Chapter One: Not Over Yet

I'd totally go for a date at the cemetery, if it didn't mean trespassing.

Much later that evening, Ms Tamara Baggins drove her turquoise Hyundai Getz up the driveway and into the garage, thoughtfully eyeing the bus across the road. Once she had finished parking her little ‘two door’, Tamara entered her house through the internal garage entry, and sank gently onto her couch with a glass of wine before allowing her thoughts to return to her evening. She smiled a little then, remembering. It had been, even she could admit, one of the most unusual dates she had ever so much as heard of, let alone experienced.

 

First, there had been the location. Some of the men she had dated in the past had had an interesting streak of creativity, but she was reasonably certain not a one of them had even so much as contemplated a date at the cemetery before. She had driven to his place first, and when he drove out towards Toowong, she had automatically assumed he would be taking her up to the Summit restaurant, or to the lookout on top of Mt Cootha, or even to Slaughter Falls for a romantic picnic together. It had been, she thought to herself, something of a relief when he turned off and drove to the cemetery instead. There was nothing wrong with a run of the mill date, of course, but Tamara preferred a man who wasn’t afraid to be unique, to stand out. She liked a man who enjoyed creativity and spontaneity and, most of all, romance, enough to really put a lot of thought into his dates.

 

So there it was, the proof that he was more romantic, more original, than she had given him credit for. He had driven her to the cemetery and they had snuck in up around the back, in the quiet streets of Mt Cootha and Toowong area. At first they had walked, the moonlight decorating tombstones with a gentle dappling beauty, and when they were ready to rest, he had placed down a comfortable blanket and laid out a picnic basket. And that was when the night had turned strange.

 

He was seductively mouthing a strawberry when things went wrong. Somehow, he had managed to inhale the small piece of fruit. At first, she had noticed nothing. On the TV when someone began to choke it was loud, violent; the person made a lot of movements, a lot of coughing; but Rhys hadn’t made a sound. He had gestured a little, but she had assumed him to be joking and laughed. It was when he had begun to turn blue that she had realised and panicked.

 

Although she had never completed any sort of first aid course, one of her female friends, having completed a course in it as a requirement of her job, had shown her the basics one day for “just in case”. Trying to force her mind to remember her friend’s advice, she flicked through her card purse quickly, hoping the little card she had picked up at some free event or other, was still in there. Unfortunately, she had taken so long to find it that as she pulled it out and read the card, he fell backward, landing hard on a tombstone that had miraculously managed to dislodge the strawberry. It had shot out of his mouth and he spluttered, breathed, while she looked on in amazement.

 

Grabbing her mobile phone, she had thought guiltily about calling 000, until she had remembered that they were in the locked cemetery " a fact that could well get them both arrested for trespassing, so she had put her phone down and simply waited. When he had recovered, he had apologised, looked around him, nodding loosely into the air and together they had left.

 

 

 

It was lucky, Rhys thought, that Tamara hadn’t noticed the gentleman with the dark hair who stood off to the left, in the distance, as he had choked this evening. The man with the tidy black suit was no stranger to him, but Rhys was still uncomfortable with the knowledge of who he was, and what he meant.

 

The man had glared at him as Tamara and Rhys had left the cemetery together. Rhys had gestured apologetically, tried to convey understanding and apology at once, without Tamara seeing. The man in the suit had merely looked disgusted and turned away , thwarted.

 

 

 

 

Placing her, by now, long empty wine glass on the coffee table, she rose, gracefully, to shut the curtains and prepare herself for bed. As she slid the curtain across, she noticed the bus still there, across the road. A stray dog, running over a neighbour’s porch, had set off motion sensor lights that cut off just near the bus and in the play of shadows, she noticed a dark shape beneath it, as though an animal were lying there. She could, she knew, just go to bed; told herself that it was late, that if an animal had been injured it probably wouldn’t have survived this long anyway... thought about doing it, too. Thought about just forgetting what she thought she’d seen and going to bed, but she couldn’t do it. Not when there was a chance that whatever it was could still be alive.

 

A few moments later, armed with a flashlight and a sausage from the fridge, for in case the animal was still alive, Tamara stepped outside, shivering slightly even with the glow of the wine warming her from within. Her neighbours’ motion activated porch lights had turned off again, so, yawning widely, she flicked her flashlight on, its beam illuminating the ground in front of her, and crossed the road. As the beam lit upon the broken body of the bus driver, crushed beneath the weight of his own truck, Tamara dropped her flashlight and began to scream...

Author's Note

Please bear in mind this is a very rough first draft as I'm throwing together 50,000 words in a month. Feel free to add reviews and comments/fix grammar and spelling/find plot holes and problems (these things are heavily encouraged!), but please do be gentle on this, as well as bearing in mind that part of the NaNo experience means unnecessary padding and/or weird moments/dares.

Reviews

[Corlath]

looking to be in good shape so far! Can't wait to see what's going to happen next :O)