Of Fate and Premonitions

As Stephanie went down the list of offerings, the meat, seafood and pasta dishes, she began to shiver and sweat at the same time. Her labored breathing caught Walt's attention. He looked up from his menu. "Are you okay?"

She took a few deep breaths and fanned herself with her napkin. "I, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure?"

She was having a panic attack triggered by sudden feelings of dread. She began to hyperventilate; her pulse raced. She threw her hand over her chest. "Walt, I need to step outside for a few minutes."

Walt followed her, telling the maitre de they planned to return. He then joined her outside.

Stephanie leaned against the building, bent over, struggling to get a deep breath. Walt took out his cell. "Do you want me to call 911?"

She raised her hand, kept the other hand on her knee and shook her head no. She knew what brought this on but was still too distressed to inform Walt. She'd been here before, knew that controlled breathing was the key to recovery: in through the nose, hold for a few seconds, then out through the mouth. She remained bent over, performing the exercise, slow and rhythmic: in through the nose, out through the mouth...repeat...

Walt felt helpless watching her distress. He wanted to hold and comfort her, though he didn't dare come closer, sensing it wasn't the right time. He could do little right now but stand by and watch.

Slowly, she straightened up. Holding one hand against the building, the other against her chest, she began to breathe normally. "Whew! That was a bad one."

"If this was about something on that menu, we can go someplace else." He smiled, hoping his glib humor might help.

She looked serious. "No, I'll stick it out. I just need to remember not to look at the chicken cacciatore. It always gets to me." She grinned, watching him freeze in confusion, unsure how to take her line. "Just joking, Walt. I WISH this was only about chicken cacciatore."

They returned to their table and ordered cacciatore, chicken for her, veal for him. Both wanted wine, but without fake IDs, iced tea would have to do, which the young female server brought along with their salads.

Stephanie felt it was time to open up about what triggered her distress. "For the last couple years, I've been plagued with feelings of dread."

With his arms resting on the table, Walt sat up as best he could in a chair with only a few curved pieces of wood for backing. "I'm listening."

She connected her feelings, she told him, to the epidemic of mass shootings that had plagued the country in the last two decades. "People think it can't happen to them, that they'll never be the victims until they are."

"And you're afraid you will be?"

She nodded. "In addition to the déjà vu, I sometimes get these scary premonitions. Only tonight's premonition involves you as well."

"Me?! When?"

"Soon. Perhaps tonight."

He flashed a faux terrified look, then ducked under the table for a few seconds.

She frowned. "You're making fun of me."

"Sorry. Look, I know terrible things like mass shootings happen, but it's still a rare thing, especially at South Jersey beach resorts. You need to relax, have fun." In a gesture of reassurance, he squeezed her hand.

"You're right. But I feel what I feel."

Nothing bad happened during dinner, no mass shootings, no machete-wielding crazies rampaging through Angelo's, no bombs or Isis-inspired drivers mowing people down. Stephanie felt better when they drove back to Ocean City. Walt parked the car on the Sun-n-Sand's lot. Then he and Stephanie hit the boards. Stephanie's feelings of dread hung on the rim of her radar, not as vivid but still there, lurking.

"See, I told you there was nothing to worry about," Walt said. He rubbed her back as they stood in front of the Music Pier, a ninety-year old town landmark, distinctive for its pastel shades of stucco and tiled, hacienda style roof. The Ninth Street Rockers, a Philadelphia based rock band was booked to play in a few minutes.

She studied the crowd passing by, the usual parade of people seeing and being seen, pushing baby strollers, jogging, strolling, munching on their boardwalk goodies, their cotton candy and frozen custard, Italian sausage and funnel cake. Young cops in black uniforms patrolled, some on foot, others on bicycle.

On the surface, all looked normal; she felt reasonably safe. Inside, she felt queasy, though she thought it best to keep quiet, least he think her paranoid. "You're right," she said. "Let's hear some music. I once heard these guys in Philly. They're really good."

The Rockers played nothing original but they were great imitators. Their repertoire included work from Green Day, REM and Springsteen. Walt and Stephanie clapped and jumped along with the rest of the audience, an eclectic demographic from X-ers to Boomers.

"Great concert," Walt said when they emerged from the Music Pier and onto the boardwalk, still crowded even though it was now dark. "You're right, they're a great local band." During the concert, he had pictured some wacko spraying the audience with an assault rifle. Not about to feed into Stephanie's dark visions, he kept it to himself.

"I thought you'd like them," Stephanie said. She glanced at her watch. "Gosh, it's close to nine-thirty already."

"So where do we go from here?"

"Well, we could renew our metaphysical discussion. Or, we can take a walk along the water's edge and do this." She embraced him, started making out with him as they stood next to the boardwalk railing.

Moments later, Walt said, "I like your second option. It's a lot more fun." He assumed she no longer harbored feelings of dread.

He assumed wrong. However, her feelings had lessened, and she saw no reason to end what had so far been a wonderful first date.

Shoes off, they strolled north, past where the boardwalk ended, holding hands, hearing little more than the water lapping the shore, soft and gentle. "I'll miss you," Stephanie said.

Walt said he'd miss her too, then took her into his arms. "Do you think we'll see each other again? I mean, we both know the short shelf life of summer romance."

"I was hoping you'd visit me for a couple days in Philly before school starts. It's close enough to Baltimore."

"Sure, absolutely. I've never actually stayed in Philly, so I'll need to check out the hotels in the area."

"Hotels? No way. You'd be staying at our house."

"Your folks wouldn't mind?"

"Not at all. We have a big house that includes a guest room."

Walt felt giddy with excitement. He hardly knew this girl and yet she just offered him an invite to stay at her house.

At ten, as requested, Stephanie called her mom, telling her she was on her way back to Venice by the Sea. She held Walt's hand as he walked her back, then gave him a long goodnight kiss when they got to within a couple blocks of her hotel. Walt offered to walk her to the door, but she demurred because she knew that he had gone a few blocks out of his way back to the Sun-n-Sand already. They made plans to see each other on the beach the next day. "My family is leaving late in the afternoon," she said, "so we'll still have a few hours to spend together."

He held her tight, kissed her passionately, his heart beating overtime with infatuation. He could fall in love with this girl. If only they had more time. If only they didn't live in different states. If only they weren't parting for the semester. Well, at least he'd get to be with her in Philly. "We'll need to make tomorrow special," he said.

"We will," she assured him, pressing her head against his chest. "Bodysurfing, another heav-ee talk on a jetty, perhaps, and then some touchy-feely stuff way down the beach, away from the madding crowd."

His held her face in his hands. "Are you okay? I mean, about your premonitions."

She nodded. "I'm great. And you, Walt Richmond, have a lot to do with that."

He left it at that, even though he thought he detected an element of pathos bordering her otherwise joyful expression.

He jogged back to his hotel, high on anticipation. Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough. He called his friends when he got back and spoke to Dennis who said they planned to leave Maloney's in a few minutes. Flipping on the TV, he threw himself on the bed and began channel surfing. Then he heard a knock at his door. It was the desk clerk, a short, middle-age man who said a Mr. and Mrs. Nason wanted to speak with him. "You can take the call in my office."

Mr. Nason sounded concerned, then worried after Walt told him that he had dropped Stephanie off twenty minutes ago. "At most, she was only a couple blocks from your hotel," Walt explained.

Then Walt got worried after Mr. Nason said that her cell was going into voice mail. Minutes later, Walt was jogging along sidewalks in the dark, passing old guest cottages and modern motels, heading toward Venice by the Sea. Turning off two blocks from it, he ran onto the beach and arrived at the spot where they parted. Several times he yelled her name, getting no response. "Ohmygod!"

He took off again, this time to the hotel. Panting, he entered the lobby and saw her parents and kid sister pacing in front of the check-in desk, worried and frantic. After catching his breath, he summarized the evening, including Stephanie's panic attack in the restaurant and her dark premonition that triggered it. "But she was fine after I left her," he said. "We had made plans for tomorrow. We even had tentative plans to see each other before we left for school. She said you guys were leaving in the afternoon."

"Not without Stephanie, we're not!" Mrs. Nason cried, her voice tinged with anger and worry.

Every few minutes, her parents dialed her cell, getting nowhere. Her dad summoned the police. They drilled Walt with questions. After all, he was the last to see her. He gave police and Stephanie's parents his contact information: cell number, home address, email. A missing person report went out.

After leaving the lobby, Walt once again returned to the beach at the spot where he and Stephanie kissed goodnight. Once again, he called out to her. And once again, he got no answer save for the wind, ocean and seagulls performing their familiar ensemble of beach music. He turned his face toward the ocean, shaking his head, struggling to understand. 'She's been abducted,' he thought, 'some monster abducted her.' If there was another explanation, he couldn't think of one. People don't just vanish into thin air like Stephanie did unless there's fowl play involved. Those dark premonitions of hers—she might have been on to something, something evil, something baleful. Their talk on the beach came to mind, talk of God, fate, afterlife. Her voice played in his head; it sounded like an echo. "Where the fuck are you, Stephanie?" he shouted into the ether.

"We had plans, remember?"

"We DID have plans. Fate intervened. You know my views on fate."

Walt spun around, trying to locate the voice, her voice. He didn't imagine it. Or maybe he did. Was he going nuts?

"Bodysurfing anyone? That's how we met if you remember."

He WAS going nuts, hallucinating. Now, through the inky-black night, he saw as well as heard her, saw her lovely form in the ocean wearing her white bikini. He kicked off his shoes, pulled up his pants to his knees and then began to wade into the water, approaching the mirage-like figure before him. It faded more with every step. Then it disappeared.

Now he knew he was hallucinating. He started to run down the beach along the shoreline, holding his shoes as he ran.

The voice wouldn't let up. "Keep going. That's it, you're getting warm. Hurry, you need to bring me back."

He ran faster, ran another couple hundred yards. Then he came to an abrupt stop. Bent over, hands on his knees, he struggled to catch his breath, blinking and terrified at what lay before him. There she was, curled in a fetal position, her dress torn, barefoot, bleeding and motionless.

He screamed her name, then bent down, grabbed her wrist and felt for a pulse: nada. He applied mouth to mouth CPR while punching 911 on his cell. Through tears, he nearly screamed his "emergency" into the phone. With the 911 operator hanging on, he continued to work on her. "Wake up Steph, please wake up!" Then her chest began to move. Seconds later, her eyes fluttered open. "He tried to kill me," she whispered. She paused, then said, "I think he did kill me."

"No, you're alive and safe," Walt assured her. He brushed back her hair, wiped the blood from her nose and kissed her. "Hang in there, Steph. Help is on the way."

*****

The police who questioned Stephanie at the hospital, told her she was lucky to be alive. Some women don't survive assaults on dark, deserted beaches. Often they're raped and then killed. Clinically, she had died. If Walt had showed up any later...

The brute took her by surprise, she told police. He pounced upon her, then choked her out. He had her draped over his shoulder like a piece of lumber when she came to and then fought like hell to escape. After slugging her in the face, he strangled her again, much harder the second time. He must have carried her to the water's edge. "That's where you found me," she said to Walt. Along with her family, he stood by her bedside.

The perp remained at large a week later when Walt went up to Philly. Silent up to then about the visions and voices on the beach, he figured now was a good time to tell her. Her parents and sister weren't home. It was raining out and he was snuggled with her in bed in the guest room. Both of them were naked and holding each other, listening to the late summer rain pitter-patter against the windows. They had just made love for the first time.

"Somehow, some way, you led me to you," he said. "If what happened out there happened to someone else, I wouldn't have believed them. It's like what you told me on the beach when we met—there's things that go on that science can't explain, that don't make sense."

She sat up and leaned against the headboard. "Okay, now I've got something weird of my own to reveal." He nodded, and then she went on to describe an "out of body experience. Or, a near death experience, whatever you want to call it," she said. "I heard you yelling for me, saw you approach me in the water and then run down the beach like a madman until you found me and revived me."

"'Fate intervened,' you said, after I said we had plans. Remember that?"

Curiously, she had no memory of saying anything. "I said that?"

"Yes, and then you said I was 'getting warm' after I took off down the beach." A jolt of anger shot through him as he looked at the bruises that still marred her neck. "I would have tried to kill whoever did this to you had he still been around. Think you can identify him?"

"I think so, but I'm in no hurry to do it. Look, I'm trying to put this behind me, grateful that I'm still alive." She reached down and closed her hand around his now flaccid cock. "Fate did indeed intervene. In a good way, thank goodness. And while we're on the subject, I'm getting another premonition."

He rolled his eyes."Uh oh."

She laughed. "A good one this time. No panic attacks, I promise."

"Go on."

"We're fated to go another round before my family returns." She began to massage his sex.

He looked down at his inflating cock and smiled. "Funny, I'm getting the same premonition."