Friday 1 a.m. November 4th

Lucille Dormer turned off her television set and thanked her lucky stars that Harold wasn't around to see this. Her late husband would have stormed down to city hall complaining about the current state of Lancet Falls.

"It's these damn corporations struttin' inta town preaching about change and "progress" when they're just sellin' snake oil. Want us God fearin' folks as miserable as the rest of em. The way I see it, we was just fine before."

She'd loved the old coot, but she had to admit it was quieter without him, more time to focus on her puzzles. And her gossip. Harold had been concerned hunting, farming, and coming home to a home-cooked meal after a long day, what other folks was up to wasn't no concern of is. Lucille smiled. He wasn't truly gone with all his familiar rants living on inside of her.

Lucille retrieved her dentures from the glass on her bedsides table maneuvered herself out of bed in a slow and methodical fashion, caution informing every movement. The last thing she needed was to take a tumble at this hour. She knew she was rolling the dice living alone at her age, but she'd rather bust a hip than live with those old loons at ValleyView. She puttered her way to her living room to work on one of her puzzles. It was a beautiful 1,000 piece purple sunset, the right amount of majesty and challenge.

She knew a woman of her age ought to be sleeping at this hour, but the aches in her bones had other plans. When she'd been a younger woman, Lucille always used to boast that her aches told her when a storm was brewing. A month had come and gone with her joints aching like they got sand in the works, and still no storm.

She gritted her dentures together, feeling it in her gums, and trudged onward through the pain. At this point, the Compendium of Gossip is all that kept her going. Lucille's mind had always been too active to be a stay at home mother, so she put her mind to work. She had appointed herself as the chronicler of the happenings of Lancet Falls. Lucille took a great deal of pride in the fact she knew about all the affairs, debts, and dirty little secrets on just about everyone, not that she would ever use it. She felt it important that somebody keep track of it all, and lately, that job felt more important than ever.

The myriad of facts and hearsay she had compiled from the local news and her gaggle of friends did nothing to help with the lack of sleep. If half of what she heard was true, the end times were coming, and Lucille would be the one to document it all.

In the past month, the local news went from covering the local high school's running back every night to having to compete with national news outlets. It all started with that string of killings in early October. Lyle Hampton, Jill Hampton, and that Saul Gutierrez had all been found their bellies ripped open over the course of one night. After that, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone looking for the inside scoop on Lancet Fall's very own homegrown serial killer, but Beatrice "Betty" Ploss had it on good authority the serial killer story was a cover. Her grandson, little Christopher Stroud, the local biology teacher, had been called in for an outside opinion she had said, chest swelled with pride.

Under normal circumstances, the media circus would have died down in a couple of days, but those killings were only the beginning in a long line of strange happenings. A bow hunter over in Filer, Idaho strolled into town the following day with a hell of a project for Hester Jenkins, the best damn taxidermist in the state. The dumbass brought in an affront to God's creation thinking it was some sort of black eagle.

Course the media was on that one like stink on cheese, and now all of a sudden Idaho was home to what must be some prehistoric species of bird. That same string days, the Lancet Times posted a back page article about little Lawrence Merrill going out to play and never coming home. Poor kid was small news compared to a trio of sensational serial killings, but that didn't mean Lucille hadn't caught wind of it.

Round that same time, is when the power outages started. They were little ones at first, nothing more than a house or two, but it wasn't long before they were blacking out entire neighborhoods. One night, not a cloud in the sky, they hit St. Luke's Hospital and shut the whole place down, the whole kit and caboodle, backup generators and all. Idaho Power's official statement chalked the whole mess up to solar flares.

As if all that wasn't bad enough, some masked delinquent, dressed all in purple, had taken it upon himself to be the self chosen savior of Southern Idaho. A mentally ill fellow running around thinking he was a hero didn't count as first rate gossip until she had taken into account testimonials of people that had seen him in action. Marge Kissel swore up, down, and sideways that while she was grocery shopping, she had seen him leap over a two story building, but she didn't stop there. Margie had looked Lucille in the eye and said, "Lucille, it was the darnedest thing, but I would swear on a stack of Bibles that he had a little black dog riding along in his backpack."

The most recent media storm kicked up the last couple of days when Cade Jahns turned up murdered. The whole thing had been kept hush hush, but the cops had to call in Cecilia Losser, Lucille's bridge partner, to ID what was left of the body on account CeCe was the closest thing the drunk had to a next of kin. Lucille pressed the woman for details, but she just shook her head repeating the words, "barbed wire" over and over again. The thought sent shivers down Lucille's spine. As long as she lived, Cece Losser was infamous for being an indomitable woman, cut from stone. Seeing her brought low, disturbed Lucille more than anything else in town.

Lucille eased herself into her chair. She'd bought one of those orthopedic memory foam contraptions supposed to help folks with back and joint pain, but so far, the only thing it was good for was tricking little old ladies watching late night advertisements. Lucille scanned the puzzle before her and scowled. All she had left was the horizon, the various shades of purple were giving her trouble. At least it's a problem I can put my hands on and solve.

Focusing her mind, blocking out all distractions, Lucille dug in and lost herself. Her aches and pains, the problems of Lancet Falls, each and every one of them on the back burner while she did battle with that purple horizon.

Unaware of the passing of time, Lucille couldn't place what time it was when her hearing aid went on the fritz. A sound like microphone feedback squealed in her ears, so intense that it sent waves of pain through her brain. She scratched at the device and threw it across the room. The sound continued its tirade. Remembering the ear plugs that she and Harold used to take when he went shooting, Lucille headed towards the kitchen, clutching at her ears every step of the way.

She'd made it halfway across her living room when the strangest light started peeking through her blinds. Lucille thought of that one movie with Richard Dreyfuss and the spaceships; she couldn't remember for the life of her remember what it was called. Her eyes didn't work as well as they used to, but she could've swore that wasn't any color she'd seen before. It was like the color of the purple on her puzzle's sunset, but brighter more intense, like she was inside the sun.

Now that she started looking at it, Lucille found that she couldn't stop. It had a hold on her, and still that sound blared through her ears, getting louder and more shrill by the second. The air around her grew corporeal settling onto everything like a fine layer of snow tinged with twinkling, violet light.

Lucille felt the drops take root in her brain like no physical barrier posed any issue. Images started flashing through her mind at a rapid fire pace, too much for a normal brain to handle, but hers wasn't normal. Not anymore.

Her mind was inundated with still image after image that showed no signs of stopping. What felt like billions of frames passed by in a span that couldn't have been more than a few seconds. They told stories, not stories that had already happened, but ones that were yet to happen. Each permutation of events no matter how big or small all had the same inevitable conclusion. That wasn't quite true, Lucille felt one bright, but infinitesimally small future, but it was oh so small.

Lucille moved towards that eventuality, but it passed by too fast for her to see anything other than a few portraits of events.

A man trudging through a desert towards an unseen oasis.
Two children holding hands in a storm.
A spider engulfed in flames.
A man sitting on the floor of a blank white room.
A tiger pulling a sled weighed down by marble statues.
Jacketed men sharing tea on a mountain of corpses.
An expanse of department store mannequins as far as the eye could see.

They don't stand a chance.

Lucille forced the slideshow of the future into a compartment in the back of her mind so that she could see her living room. The kitchen lay within reach, all it would take was a few more steps. She was no longer transfixed by the light, but she found that her brain wasn't much good for movement anymore. Control of her muscles had become a secondary function, but she still needed something in the kitchen. With grueling amounts of focus, Lucille ignored the images and the now mind shattering noise all in an effort to reach her kitchen. She'd become an automaton with a single goal in mind. 

The kitchen cupboard, the kitchen cupboard, the kitchen cupboard. The words were a mantra in her mind that served to block out the pictures threatening to consume her mind. Lucille fumbled forward clinging to the handles of the cupboard like a guardrail. She threw them open, hands groping inside, yearning for the comfort within. Fingers touched cool metal. She seized it with both hands pressing the cool metal to her temple.

Harold had bought it for her, said it was for protection. She'd thought it silly then, but now, it didn't feel that silly. In a way, it was going to protect her after all. From what has yet to come. Lucille didn't know which future would come to pass, but she didn't care.

She pulled the trigger.

The future was no place for Lucille Dormer.

SaintCole,

This chapter marks the first in a series of updates that will deviate from our original characters. They'll be back. I pinky promise. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think it was for the betterment of the story. It's always the way I wanted to tackle this story. The multiple angles of what's happening in Lancet Falls wouldn't be complete without all these viewpoints. 

If you liked my little experiment, or if you're just liking the story overall. Please vote! 

What did you think of Lucille's little mini story? What do you think what she saw meant? I love hearing you guy's theories!

Thank you for reading this far. This signified the official end of Act 1.  Let's have some fun everyone!