Grayson (The Intro Part 3)

The rain seemed to fall harder with every passing second. Jeremy glanced over his shoulder as he was running to find no one behind him. He turned down the nearest alley still unsure if he had lost them. The towering buildings blocked some of the rain but Jeremy was more grateful for the wind block they provided.

He found a spot under a fire escape to attempt to catch his breath. Jeremy tossed his 9mm onto a box behind the dumpster and slid down the wall into a sobbing pile on the ground. Suddenly his heart began to pound as he heard running footsteps from outside the alley. He mustered himself to an absolute silence as they came to a stop just before the entrance of the alley.

“That little fuck runs to fast man!” a gruff voice exclaimed.

“Ha! If that little bitch thinks that he can get away by runnin’ he’s got another fucking thing comin’! He picked the wrong people to fuck with!” another voice agreed, as the footsteps slowly began to move in the direction from which they came. Jeremy’s arms began to tremble as they left, and slowly his whole body followed. He thought he might have been cold, so he began to blow into his hands, when he noticed the ground to his left began to look like it was moving.

He tried to adjust his eyes, blinking and rubbing them frequently but he distinctly saw movement. The ground appeared to have ripples going through it as if someone had thrown a rock in a pond. He reached down to feel the rippling but only felt cold, solid, asphalt. The waves seemed to be getting bigger as if more rocks were being thrown into the pond of the alley, while he began to hear footsteps.
He reached behind the dumpster he was next to and found his 9mm on the box coated in a light film of water and cardboard residue. Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut trying to block out the rippling in the ground below him, and focus on his survival. The footsteps seemed to stop right next to him, so he turned his head up and pinched open one eye.

Standing next to him was a college aged looking girl, in a tattered outfit and dirty blonde hair. It was evident to Jeremy that this girl was homeless, and as he opened his other eye, he noticed a melted candle and a box of matches. The girl had a mortified look on her face, staring at the gun in Jeremy’s hand. He noticed and quickly concealed the weapon in his torn leather jacket.

“Oh sorry. Uh. Do you live here?” Jeremy inquired as he rose, patting his pants. The girl’s breaths were short and riddled with fear. “Don’t worry I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not a mur-“ Jeremy stopped himself mid-word realizing he was about to lie to this girl. “I’m not a dangerous person.”

“Y, y, yeah I live here.” The girl’s shame was evident in her radiant green eyes that fell to the floor as she spoke. “B, but if you need it I can probably go find somewhere else.” She shivered.

“It’s pouring. Why don’t we share the spot?” Jeremy offered. He would have told anyone else to get lost, but something felt right about this girl to Jeremy, it felt wrong to let her leave. “Here go ahead sit down.” He motioned to the girl to sit where he had just been sobbing. The girl uneasily complied, all the while keeping focused on his chest, with anxiety. Jeremy sat leaning against a trash can facing the girl.

“So what’s your name?” He crossed his arms as he settled into a comfortable position.

“Alice. Alice Burke. Uh, what’s yours?” she trembled as she spoke.

“Jeremy Gray. But most people call me Grayson. Relax. Really. It’s alright I just need to stay here to lay low for a few hours.” He explained attempting to ease her discomfort.

“Why do you need to lay low?” she inquired, mildly accepting his reassurances.

“I did some things that some people aren’t very happy with. Hell I’m not happy with it.” Jeremy chuckled.

“What did you do?” her anxiety seemed to slowly be resurfacing.

“Well, I’ve use cryozyte from time to time.” Her face lit up with the mention of cryozyte.

“You don’t happen to have any on you. Do you?” she suggested.

“I actually do happen to have a couple of wafers on me. You freeze I’m assuming.” Jeremy began to dig in the pocket of his jeans.

“I don’t really have any reason not to; except money of course. Um, I think I have a transfer card in my purse somewhere.” She began to frantically search the large brown fake leather bag to her left.

“It wouldn’t do any good.” Jeremy produced a small blue baggy with two pale wafers in it. “My account’s most likely being monitored. They’d find me as soon as I accepted the transfer. Just think of it as me paying rent for this spot.” He handed her a wafer. “Cheers.” They both held up their wafers to cheer and placed them under their tongues. “These take about five minutes.” Jeremy informed.

“Nice! Thank you. So what’s up Grayson? People are after you and monitoring your account because you use zyte?” she inquired more openly now. It seemed that the ingestion of drugs made her more comfortable with Jeremy. Jeremy chuckled.

“Well, not quite. I’ve been seeing stuff recently. And not like someone with freezer burn, I mean weird stuff. I keep seeing these waves in everything. More and more often it looks like everything’s making these waves.” Jeremy readjusted his sitting position.

“Yeah, usually with freezer burn you start to see in black and white, not waves.” She laughed.

“Well, I was at my dealer’s house today getting my usual zyte order and he had on this music. It was like neometal with techno and tribal drums. It wasn’t good at all. It was horrible, and I started to see these waves everywhere. I told him what was going on, and the bastard turned it up! When, I went to turn it down he grabbed my hand and I don’t know what happened but the next thing I knew he was splattered across his painting of Yosemite on the wall across from me!” He saw the anxiety in his companion rise, as her eyes once again focused on the gun in his jacket. “I didn’t shoot him. He kept his gun in the kitchen drawer. So I was freaking out because my dealer just happens have mafia connections, and from what I understood these guys liked him a lot. Which wasn’t hard; Jay had one of those personalities that everyone likes. And it just happened to be my luck that as I’m freaking out about my splattered dealer the door chimes! So I run to his kitchen and start beating on the drawer his gun’s in because of course his drawers don’t recognize my prints. Then I hear these guys outside his door shouting about how he’s going to smash the door in, and who does Jay think he is trying to skip out on payments or something like that. So I bust open the drawer finally and grab the gun as these guys start pounding on the front door. I’m freaking out at this point because there’s no back door and no windows I could climb through. So I aimed at the door and waited until they broke it down.” Alice was leaning forward with her hands folded, focusing intently on Jeremy.

“Then what?” She urged him.

“Well, they broke down the door! There were these three big guys in the doorway. I ran forward and fired a couple of rounds. The two on the sides dove out of the way, but I know I hit the center guy because he went flying backwards in a mist of blood when I ran over him. After that I ran as fast as I could, for as long as I could until the other two guys couldn’t follow me anymore. That’s how I got here.”Jeremy sighed.

“Wow!” Alice blinked in amazement. “But why do you think they’re monitoring your account? Or even know who you are?” she questioned puzzled.

“I was buying something hand to hand, not with a chip reader. I had to use a transfer card to be able to transfer the money to him.” Jeremy began.
“You left your transfer card?!” Alice exclaimed. “Well that wasn’t a very good –“ Jeremy could see her pupils instantly double in size, as she quickly shivered, and slowly leaned back against the dumpster.

He smiled as he felt a familiar cool sensation crawling up his spine to the base of his skull. His body twitched in a slight shiver as his eyes rolled up and he sank into his comfortable position.