Jill woke up to bits of water falling from the skies in rapid sheets, each drop feeling like a tiny shard of glass. The skies were dark, the air was cold, and the grass around Jill’s body was bent in all directions, conforming to her slender build. She stood up and wiped the dripping hair out of her face, and took a look around where she had been lying. The first thing she noticed was a black leather briefcase, which she walked over to pick up—for some unexplainable reason, she knew it belonged to her.
With the briefcase off the ground, she was now able to see the gun, soaked with dirt and water, which was concealed beneath the now-removed briefcase.
Jill picked the wet pistol up, took off her leather gloves to feel it, and dropped it the moment her skin came in contact with the warm, silver metallic casing of the gun. The gun fell to the ground with a muffled crash, just as a man’s voice was flowing through Jill’s head: “Jill, this isn’t you,” and then a painful flash filled her body.
“Jill!” She heard someone yell.
Jill looked nervously in the direction of the yell, and made a choked gasp before she started running up the hill in an effort to reach the man who had yelled out her name. As she ran, the wet ground gave way to her feet, and Jill fell into the soggy turf which covered the hillside. She put her hands into the wet soil, pushed herself up, and finished the final stretch up the hill, just to find a man lying down in the dense, flooded grass.
The man was dressed in a long black trench coat, his damp blonde hair, now a very dirty shade of brown due to, what looked like, an extended exposure to the red-brown mud he had been lying in.
“Jack… Are you al-alright?” Jill asked, letting her voice trail off, her hands placed firmly on his wet coat.
“Jill, how could y-you—?” Jack asked through a strained whisper, though interrupted by a wet, hacking cough.
“What… what do you mean?” She brought up her ungloved hand to keep from coughing, when she noticed her hand was covered in something beside wet dirt. She brought it close to her eyes, and that’s when she noticed the blood.
“Jack!” She screamed hysterically, “you’re bleeding! God, Jack!”
When Jill looked at Jack again, his head had tilted to the side, his empty brown eyes glazed over. Jill screamed at the sight, while a small trail of blood carried itself off to the side of Jack’s body, and filled a small object—an old, tipped-over rusted metal pail, its entire bottom side filled with rain mixed with Jack’s blood.
“And what if it’s not here, Jack?” Jill asked the man in the long, black trench coat to her side, as she carried an old shovel in her left hand.
“Jill, it’s here. I buried the briefcase on top of this hill, and used an old pail of water from my truck to mark the spot.”
“You used a pail of water to… mark the spot?” Jill asked, then broke into laughter at the idea, which was complemented by the sound of a million rain drops hitting her umbrella, their tiny speck of life ended with nothing short of a crash against a piece of waterproof fabric.
It seemed as if Jack was about to defend his actions, but then they both reached the top of the hill, and saw a small pail of now-evaporated water, and an old-fashioned water well farther off in the distance.
“Damn, you really did use a pail of water,” she said, as she kicked over the pail and began digging. It only took a few strokes of the shovel before she hit something solid, she bent down and picked up a soaking-wet, mud-encrusted briefcase, which was instantly cleaned by the torrential rain falling from the dark skies, “well, this could almost be considered your lucky day, Jack.”
“A-almost…?” Jack warily asked.
Jill then pulled a long, thin, silver object out of her coat pocket, and pointed it directly at Jack.
“Holy shit, Jill!” Jack yelled, and fell backwards as the ground gave way to his sudden recoil.
“Jill, calm down and put the gun away, this isn’t you. You can control it,” Jack said, his breaths coming in short, disturbed bursts. “Please god Jill—”
“Jill’s gone, Jack,” she said—and the sound of thunder echoed through the valley.