My Name is Hunter

I shouldn’t have come here.

The moment I stepped out of that bus terminal, A heavy ominous wave swept over me like dark smoke. The lingering weight of it left me feeling burdened by imaginary crows settling on either of my shoulders, squawking endless garbled warnings into my head. Along with the warnings is a messy mix of emotions...gloom, fear, anger, anxiety, despair...shoved into me all at once that I’m forced to heave a couple of heavy breaths to fight the urge to plop down in middle of the sidewalk and laugh-cry like a retard.

I feel a headache forming on either side of my temples.

C’mon, Hunter, get it together - I tell myself as I place a hand across my forehead, massaging it. I breathe. It’s times like this that I curse my ESP abilities. While it may sound cool to possess supernatural abilities and be “in tune with the force” as the movies have put it, sometimes being able to “feel” everything can be very overwhelming. Suffocating. Like gulping down more water than you can swallow, or like having invisible walls closing in on you. It’s no wonder introverts are always looking for the quiet. The peace. The space to just... breathe.

Unfortunately, standing out here under the blistering heat of the 3pm sunlight isn’t helping make the headache subside. It’s not just the heat either. My ears are being bombarded by a chaotic chorus of the traffic of both cars and people surrounding me. City cars honk like children on a tantrum. Footsteps drum on gravel. Chatters buzz like that annoying TV static.

Geez, do I really wanna live in a place like this?

Do you even have a choice, Hunter?

The self-depreciating voice in my head decided to pitch in. And he spat my name like venom. He...It.. first came to me 3 years ago on the night of the worst day of my life, after I woke up screaming from a nightmare that is now just a blur of death and blood and tears...and a gun shot. But I could never forget the chill I felt from the sound of his voice - which is a haunting copy mine - cackling from the glass door beside me. I found myself in a holding cell of some sort, and there he was - my reflection sneering at me with a terrifying glint of mischief in his eyes while I swore my shocked gaze and agape mouth was not wearing a trace of a smile. Since then, he became the thick haze that constantly shrouded the faintest ray of hope and happiness that dare try to pierce through my burdened sole. He egged my self doubts, poured fuel on my hatred and tried to drown me in my own despair with every chance he coud get.

I mean, it’s not like you can just march right back in there and expect him to take you in with open arms. Not after you walked out on him just like that, I mean pfft!

I can almost sense him - my other more cynical self - crossing his arms, with his mouth curved up in a smug grin and one brow raised.

Hey, shut up, will 'ya? You know it didn’t happen like that. Actually, he was-

Riiiiiinggg!...Riiiiinggg!

And as if on cue, my phone rings and vibrates in my jeans pocket. With a nervous smile, I pull it out to find His name and stony dark face on the caller ID.

“Hey, boss,” I greet through the line as I try to hide the tension in my voice. Man, why do feel guilty all of a sudden? Am I really letting what that crack case version of myself get to me?

Silly Hunter. You’re just as crazy as I am, you know? 'Cause I’m you.

SHUT UP!

Inside my head, The crack case me chuckles like a hyena and I feel my face contort into an irritated pout.

“Hey, kid! So, how’re we doin?” Boss practically shouts over the line making me wince. But the apparent excitement in his voice draws a large grin on my face.

“Um, I just got off the bus.” I say, glancing back at the terminal, then continue, while craning my neck at the direction where my ride is supposed to come from “And I’m still waiting for my ride to the apartment. It’s um...another bus, apparently.” I slump at the last part and he chuckles at me in response then says “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll get used to it. By the way, you feelin fired up for your interview tomorrow?”

I slump further and exhale.

“Not really.” Oh the job interview “I’m uh...I’m actually pretty nervous so thank you very much for reminding me, boss, really.”

Boss laughs out again over the line and says to me “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” I can almost feel his large hand patting my shoulder “And Hunter, you don’t have to call me boss, y’know? Since you don’t work for me anymore. Just Henry, okay? So what’s got you worked up. It’s not like you to - ”

“I don’t know” I look down at the gravel “What if, what if I don’t get the job. Henry, I need this job.” My teeth mashed together tightly at the word “need”.

“Like I said, champ. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.” The brightness never left the tone of his voice. Yeah, that’s easy for you to say. I imagine Henry sat in his office slouched in his chair and there’s a light beer and some chips on his table just an arm's reach from him.

“But, Boss...I mean, Henry -”

There’s an almost inaudible ‘Hmm’ over the line and I can feel him raise an eyebrow. ESP perk.

“See, I left because I thought I could find something better here. But what if - what if don’t get the job. I-It’s not like my apartment is going to pay for itself, and there’s other things too like food -” Henry stays silent while I ramble but I know he’s judging me now, but I can’t help it “What if I fail it would have all been for nothing. Y’know, leaving and...coming here.”

Maybe it’s just the heat, or this ominous air looming around my head but my emotions are all over the place. And it feels as if I’m just making excuses for being a pathetic nervous wreck. Geez, what is wrong with me today?

Awkward silence falls on us over the line and I squirm as I replay inside my head the last words I told Henry. It feels as if his next words would be a hard slap on the face.

“Hey, is this still Hunter I’m talkin to?” Aaand there it is.

His voice goes through the line low, calm and cold “I mean, where’s that homeless, scrawny, bruised up 15-year-old kid who came to me, wearing nothing but a run-down hoody, jeans and sneakers, looking for a job? Where’s that kid who wanted the job and the free lodging so bad, he swore he could do any work I throw at’im and looked at me like he could punch a hole right through me if he wanted to. Where the heck, is that kid, Hunter?” There's a pause and I close my eyes as I exhale the breath I didn’t realize I was holding while I listened to him. Henry’s voice comes through the phone again, just as the bus I’ve been waiting for for a good 30 mins come into view “Cause he’s the one who’s gonna land the job. Not this pathetic whiner who’s practically giving up before he’s even started.”

Aim, fire, and bull’s eye. I wince as Henry’s words shoot straight through my chest. The guy was...is the closest thing I have to a father right now and I respect everything about him and everything he stands for. So hearing those words from him feels like a bullet to the heart.

I was so engaged in my own self-loathing that I didn’t realize that I'd been staring up at the open door, in a trance and unmoving, until I notice the last person...well, people - a middle aged couple boarding the bus. The woman who seem to be pregnant carefully steps on the inclines while holding on to the conductor’s guiding hand. Her husband, probably, lingers behind her with his hand on her upper back to keep her steady.

I smile and nearly got lost down memory lane had the conductor not spoken to me

“Hey, kid. You boarding?” he asks.

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I scramble to the bus door and jog up the inclines. “Henry, yeah, just got on the bus.” I say in a hurry as I reset the phone up my ear “I’ll call you later when I get to my apartment. And, Henry, ” a brief silence. My next words come out low and quiet, almost like I’m reluctant to say them “I’m just nervous, okay. But I’m not giving up. I’m gonna - ”

“I know.” I feel him shrug over the line and I can’t help the smile.

The bus jumps and I realize that it’s started to move so I grab on to the closest grip bar I can find, which is next to the priority seat at the front, across from the driver’s. There, I make a quick eye contact with the pregnant woman sat on that priority seat.

Somehow I know that this woman and I will meet again at another time. But that, is something I gonna worry about when it comes. I give her a soft smile and she returns it to me.

Fighting the urge to keep staring into her warm brown eyes, and failing horribly, I speak into my phone “Gotta go, Henry. I’ll call you later. I promise.” And with that, I drop the call and deposit the phone into my front pocket, thankful that I bought a small basic one. A quick nod and I tear my eyes away from her, feeling my face heat up more than it already has. And she giggles in response. Real smooth, Hunter.

“Where to?” the conductor suddenly asks. I chance a look at him and take in his features as I contemplate his question. He is a tall, tan skinned man, possibly in his early thirties, with dark small eyes and he wears a royal blue polo shirt with the name of the bus company embossed on his right chest pocket.

“Oh I’m -” the bus makes a big jump and I nearly fall over.

“Hold on, now” He says and I comply.

“Getting off at Boni Ave.” I answer after getting back my bearings.

Then the conductor types in something on what seems to be a portable receipt printing machine before he tears of the paper that the machine coughed out.

“That’ll be P20.00.” he says.

“Oh. Okay.” I produce the bill from the spare change I hastily put in my pocket a while back and hands it to the conductor. All the while, I can feel him gazing at me, pretending to look away or at least trying to look nonchalant. I stifle a giggle.

Gets them every time.

It must be my two colored eyes - one is a bright yellow green and the other an almost neon shade of cyan. Match them with my pale complexion and my ashen blond hair, I must really look foreign to him.

Mr. Conductor takes the orange bill, awkwardly, and clears his throat before squeezing around me to get to the other newly boarded passengers.

I then survey the bus and suddenly grow self-conscious as I notice quite a pair eyes staring up at me, so I meekly pull my hood over my head as I wobble down the aisle heading to an empty seat at the back.

I'm eyeing a seat by the window. Next to it, sat by the aisle, is a pale skinned curly haired young man who’s possibly just a few years older than me. He hardly noticed me coming as he gazes out the window across the other side of the bus.

I tap his shoulder, tearing him away from whatever he was listening to on his black unnecessarily large headset.

And sure enough, as soon as his eyes meet mine, they linger there awkwardly before anything else registers.

I smile slightly, stifling a giggle.

“Um excuse me,” I ask as politely as I can manage, gesturing to the empty seat next to him, “Mind if I -” He ogles at me for a moment before he blinks.

“Oh,” he blurts finally, coming out of the trance, “N-Not at all, please.” He stutters then scoots outward to give me room to squeeze in toward the seat by the window.

“Thanks” I oblige with a smile, clutching my bag in front of me with only one strap hung on my shoulder.

Once I’m squeezed in, I collapse on the seat with sigh and put the bag down in front of me. The weight of it drops with a thud, making the nice guy next to me flinch.

“Sorry,” I smile and shrug apologetically up at him.

The young man stares at the bag wide-eyed, then looks down at me, chuckling as he asks “Dude, did you pack your entire house entire in there?”

“I wish” I respond, chuckling as I rub my eye “I mean, if I could pack a house in here, it would save me from those dreadful rent expenses.”

He chuckles. Crisp, light and pleasant bells ring in my ears. His round brown eyes sparkle through a pair of curve slits while a cute dimple dents his left cheek.

“Taking a vacation? You look...foreign.” He asks, though hesitating to get that last word out, probably afraid it might somehow offend me.

I shake my head with a small smile, then answer with a shrug “I’m moving in, actually. And, despite how I look I grew up in this country. My mom’s Filipina. My dad’s American though.”

“Oh, I see...guess that explains why you seem so fluent with the native language, huh?”

I shrug and smile, which he takes as a yes. But even as he leans back I catch him glancing up at my face, looking away whenever he thought I caught him staring. To this, I had to bite my lip stifle the giggle. He’s obviously brimming with curiosity about my eye color, and most likely my general appearance, but for some reason, he’s suppressing the urge to ask them. Whether if it’s out of courtesy or mere shyness, I’ll never find out.

Our bus, along with the rest of the traffic, moves at a sluggish pace. Thankfully, I found myself seated next to a guy who can seamlessly keep a conversation flowing from one hilarious topic to another. I mostly just nod and laugh while I let him do practically all the talking. Although, most of his stories were of other people’s. I can’t help but take notice of the way he glides over his personal life and skillfully moving on to ‘this other guy who did this and then that’.

I opted to pretend not to notice.

Everyone’s got a corpse in their trunk I guess.

“...Can you believe it?” the young man speaks laced with laughter “He actually walked past the ladies with his butt cheeks showing through the holes in his pants. And, had the nerve to smolder at them! Man, he’s such a riot.”

I chuckle saying “You think he noticed? Surely, he felt the breeze.”

“Dunno” He leans back “If he did, he was probably owning it.” And then lets out a sigh before chuckling to himself as he shakes himself. But the humor doesn’t reach his eyes. For the first time since he started talking, he went at least ten seconds not saying a word.

I take his silence as a cue to simmer down. I lean back, tilting my head up but as I let my body fall onto the back of the seat, the exhaustion that’s been building up since I set out for this trip suddenly washes over me and I feel my eyelids flutter as sleepiness begins to take over me.

Uh uh, no way.

I sit up to try and fight the sleep. Hell, there is no way I’m falling asleep in this bus and missing my stop. Now that I’m truly on my own, I can’t count on anyone to lend me a hand if I got lost in this place. I can’t -

My eyelids flutter as my vision flicks in and out. Last thing I can remember was turning to the window and feeling my head bob under its own weight. My entire body was suddenly made of rocks. Rigid, heavy and numb.

* * * *

“Woah!” A familiar voice exclaims. I open my eyes to find myself nearly fallen over if not for my friendly seatmate catching me by the chest. “Oh my God, are you okay?”

“W-what?” I blink a few times as I slowly sit up and try to recollect my senses. “Um, sorry,” I give him a soft smile and a shrug as I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes. Suddenly, something sharp rings in my head and I verbally wince as I clutch the side of my head. Those foreboding whispers that I manage to ignore for a few moments are now practically wailing in my head.

Whatever sort of danger this ominous air is trying to warn me about, it's probably close...Very close. I just hope that I’ll be powerful enough to stop it.

“W-what’s wrong? Hey!” My seatmates’ voice ooze with concern as his hand slides up my shoulder and he leans over to get a better look at me “Are you sick? Talk to me, man.”

“I-it’s nothing. Just a headache.” I force a smile at him, while my hand is still planted on my forehead. “I’m... probably just tired. Where are we now?”

“We haven’t gotten far, still in Cubao.” He answers, his big brown gentle eyes never leaving mine.

“Oh” I glance out the window to find our ride still stuck in heavy traffic.

“Are you sure you’re alright? You just fell over all of a sudden.” He lets go of me, but concern still lace his expression “Where are you getting off?”

“Um, Boni Ave” I lean back.

“Great! I’m getting off at the next station after yours, so you should get some rest. Luckily, this heavy traffic will let you sleep a little longer. I just hope you’re not in a hurry or something. I’ll wake you when we get to your stop.” Woah, wasn’t expecting that.

“You would?” I stare at him.

“Sure.” He shrugs and smiles at me.

The rational part of me says not to give in to his obvious probably deceitful charm, but another part of me, the esper, is nothing but smiles and thumbs up about this guy. And that, makes me all the more confused. There’s definitely something about this guy, and I sensed it the moment I first laid eyes on him. Who the hell is he?

“Don’t worry, I won’t make miss you your stop.” He adds chuckling, probably sensing my doubt. Then, he holds out his hand to me as he says “By the way, I’m Daniel.”

Oh, right. Geez, I can’t believe I’ve been talking with this guy for the last thirty minutes or so and I didn’t even bother asking his name.

I unglue my hand from my head and take his “Hunter”

“That’s a strange name.”

“Yeah, I guess it is. Um, Daniel?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Daniel chuckles in response and flashes an eye vanishing, dimple showing smile as I close my eyes and allow my weary body to collapse onto the seat.

For a brief moment, a strange sort of silence hangs in the air around me. It's calm and light, almost lulling, I might just as well call it ‘peace’ - something I haven't felt in a long while. And I'm not surprised to find that it's Daniel radiating this heavenly feeling as he’s slumped on his seat, eyes closed and head back with that large headset clamped on his ears.

I let the peace embrace me as I push aside the dark air that’s been looming around me. I don’t even care how reckless I’m being ignoring these warning bells in my head because right now, I just want to enjoy this rare moment of peace....while it lasts...

* * * *

5 minutes...

8 minutes...

10...15.....

All of a sudden, a sharp ringing pierces through the tranquil clouds in my head and then shoots an equally sharp pain through my temples. When I open my eyes, everything spins and blur and I quickly squeeze them shut again and blink before finally getting my world back into focus. Only then do I realize that that sharp ringing is actually a woman’s voice shrieking in horror.

Daniel and I only had a brief moment to lock eyes - his wide with shock and terror, mine squinted in deep anxiety and concentration - before the bus very suddenly halts, throwing us both to the thankfully cushioned head board of the seats in front of us.

Though, I still manage to hurt my wrists as I instinctively pushed my palms against back of the seat during the sudden break.

I hear the bus door hiss open, instantly followed by an outburst of screams and thumps and rustling as people scramble to get out from their seats and out the bus. Angry honking of horns from vehicles surrounding ours soon joins in the sudden chorus of chaos.

“Agh! Daniel, you okay?” I breathe, looking over to my new friend to find him sunk into his seat, shaking and frozen. His eyes wide in unbelieving horror as he stares toward the front of bus.

“Dan?” I call softly, my brows furrowing, but there come no response.

Ignoring the pounding in my head brought on by both the rising commotion and the panic wailing of my supernatural sensory, I attempt to stand up along with everybody else. “Daniel, what’s going on?” I ask rather impatiently as I crane my neck in a haste to get a peek at the source of the commotion. I had just managed to stand enough to see an unconscious man’s head lolling forward as something holds him up by the collar of his shirt, when Daniel tackles me and sends me crashing back down into the corner by the window. And a barely audible ‘Uhf!’ was all I could manage as my left elbow connects with the bus window’s metallic frame, sending a sharp tingling pain that ran across the entire length of my arm, before a body hurtles and crashes onto the back window hard enough to generate a very loud thud and the sound of glass breaking.

I wince, mostly from the violent crash than the pain in my arm.

“Mama!” Daniel yelps pressing onto me harder, his shaking frame latches onto my right arm, while a throbbing pain begins to form in my left elbow. Pain that I seem to be able to tolerate at the moment as I watch the lifeless body of the man I’ve come to recognize as our bus driver slide down from the cracked window and land onto the seat next to us, leaving a trail of blood from where his body slid off the window down to the back of the seat. Right now, I am starting to regret my choice to take the seat at the very back.

Blood seeps out from a rupture at his chest, though I can’t see the extent of the damage from our vantage point. And, as gravity pulls down his limp unresisting limbs, his body bends slightly sideways to our direction. His head follows the motion.

I hear Daniel whimpering into my right arm, probably praying for the same thing as I am, but unlike me, he had enough sense not to look up.

Blood drains from my face and chill rises up my spine to the back of my neck as I watch the dead man’s head turn sideways to our direction until it sat rested onto the back of the seat, and I find myself staring at my own horror stricken reflection in the abyss of the dark, dilated pupils in his glazed eyes. His mouth is clearly dead frozen in a muted scream, with blood and saliva dripping down from the corners, but I swear that I heard an eerily choked raspy voice blowing into my ear - Save me, it begged.

So, either this man’s spirit doesn’t know his corporeal vessel has already expired, or I really am spiraling down into the depths of insanity brought about by a string of tragedies know as my life. Either way, I have to thank Daniel’s boyish whimpering and his tightening hold on my arm for nudging me back to my senses.

I blink and shake my head, then grab Daniel by the shoulders as I unpeel him off of me.

“Hunter?” He looks up at me with watery eyes as he reluctantly let’s go.

Someone screams and another mangled body, a woman this time, suddenly hurtles to the back of the bus almost in the same way as the first one except she, thankfully, landed further onto the other side of the bus before sliding down next to the first corpse. But my relief was short-lived as the momentum of the latest crash managed to knock over the bus driver’s body and his lifeless head ends up lying next to my lap, his glassy eyes landing directly in front of Daniel.

He squeals, rather girlishly, And it took nearly everything in me to stifle a giggle. Daniel notices anyway and pouts as he whispers “Cut it out, it’s-” He risks a glance at the corpse’s face but regrets it instantly, biting his lips as he frantically fishes for a hanky in his jeans pocket and squeaks as he throws it onto the corpses face.

I couldn’t hold in the giggle as he whisper-shouts at me “It’s looking at me!”

I chuckle “Just be grateful it’s not talking to you.”

“Not funny-” Daniel hisses up at me but he was cut off. We both freeze to the sound of a woman’s horrifying scream calling out some guy’s name, ‘John’ I think, followed by a loud thud that makes us both wince.

Daniel whimpers as he places his hands on his ears, mumbling unintelligible prayers, while I stay frozen as the sound of painful grunting followed by a disgusting squishing and crunching sound that are overlapped by an abrupt choking cry barely reaches my ears, if not for my heightened senses.

The woman whimpered and sobbed, fear apparent in the amount of suppressing she puts into every sound she can’t help but make, then she gasps.

Instinct tells me to look up. And I let out a surprised gasp of my own when I see a limp body flying over the seats on our side of the bus and hurtling straight towards us. Fortunately for Daniel, he's hunched over, small and hidden, against the seat in front of us with his eyes closed and hands on his ears, while I'm stuck gawking at the bloody projectile of tan flesh and pressed linen flailing overhead towards us.

Shit! I cuss under my breath.

One small piece of the forbidden language managed to shake me up just in time to grab Daniel by the shoulder and dive with him towards the aisle and out of the way the falling corpse. It lands back first with a thud onto the seat I was on just seconds ago before it slides off and drops into a bloody pile of flesh and clothing on the bus floor. He lay there face up revealing his eyes frozen in shock, his mouth slightly parted with blood generously pouring down his lower lip and chin, and worst of all a large gaping hole in his chest finally paints a picture to that squishing, crunching, choking sound from a little while back. His legs bend in an awkward angle trapped against the wall just beneath the window. His arms spill into the aisle as they lay uncurled next to my sandaled feet.

Daniel begins to shift from underneath me.

“Sorry” I breathe as I hastily push myself off of him, earning me a painful protest from my injured left arm. I flinch to the heavy pain that erupted from my elbow and I bite my teeth to suppress the urge to grab it.

“Hunter, you okay, man?” Daniel seems to have noticed anyway. He slides off from under me, sits up, then reaches out to touch my elbow.

I grit down at the brush stroke cat print on his shirt, “Yeah, I’m fine -”

A chocking sound, and Daniel’s body suddenly freezes. Words, and blood circulation died on me when my eyes travel up to his head and see him clutching a snake like constrict that looks a lot like human skin and flesh around his neck, desperately trying to pull it off while his pinkish white complexion begins to fade into a dull purplish hue and his pupils are slowly climbing up the back of his eyes.

Looming behind Daniel is a dazed woman, seemingly in her early twenties. Her fair skin, just barely covered by a white tank top under a pastel pink see-through tunic over tight denim shorts, glistened with profuse sweating. She is beautiful, with her long wavy black hair smoothly running down her back, and a nice full fringe framing her small face and accentuating her dark almond eyes. She would have looked perfect if not for the huge splatter of fresh blood on her skin and clothing and the strangely stretched out arms, ala rubber man, that is currently wrapped around my new friend’s neck like a boa constrictor.

Panic begins to rise in my throat as I realize that Daniel's struggling form is being pulled away and upward, further tightening the woman’s choke hold on him. Her expression remains blank and distant, her dark eyes two deep wells of undisturbed water.

“H-Hunt-” Daniel chokes as one of his hands lets go of the constrict to reach out for me.

“Damn it!” I cuss as I spring up, ignoring my protesting arm. With my good arm, I reach up and grab the pale sweaty smooth band of flesh constrict on Daniel’s neck. And my heart skips a beat as I watch his hand begin to go limp, consciousness leaving him.

I’m a little out practice, but I’ve got to do this - for Daniel -and I’ve got to do it right.

Furrowing my brows in concentration, I feel a rather excited tendril of heat traveling from my stomach up to my spine, then rides my shoulder blades before traveling down my arms. I then release the heat through my fingers in the form of electrical tendrils and send them under the skin of the fleshy constrict before I will the current to explode, shocking the grip out of the woman’s arm. Or at least, it was supposed to.

I feel her grip loosen, a little, but she doesn’t let go.

But unfortunately, so do I. I keep my hold on her fleshy rubber arm even as she raises a now unconscious Daniel and I have to point my toes just to keep myself from letting go. Her sweat though is making my hands slip.

But, I..am..not..letting..the hell Go!

Her hold tightens again and a new wave of panic rises up my spine as I feel Daniel’s life force slipping away, almost in sync with the weakening beat of his heart and the color draining from his skin.

Police and ambulance sirens begin to blare from the outside, but I opted to ignore them, clumping them with all the other background noises that might have me on my knees with a migraine have I not been tuning them out - honking cars, incessant chatters, footsteps, even the whimpering of the panic and the injured around us.

Summoning a portion of superhuman strength, I see the veins on my hand bulge as I tighten my grip around the rubber arm, causing the skin of hers around my hand to darken and her flesh to warp under the pressure of my grip. I know I should have been hurting her at this point, but she doesn’t flinch. Somehow undeterred, I dig my fingers into her flesh, drawing blood. To my irritation, she doesn’t flinch nor whimper. Now that I think about it, she hasn’t uttered a single word, not even blinking or sparing us a glance even as she flings Daniel and I to the side.

I reach over to my unconscious friend as we sway in the air and I clutch his body protectively against mine, a hand on his head as I bury it in my neck. We hit the windows with so much force that I swear we were going to get thrown off the bus as I feel and hear the glass break against my back at the impact.

I wince at the pain on my spine and the shards digging into my skin as we slide off the window and into an awkward tangle of limbs onto a two-seater where a middle aged woman in fancy business attire is hunched over in her seat with a gaping hole in her chest area where her heart should be, except it isn’t there anymore.

Interesting. Didn’t the three morons in the back have the same exact hole in their bodies too? I nod in agreement at my other self’s input, thinking he's just making a simple observation.

Then he adds, Do you think she’ll give us one of those if we ask nicely?

I roll my eyes and groan. I don’t have time for this right now. Then again, it was stupid of me to expect anything decent out him. I scowl at no one before glancing down at Daniel who lay motionless beneath me. And I feel my blood run cold as I take in his nearly ghostly complexion. Not bothering to second guess myself, I grab the nearest shard of glass I can find and slice through the woman’s rubberized arm. Splattering blood onto half of mine and Daniel’s face. But yet again she shows no sign of pain, not even a grunt or a whimper. I shrug off the thought as I hurriedly untangle the fleshy constrict off of my new friend’s neck and throw it off to the side, anxiously praying to all the gods that I’m not too late.

“C’mon, Daniel, work with me here.” I grit down at him, checking for a pulse. My fingers grazing the bruises on his neck. I felt nothing. Shit!

Amidst the panic, I can sense the woman’s presence looming over us but I chose to partially ignore it, letting her murderous aura scratch away at the back of my consciousness, just above the background noises all around us. I know its reckless and I’m probably going to regret it in a few short moments, but I’m pretty sure it won’t compare to the regret that’s gonna bite at me if I let my new friend die on my watch.

I heave a heavy sigh before closing my eyes and placing my palms against Daniel’s chest. Okay, Hunter, you can do this, I breathe, my voice barely a whisper as I force my rattling nerves to settle. Because, I’ve never actually done this before. I just hope that three years of self-training my abilities was enough for me to not kill my friend.

With those thoughts hovering over me, and my peripheral vision registering an arm slinging towards us, I release a meticulously controlled voltage of electricity into Daniel’s lungs making his chest jolt upon release. Almost at the same time as when a rubber arm swung at my head, barely missing it had my extra sensory not pinched my ear in the nick of time. I hear glass break from where the rubber arm smashed into it and I protectively hunch over Daniel’s body, shielding him from the glass debris. Thankfully, my hoody is tough enough to bounce off the smaller ones, but some still managed to graze my exposed neck and scalp, not falling hard enough to stab deep into me. Easily shrugging off the trivial pain I hastily send another jolt to hopefully shock his system awake. Then I stare down at him, silently pleading for a response. but when there was none, I felt my chest constricting, the air being squeezed out as unwelcome tears begin to form at the base of my two colored eyes.

Not until I feel a tug at my chest do I realize that there is an actual rubber arm around my chest literally squeezing air from my lungs. The arm must have recoiled from the jab and I’ve been too preoccupied with Daniel to notice.

The last thing I can remember seeing, or at very least thought to have seen, is the faint rise and fall of my friend’s chest and the twitch of his lashes before I feel my body being violently tugged off the seat, slung upwards and smashed down onto the metal floors...Hard. My body instantly forgets how to breathe.

My shoulders hit the floor first with a thud, and I could have sworn I heard something crack, then I feel my head bounce back from the momentum with a thud that echoed inside it. A sharp pain erupted from the back of my head the same time that darkness begins to consume me.

So, is this it...I cough, as I think ...I really shouldn’t have come here.

There she stands at my feet, dimming and blurring just like everything else, with one arm raised just a few feet above my chest, pointed like a spear poised to thrust.

-----------+-+---------------