The garlic-y green beans were proving difficult to scoop up with a spoon; Lucy had dropped her fork on the floor and as she was inept with chopsticks the only viable option for transporting food from plate to mouth was the spoon.
She was in the heat of this struggle as the blue-haired girl approached her table. “Oh I guess she’s picked up her food,” Lucy thought as she noticed the stranger drawing near. The girl strode over with her plastic bag of food clutched to her chest. She brought with her the air of a messenger.
She stopped at Lucy’s table, near her right elbow and looked down at her.
“Something’s not right with her,” Lucy thought.
“Yes?” Lucy asked, feeling a bit cornered by this unknown person.
“We will know each other,” the azure-headed girl said slowly, with an implied meaning.
“Huh?” was all she could summon as a response, sensing there was an important event taking place but unsure and wary of its origin or direction.
“In the future…in a different time…when the virus…” she began to visibly struggle, for words, for oxygen, a gasp/wheeze coming from her throat. Lucy grew alarmed and tried to help.
“Here, sit down,” she said, reaching for the girl’s wrist.
“No!” The arm pulled back while she flung the other out to the side, the bag of take out food unfortunately held by that same arm, flung as a projectile towards another table, hitting the pot of soup at just the right angle to make a hot splash, causing those diners to rise screaming, burned by the soup, the management rushing over, other patrons rising and in wonder, staring and afraid.
Lucy herself rose and faced the girl, “What is going on, what’s…”
Before Lucy could complete the thought and before the girl rolled her eyes and through a mouth that was beginning to froth and twist collapsed, she said something Lucy would try to forget;
“Pay attention to your Fortune.”
Then she went down.
This is the third installment of an ongoing series.
CELLOPHANE 