It all began as a whisper. Just one small voice in her ear, speaking so low that Emme wasn’t sure it was real at all. She dismissed it and went about her day.
The whisper became whispers. No set pattern, just random moments where a voice breathed and vanished. The message remained impossible to perceive.
Emme tried to put them out of her mind. “It must be my imagination,” she thought. “Too much caffeine or not enough sleep. Or both.” That thought seemed to quiet the whispers, as though her mind understood that she would begin to treat her body better in the morning.
It wasn’t until she was walking home alongside the river that she heard it again, but this time it was loud enough for her to understand the words.
“Come. Follow.”
“Who are you? What do you want from me? Why are you speaking in my ear? How are you there and I can’t see you? Emme’s questions tumbled from her lips, but the answers were left unsaid. Only the low voice repeating,
“Come. Follow.”
“I will not follow. I will not come. Leave me alone!” Emme wiped perspiration from her upper lip and felt tears on her cheeks. She did not know she was crying. She began to run away from the voice, but it stayed with her on the wind. It grew louder and more insistent.
“Come! Follow!”
“NO! GO AWAY!” Out of breath, Emme dashed toward the bridge over the river. There was a police station just over the bridge that she passed every day. She raced toward it.
This time the voice was so loud that she looked to see whether anyone else could hear. People looked at her strangely as she ran, but no one stopped to see whether she needed help and no one else seemed to hear.
“COME. FOLLOW. LIVE.” The voice rose with the wind that began to swirl around Emme.
“Where? Why? What do you want? What do you mean?” Emme began to pant with terror and exhaustion. What was happening to her? “GO AWAY!”
The wind picked up speed, rotating around her until she felt like she was in the middle of a cyclone. She couldn’t speak or move. She cried as the wind spun around her, preventing her from leaving its eye. She felt herself lift from the ground, suspended, but not spinning with the wind.
It felt to Emme like hours. She gave up fighting and let her self go limp, held up by the force of the voice in the wind that fairly shouted at her.
“LIVE!” it said. Nothing more about going and following. Just a command: LIVE.
Between seconds, the howling wind ceased, and Emme found herself seated near the river. Leaves littered the ground around her, and her left shoe was missing. Also missing was the voice. And the bridge.
The bridge was gone. She could see that the buildings on that side of the bridge were reduced to rubble. Smoke rose up from fires outside her view. Overhead she heard the whine of plane engines, speeding away. Beneath the noise was a still, small voice, whispering again,
“Live.”