Jade breathed heavily as she ran up the long, long stairs. She had to get up there, and fast. Something was happening, and if she didn't... she didn't know, but she knew it was bad. The girl shook the pounding rain off her head, paying no further heed to it. There was no time.
Finally, she reached the top. A building of jade stood before her, beautiful, but damaged. Parts of the floors were cracked, and the outer walls were damaged. Jade stood in the open doorway, looking through her wet hair at the man who stood within. It was dark, so she couldn't see much, but what she did see were his eyes. Yellow and menacing. The man snarled, letting out a roar-like scream as he rushed at Jade. she got into a stance to counter and-
BEEP BEEP BEEP BE-
Jade's eyes, green like her namesake, shot open with a start and she sat up in bed.
"Fuck, no. Again?", she groaned as she ran a hand down her face, distressed by her dream. Her stressed expression soon turned into one of annoyance when she registered the digital alarm blaring on her bedside table. Without even looking at the alarm clock, she reached over with her fist and smashed it to pieces unceremoniously. Once the beeping stopped, she picked up the pieces with the same hand that had destroyed the clock and held it in front of her, staring down at the remains emotionlessly.
"Rest in pieces, alarm clock number twenty-seven. You served me well in your long life of nearly a week, doing your job of being annoying as fuck. I don't know why Mom keeps buying you for me.", Jade lamented, before silently chucking the murdered alarm clock into the metal trash can in the corner of her room, which visibly held the remains of other alarm clocks and even had a sign taped to the front reading 'Alarm Clock Mass-Grave' in black sharpie on a piece of line paper.
Jade gave the trash can the middle finger and got up to get dressed. Once she was done putting on her green 'Eat the Rich' t-shirt and black ripped jeans, she laced up her black high-tops on the edge of her bed and slipped on her black leather jacket, before rushing to the door and grabbing her green and black backpack, which sat in the corner opposite from the Alarm Clock Mass-Grave. Jade looked back and smiled at her room, waving goodbye.
"Bye Brucey, bye Cheryll! I better not catch you two trying to fuck on my bed again!", the girl bade. 'Brucey' was the Bruce Lee poster above her bed, and 'Cheryll' was a small flowering cactus on her windowsill, with a yellow sticky note on her pot that read 'Cheryll the Bitch Cactus'. Neither object responded, because they were objects, and Jade laughed at herself before leaving and shutting the door.
Jade dashed down the hall, sliding down the stair banister and landing on the hardwood floor of her living room, before running into the kitchen, where she smelt a rare treat; her Mom's cooking. The short girl took a seat at the island bar and looked at her mother and her flower print scrubs suspiciously. Jade's mother noticed this, and looked at her daughter with a raised eyebrow.
"What, do I have bacon grease on me or something?", she asked. Jade narrowed her eyes.
"Why are you cooking. You never cook. You're always at work by now because Tina's a dumb bitch and always manages to screw something up big time by seven am.", the green eyed girl stating, recalling the latest piece of gossip from her mother's late night phone conversations. Walls were thin and she talked loud when was mad. Jade's mother rolled her eyes and smiled fondly as she walked over to her daughter with a pan and a plate.
"I'm your mother, Jade. Is it so hard to believe I would want to cook for you every now and then?", she asked as she served two fried eggs and several pieces of bacon onto the plate she had set down in front of Jade. Jade looked at the food, and then her mother suspiciously.
"Actually it would, Anne.", she told her with a dry smile. Anne rolled her eyes again, knowing her daughter was just messing around, and went to make her own plate on the kitchen counter.
"You wound me, hun. But I did cook this for a reason.", Anne started to say. Jade groaned dramatically. She knew there was a catch.
"Oh God, what is this time? Please tell me it doesn't involve the jaws of life again.", the girl pleaded, recalling the last time her mother needed a favor. She could still smell the plaster. Anne laughed.
"Calm down, it's not that bad. I just need you to run to the fireworks tent a few miles from here and get me three hundred dollars worth of fire hazards. I'll give you the money before you go.", the brunette woman requested. Jade looked at her weirdly.
"Why the hell do we need fireworks?", she asked. Anne gave her a deadpan look, her brown eyes gaining an annoyed glint.
"Jade, it's July third.", the older woman informed. Jade looked utterly floored by this information, and Anne face palmed.
"Jade, please tell me you did not misplace an entire month again.", the woman pleaded weakly. Jade continued looking at her in shock.
"Bitch, I thought it was September?!", the girl yelled. Anne sighed. She was disappointed, but not surprised.
"No Jade, it's the middle of summer break. Please tell me you didn't get ready for school... you got ready for school, didn't you?", the nurse asked rhetorically. Jade looked from side to side nervously.
"... Maybe.", she admitted, reluctantly. Anne sighed again, wondering how her daughter, a freshly eighteen year old adult, managed to be such a human disaster.
"Well at least you're being proactive, even if it is on accident. Just go there now while you're up, if it's not too much trouble.", the woman asked her hopeless daughter. Jade nodded.
"Yeah, I'll do it. What kind of fireworks did you want again?", she asked. Anne packed her breakfast to go and grabbed her purse.
"Anything that shoots up into the air and goes boom.", she stated casually. Jade nodded wisely.
"Ah, so the illegal shit. I gotchu, I gotchu.", the pale girl responded. Anne smiled at her.
"Not even ten am and you're about to probably commit a felony, that's my girl.", the brown eyed woman joked. She walked over to her daughter, kissing the white streak in her long, pitch black hair. It had been caused by poliosis. Jade had been born with it.
"Love you. Don't get arrested, I don't have enough money for bail.", Anne told the black haired girl, before leaving out the front door and locking it behind her. Jade smirked once she was gone.
"So what she's saying is 'don't get caught'.", she whispered diabolically, but no matter how much she joked about it, Jade would never commit a felony... unless it was against Walmart, because that capitalist dystopia was free fucking game.
—---------------------------------------------------
Jade ran down the worn-down road of Maywood Avenue, her home street, until she arrived at a small but nice house just a few lots down from her own. It was painted a faded blue, with plants all on the front porch. Jade ran down the dirt driveway and up the stone porch steps, until she came to the front door. She banged loudly on the screen door.
"¡Abuela! ¡Abre la maldita puerta! (Grandma! Open the damn door!)", Jade yelled in perfect Spanish, despite being a Florida native and white as crackers. After a few more seconds of pounding, an old woman with weathered caramel skin and white hair pulled back in a bun opened the wooden door behind the screen one, looking at Jade in annoyance.
"Jade Mckenzie Blackbourne, why in the name of the good Lord himself are you banging on my door so early goddamn in the morning?!", the old woman asked in disgruntlement. Jade looked at her in confusion.
"Abuela, it's eleven am.", she told her. Abuela blinked her old, dark brown eyes.
"Oh. Well in that case, why are you still standing in the damn doorway? Get inside the house or you'll fry like an egg in the heat. And wipe your feet on the mat before you come in!", the senior citizen scolded goodnaturedly. Jade did as she was told, swiping her feet on the black and white mat that read 'Come back with a warrant', before coming in and shutting both doors behind her.
The living room was the same as it always was; same nice old furniture, same TV playing some telenovela, same virgin Mary candles scattered about, same creepy lifelike crucifix of Big J that had given her nightmares as a child, same empty bottle of tequila on the coffee table- wait a damn minute.
"Abuela, we've talked about this, you have got to stop drinking! Your doctor said- !", Jade reminded with a frown as she picked up the glass bottle and waved it in the air, looking at Abuela, who was making something in the kitchen. The old woman rolled her eyes to the sky.
"I know what that little chico (boy) they let wear a doctor's coat said, 'You're already at a high risk for liver cancer at such an old age, you shouldn't push your luck, blah ba blah ba blah', but I don't give a shit! If I die, I die doing what I love. I'm eighty fucking years old, everything hurts and those pansy-ass over the counters aren't gonna cut it. So it's either morphine or tequila, and Medicare doesn't cover the good shit so tequila it is.", the weathered old woman barked as she continued tooling away in the kitchen.
Jade sighed and sat the bottle back down on the coffee table, taking a seat on the couch. She had no idea what she was expecting. Martina Cabrera was an Uruguayan immigrant with balls of steel and no filter, even by old people's standards. She had come to the US when she was twenty, and worked a variety of jobs with her husband to provide for herself and her two sons. These jobs included, but were not limited to; money launderer, smuggler, waitress, knife sales woman, and for a brief period in the sixties a marajuana farmer. Her husband stuck to farm work his whole life, which was much more legal than most of Martina's jobs but also more boring and less high paying, not that either of them minded. Hernando Cabrera was more than content to be the mild-mannered husband while his badass wife wore the pants.
Martina had lived in a house down the road from Jade's own long before her and her mother moved in nearly eighteen years ago. She was sixty-two at the time, and a recently widowed empty nester. Her sons were both married in Virginia and never visited, so Martina was painfully lonely (not that she would ever admit it). Imagine her surprise when one day, some twenty-something, tired single mother on the brink of tears shows up with a sleeping baby and asks if she can watch her for the day. She had to go to work, her regular babysitter had canceled on her and she had heard Martina was looking for some company. Just before the old woman could ask who the hell was talking shit about her being lonely, and if she needed to go bitch slap Mrs. Wheeler again, the baby and a diaper bag were shoved into her arms and the lady (she believed she said her name was Anne) was off to work. Martina looked down at the baby, the baby woke up and looked up at her with big green eyes, and suddenly Martina had a wonderful, awful idea.
This girl would become her granddaughter, and she would send pictures of her to her sons and make them jealous, which would cause them to visit and possibly finally give her grandchildren. Yes, that would work.
Except it didn't work, because Martina fell in grandmotherly love with the little shit known as Jade Blackbourne and ended up becoming her full-time nanny. How the turn tables.
Jade spent more than half her childhood at Martina's house, which was how she learned Spanish... and how to commit several crimes. Martina was her grandmother, and her greatest role model. Jade loved her deeply, but she really wished she would listen to her sometimes.
"And besides, if I die, I get to be with Hernando again... and ask him what the hell he was thinking when he thought climbing that stupid ladder without someone with him at seventy was a 'good idea'.", Martina started sweetly as she carried a plate of sweet empanadas out to the living room, gazing lovingly at a black and white picture of an older man on her wall, before glaring at it and hissing bitterly. Martina sat down beside Jade and set the plate in between them, now smiling once again. Jade frowned at her.
"Abuela, please value your life. If you die, I'll have to explain to your sons why there's Hatsune Miku shrine in the basement when they come to clean out the house.", the girl said seriously. Martina blinked at her.
"But I thought you took that down two years ago?", she asked. Jade shrugged.
"I was going to, but then I realized I didn't have enough room for it at my house. It's gotten bigger. There's a head bust now.", the black and white haired girl explained. Martina nodded and Jade picked up an empanada and started eating it. Her Abuela gave her an expectant look, and she looked at her in confusion.
"What?", Jade asked with her mouth full. Martina rolled her eyes.
"Jade, mi vida (my life), you don't come here before noon unless you need something or you're hiding from someone. So, which one is it?", the old woman asked knowingly, starting to eat her own empanada. Jade swallowed her food and began to look nervous.
"Actually... I had the dream again.", she stated. Martina started choking.
"You what?!", the woman said once she got most of her barings, shakily swallowing her food. Jade began to look sheepish, and Martina grabbed her shoulders.
"Which one? The one with the stairs?! The one with the cannon balls?! The one with the creepy jade people?!", the brown eyed woman asked frantically, recalling all the times Jade had told her about odd dreams involving odd fights and situations. Jade looked a bit shaken up, but did her best to answer.
"The-the one with the stairs.", she stuttered. Martina released her and started hissing curses.
"That's the fifth time this month! This means something, Jade!", she exclaimed passionately, before hurriedly getting up and rifling around a drawer in the table that held most of her virgin Mary candles, which was also below the crucifix. Martina grabbed something from inside of it.
"Do you know what it means, Abuela?", Jade asked hopefully. Martina scoffed, causing the girl to frown.
"Fuck no, who do you think I am? The Lord's prophet? I don't know what it means, but I do know what my grandmother always used to tell me; Las brujas no existen, pero que las hay las hay (witches don't exist until you bump into them)!", Martina said, shouting her Spanish wisdom. Jade didn't get it.
"What's that supposed to mean?", she asked. Martina closed the drawer and walked over to her.
"It means that while you and your little gen z generation may not believe in the old stories of the supernatural, that doesn't mean they aren't true. And it also means you shouldn't take strange dreams like your's lightly.", the old woman explained, before holding something. It was an old wooden rosary. Jade looked up at her Abuela blankly.
"Abuela, I'm a Spiritualist.", she stated. Martina glared at her
"I don't care if you're a communist, just wear the damn rosary. I wore it when I came to this country, and it protected me. Now let it protect you. Please, for my peace of mind.", the old woman pleaded in a surprisingly nice voice. Jade's expression softened and she pocketed the beads with a sigh. Martina narrowed her eyes when she didn't put it on properly. But shrugged and let it go.
"Good enough. Now, did you need anything else?", the woman asked. Jade thought about it for a moment, before her eyes widened in realization.
"Oh yeah, I need to borrow your car.", the green eyed girl said. Martina sighed and picked up her keys, tossing them to her.
"Take it, and if you use it for anything illegal, change the plates with one of the backups in the trunk.", the white haired woman told her. Jade nodded and smiled brightly at her, grabbing her backpack off the floor and heading for the door.
"Bye Abuela, love you!", Jade yelled with a wave before leaving out the door. Martina smiled and shook her head.
"That girl is going to be the death of me. Now, where did I put that other bottle of tequila... ?"
—--------------------------------------------------------
"So you had the 'Running up that hill except someone's trying to kill me' dream again?", Rachel, Jade's best friend since freshman year asked through the speaker of Jade's phone, her raised eyebrow visible due to the video call. Jade nodded and adjusted her phone stand a bit as she came to a red light.
"Yep. I swear, it's like every time I sleep I get some weird melatonin nightmare about shonen anime fights and stairs. And the weirdest thing is, these dreams are familiar. It's like I've seen all this somewhere before", Jade explained as she started driving again. Rachel shrugged.
"Well maybe you have. Maybe they're scenes from movies or something.", the red head suggested. Her boyfriend and Jade's second best friend, James, nodded in agreement as he walked up behind Rachel.
"Yeah. You can't can't make up faces and stuff in dreams, you have to have seen it before. And anyways, it's not even like they're that important. You'll be fine, Jade.", the blonde said surely. Jade raised an eyebrow at him.
"Let me guess, you got all that from our sophomore psychology course?", the green eyed girl asked. The blue eyed boy opened his mouth to answer, but closed it again. Jade nodded.
"Yeah, I thought so. Look, I get you guys wanna help and all that, but this is really freaking me out. And it's got Abuela losing her shit, too. She practically threatened to hang me in the streets if I didn't take this old rosary she insisted I have.", Jade told them. Rachel and James looked at her strangely.
"She does know you're not Catholic, right?", Rachel asked. Jade sighed and turned left.
"Oh, she does. She just doesn't care.", she said as she pulled up to the fireworks tent. It was packed with last minute shoppers. Jade searched for a parking spot in the lot beside the tent before she pulled in, and cursed when she saw there were no spaces available.
"Oh fuck me with an origami dildo, there's no fucking spaces.", the girl grumbled. She then looked at her friends and gave them an apologetic smile.
"Sorry guys, I gotta go. The stupid tent's packed and parking's gonna be a nightmare. Talk to you later?", Jade told them. Rachel and James both looked at each other, and then at her, worry clear in their eyes.
"Seriously Jade, even if these dreams keep happening, you're gonna be fine. We know you will.", Rachel said with an empathetic smile, her brown eyes warm. Jade gave her an annoyed look.
"Stop talking to me like I'm terminal bitch, or I'll snatch that stale-ass firetruck wig off your pasty-ass scalp.", the black and white haired girl threatened. James and Rachel both laughed, not at all offended.
"That's the spirit! Love you bitch!", Rachel encouraged. And then she hung up. Rude.
Jade pulled into the Belk's parking lot across from the fireworks tent, taking one of the vacant spaces close to the road. She grabbed her backpack and phone, got out of the car and lock it with the keyfob, grumbling the whole time.
"Stupid dreams making everyone lose their shit, stupid lack of parking spaces, stupid James acting like he knows shit.", she said under her breath as she marched to the four lane road. There was no crosswalk, since she lived in Florida and those were for the weak. Jade stopped abruptly as she reached the edge of the road and stamped her foot.
"I swear to fuck, if I ever find out whatever entity or drug or whatever is causing this, I am going to go out of my way to make their life as annoying as possible!", the girl shouted. No one looked at her for more than a few seconds, because again, she lived in Florida. They'd seen weirder shit.
"Stupid FUCKING- !", Jade started to scream as she walked across the road, only to be cut off when an eighteen wheeler came flying down the road from out of nowhere.
Jade didn't feel any pain, not even any form of impact. She just felt as if the earth had given out from beneath her, and then she was falling. Fast.
Well, shit.
I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. Update schedule is an illusion, staying on track is impossible, and time has no meaning. I have no idea where the hell I'm taking this, all I know is that I watched all three Kung fu Panda movies with my sister, watched eighties martial arts movie I could get my hands on, then fell down the rabbit hole of thirst when I saw how many people had turned Lord Shen into a hot guy with pretty hair. I had a weird obsession with Kung fu Panda as a kid, and figured I might as well write a better version of whatever fanfic my ten year old self had rattling around in her head, and only didn't write because she didn't know fanfiction existed yet. Abuela's character has been approved by my Spanish teacher, who spent several years living in Uruguay and knew and an Abuela just like this. Next time, it's Dragon Warrior time, baby! (Again, oh God, what am I doing)
So long and Goodnight, Thackery Binx.