02

When Elena told people what she did for a living, she knew the kinds of reactions she would have to field. When it came to men who were interested in her, there would be some awkward prodding, but eventually they would steer the conversation elsewhere. Remote viewing was, she had learned, not a particularly successful conversation topic on a date.

Grigori was different. She knew he was different from the start. Neither of them would have met, were it not for a chance encounter at the hiking trail she visited every few months. A hiking trail he only ever visited once a year, and which he would walk in honor of his father's memory. He was a stern-looking man with an intimidating build, but Elena had felt unusually calm around him.

She knew he posed no threat. Was it her extrasensory powers? She wasn't certain; she'd never really put much stock into her ability to read people. She sought information. She looked for messages, for visions. She didn't look into people's hearts, into their thoughts.

If he had felt the same in turn, Elena didn't know. She hardly remembered how they'd started talking, or how they had ended up walking together, or what they'd spoken about. Everything flowed freely, like a river which had always been there, a current which had been made just for them.

Grigori was all she could have hoped for in a partner. It wasn't until months into their relationship, however, that she began to suspect.

Winter had been harsh that year, and their small town was besieged by snowstorms on all fronts. Returning from a visit to her mother in the city, Elena's car had somehow lost traction, the wheels spinning out of control, and though it was all a blur of while upon white, she remembered very clearly the time in her dashboard, blinking at her - 9:47 - before she found her way into a nearby tree.

Unconscious and bleeding in the wintry wilds, she was more vulnerable than she had ever been.

She came to in a hospital, and learned that it had been Grigori who had found her. He had driven straight to the spot where she had veered off the road. How long had she been unconscious by the time he had arrived? Nobody could be certain.

What a stroke of luck! What a miracle!

She had asked him when he'd left to look for her - when he'd realized she was in trouble. "It was nine in the morning, just some minutes past - perhaps a quarter past," - but he couldn't quite explain it, that overwhelming sense that he needed to meet her on the road.

He made a joke of it in his mind - turned it into a romantic gesture, certain that he would meet up with her, surprise her, and they would drive back into town, perhaps have some lunch together. But he couldn't quash the ominous feeling in his bones.

And he had found her just when she had needed him most.

There were other events, too. Less dramatic examples of what Elena began to recognize as a powerful mind.

They would make plans - perhaps they might go to La Rosa or the Old Tower for dinner? - and he would consider this for a moment, before finally making some off-hand comment: The Old Tower has a problem; let's go to La Rosa.

And, sure enough, later that night they would drive past The Old Tower on their way home from dinner at La Rosa, and they would see a crowd of disappointed diners trying to find their cars and frustrated employees shivering in the cold, causing a traffic jam in the area.

"What's happened?" Grigori would ask one of the crowd.

"Gas leak," the sniffling employee would say, nose red and runny from the harsh bite of the chilly night air. "The smell got so strong, we had to evacuate."

These weren't flukes. Grigori was a constant feed of information he had no right to know - no reason to have. Elena realized that his skills far eclipsed her own, and she had had to train for years to get to where she was now.

Grigori didn't mind her questions - her prodding - her little tests her and there. To him, it was a slightly interesting trick he could do, and wasn't it strange that he could answer her questions right all the time? To Elena, however, this was something beyond simple luck or a good knack at guessing.

She shouldn't have told them - she knew that now, of course - but back then, she was naive. She thought her colleagues at the lab would help her run more experiments - a light investigation into the extents of Grigori's power.

Instead, she went from having the perfect life with the one man she'd ever truly loved and a job that, while a little quirky, was generally fun for her - to subsisting on unemployment while putting up missing posters all over town.

Grigori's face was soon to be found everywhere.

Grigori was alive. She knew he was alive. And it couldn't have been a coincidence that the lab had released her on the same day he was never seen again. There was a connection, and though she couldn't see it, she had the feeling that he was there, nearby, somewhere.

And she was going to find him, no matter what.

💭

Sometimes I write snippets and share them. If you enjoyed this one, there's many more where that came from! You can also check out my short stories, read my solarpunk thriller Murder in Heliopolis, or grab a copy of my eerie suspense novella Apartment.