All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 17: This Cheating Heart ~ Carrie Cutforth

Music: Your Cheatin' Heart ~ Hank Williams Jr.

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David’s POV

My eyeball is bathed in a blood red glow while my body feels like it is floating midair, and I wonder where in the ‘verse am I freefalling in this mad slow descent to nowhere. Am I between worlds now? And what would happen if I fell between the cracks, the slippery tenuous borders of these amorphous bubbles. Would I free fall for eternity in the chasm of chaos? If I hit a bubble at this velocity would I pop it and thus destroy that world – the entire existence of everyone and everything of that reality? Or would it envelop and embrace me? Or am I bound to ricochet from one to the next. The ‘verses most cruel game of pinball.

“DAVID!” I heard a sharp shrill voice cry out.

I snapped up from my reclining position and cold water struck me on all sides, a torrent flooding both of my thighs as I sat up flapping and fighting the inflatable mattress wedged between my legs and now hitting me with its rough tarp in the face and back of the head simultaneously. It took me a moment to get my bearings and realize I had been napping on a floating recliner in an outdoor pool, and was now waist deep in water.

I start to punch the blue mattress down in front of me and then dismount with one bare leg swinging over to join the other. Fffffffuccccck this is freezing cold.

Nice job, ‘verse. Thanks a bunch. One of these days I’m going to find myself in a real pickle.

With the mattress no longer blindsighting me, I was able to see her standing at the edge of the pool with a look of alarm, nose scrunched and wide-eyed, despite her severe pony-tail pulling her eyelids back into little slants. The sun was bright and blue and I could see the palm trees at the beach behind the gate enclosure of this…motel, I assume; its salmon colored plaster walls baking in the sun. The pool was in the middle of the motel lot, with the rooms flanking either side of the pool, and all the glass patio doors of each room facing it.

“Oh…hi…Em,” I manage to spit out. Can there just be one world I wake up a rock star or in a harem about to be…serviced? 

“Babe! Are you all right?” she cried out again, and I was a little surprised by the tone of alarm in her voice.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine…It is just water…” I shrugged, but inwardly I was thrilled. Babe, huh?

Emma shook her head with the look of a school marm, her tight ponytail bobbing up and down behind her. “David,” she said in a nagging voice as I waded my way towards her, “It’s not the water I’m worried about. Look at you! How long have you been sleeping out here?”

At her feet I looked up – and it was….sigh….a glorious view. Despite the frigid water, I had no desire to move from where I stood at the base of Emma’s well-manicured toes in white sandals. Emma was as gorgeous as ever, in a tight fitting bodice turquoise blouse and a flowery billowing skirt that was mercifully billowing in the gentle breeze…just enough to see…

“David!” she nagged again, “How long have you been out in the sun?”

I shrugged and reached to tug the hem of her skirt up for a better view, while my other hand went to caress a gorgeous ankle.

“Oh my gawd!’ she squealed, skipping back. “Your hands are freezing!”

I grinned at her with a wicked glint, “Oh…yeah?”

She saw the look in my eye: the combination of mischief and lust, and shot me that delightful warning glare. “Don’t. You. Dare,” she commanded but couldn’t quite pull-off the stern army general look she was attempting for me to take to seriously. I could see the glint in her eye, the supressed giggle threatening to break out in the corner of her mouth.