted to ask God why their parents had left them alone.

This felt a lot like that. Val felt hopeless as he looked down on a blonde woman, her hair spread out around her head as if a halo. The mattress she lay on was stained, Valentino knew how gross it felt to sleep on a mattress like that as if you could never be clean again.

The woman jolted up and suddenly Valentino realized that this wasn't normal. Was he dreaming? Usually people don't dream while standing up and usually dreams don't leave one with questions.

The woman raised some sort of gun to her head.

Valentino tried to scream but no sound came out as the woman pulled the trigger.

BANG

An awful sob tore its way out of Val's throat as his knees buckled.

"I'm so sorry," the man was saying. "Hey, are you okay?"

Valentino did not feel okay. This wasn't okay. Nothing was okay.

"I can clean this up, man."

He couldn't deal with this. Val wanted to go home, he wanted his shift to be over but it wasn't. If he just left Alexi would have to fire him and Val needed this job.

Standing, on shaky legs, Val left to the back room to grab a mop. He returned to the man, "Why don't you go get another gallon of milk and I'll ring you up?"

"Sorry again, dude," the man said before walking away.

Valentino sighed, this feeling of utter hopelessness flooding through as he thought of the woman. This would have to be dealt with later, for now, he had milk to mop.

~

~

~

~

Jackzon wasn't really sure what was going on but he loved it. Reality TV was one of the greatest joys on planet earth, Jackzon had decided.

The program was Housewives of Beverly Hills, or somewhere else where the wives of rich men are assholes to each other while pretending like they're all friends.

Jackzon scooped salsa up with the chip in his hand and munched while a woman named Brandy tried to pull out another woman's hair on screen. This level of entertainment was purely chaotic and Jackzon loved it. He would legitimately pay money for more of this. Luckily there were 26 seasons of the Bachelor and 8 seasons of Dance Moms, along with the 11 seasons of the pure entertainment he was watching right now.

Sadly, he had finished watching Toddlers in Tiaras, now that was even better than this. The totally justified anger on the 4 year old's faces as they lost to some other 4 year old in a contest of looks that they don't actually care about, it was hysterical.

A bang sounded from the kitchen and Jackzon turned his head to see what it was.

Except now he was in a church. Jackzon wasn't Catholic, Protestant, Episcopalian, Methodist, or whatever other church-y religions there are. He wasn't well versed in how churches are supposed to look.

However, he knew it wasn't supposed to look like this, with all the pews knocked over and cobwebs all over the dead guy that's always in churches, Jesus.

The woman, laying on a mattress in the centre of the room, wasn't a normal fixture in a church, Jackzon was sure of it.

She sat up, so abruptly that Jackzon tried to jolt back from her but his body wouldn't allow it.

He watched, whatever humour he had found in the situation rapidly draining as he noticed the gun in her hand approach her head.

BANG

He wanted to cry. Something was wrong. That wasn't a dream, people don't dream like that, whatever that was it was awful. Jackzon would rate it a negative one billion out of ten.

Tears streamed down his face as his cat, He, meowed and batted at Jackzon's shoe. He picked up the cat, burrowing his fingers in her long fur. "Everything is okay, everything is fine," he whispered to himself.

Everything was certainly not fine.