The Proposed Prophecies

The doorman to Evan’s building greeted her with a smile. The apartment complex was exactly as she had imagined; it smelled like new and was clean, and the elevator was quiet and fast, not like theirs in Stockholm where she never been sure if it was about to fall apart. Evan’s elevator even played pleasant relaxing music. It was so fancy that she felt underdressed, her flip flops were not designed to walk on the perfectly white tiles.

“Hey Beautiful.” Evan smiled as he opened the door on his apartment. She didn’t even have to knock. The door man must have said something to Evan, somehow. Despite the promise made to Carmen it was still hard to fully leave the thought about the diary behind. It was still there in her white bag hanging across her shoulder, like she was carrying a dark shadow.

Evan’s apartment smelled good, just like the rest of the apartment complex. It was spacious compared to the one her mother had owned in Stockholm. His kitchen was connected to the living area and the wall to wall windows overlooked the whole city. His apartment was sophisticated, just like Liv would imagined it would be. There were a lot of books on the bookshelf and he had no TV at all, which didn’t surprise her. He always looked like the type of person who would read books rather than being some kind of TV-watching couch potato. There were small round lights all around the ceiling, just like in Amy’s place. His apartment was a combination of cold colors such as white, grey, blue and full of art such as abstract paintings and small statues, spread around the living area. Liv thought these objects were designed to leave their meaning up to the viewer’s imagination.

She placed her bag onto his grey sofa and couldn’t help but notice the overdue bills and a bankruptcy notice laying around the stylish metal table. They were all addresses to Evan’s parent’s business.

“Oh, that’s nothing really,” he said as he brought a glass of wine for her.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” There were piles of bills dating back months and that was only what she could see. There appeared to be many more under the ones on the top and the amounts listed on some of them were reaching thousands of dollars.

“It is nothing to worry about.” He looked relaxed, making Liv think that the situation really couldn’t be that bad. Perhaps they had some savings or managed their bills online. If the situation was that bad, she would surely see some type of worry on his face but he looked happy instead.

“What is this?” Evan suddenly pointed at her grandfather’s diary peaking from the top of her white bag on the couch. Liv paused. She wanted to lie about the diary at first, and say it was from school but she changed her mind. She liked Evan and trusted him enough to start including him more in her life, even if there were things said that were difficult to explain contained within.

“It’s my grandfather’s diary. Well, I am not even sure if it is truly his or just some random stories by some random person. I just know that my grandfather was a writer but I don’t know if this diary is definitely his” She tried to gauge Evan’s interest. He wasn’t acting like what she was saying was strange. “May I?“ he asked and she nodded. He started reading the diary, even reading parts that Liv hadn’t read yet. His reading glasses slipped to the tip of his nose as he turned one page after another.

Suddenly he closed it and placed it on the table on top of the bills and sat next to her on the sofa. “Are there any other diaries?” He appeared serious.

“Yes, a whole box,” Liv said and he suddenly smiled. She was expecting the conversation to continue but suddenly he wasn’t interested. He kissed her. “I love you Liv,” he whispered. It came out of nowhere and the blood in her veins felt as if it was circling her body faster than a tornado. His eyes were the deepest set of brown she had ever seen. “I love you too,” she whispered back, despite thinking it was strange that he had changed the subject so quickly. He got up and held her hand. He didn’t say a word but his eyes talked without it. They were a reflection of a love she felt without him even saying it again out loud. She let him lead her into his dark bedroom, leaving the mysterious diary on the table and the thought of it completely out of her mind.

Liv woke up in the middle of the night from a loud crash of thunder. It appeared that there was a storm approaching the city. It was not raining yet but the sky kept lighting up with flashes of lightening. Evan appeared to be deep asleep, unbothered by the loud thunder surrounding the city.

She put her shorts and t-shirt back on, then walked slowly away from his bedroom, aiming for the kitchen to get some water. There was one more closed room on the left as she walked through the hallway. She wondered what was inside. Perhaps it was another bedroom or a storage room. She opened the door slightly, despite knowing it was wrong. They hadn’t been dating for a long enough time that she would feel comfortable snooping around his apartment. But then she felt like she wanted to know more about him and his quietness and short answers about his past weren’t really helping.

The dark hardwood floor made a squeaky noise as she stepped inside the room with her bare feet. Inside, it looked like an office. She froze for a second. It would be hard to explain her presence there if he saw her snooping around. But there was no movement or noise coming from Evan’s bedroom so she moved towards the office again. The lightening from outside made the room somehow visible but there was not a lot to see. It was a spacious room but he had only a simple desk in it with a bunch of papers on it and shelves all around. It didn’t even look like he had a computer. “What century is this guy from?” Liv laughed. There were so many books and it really didn’t look like he had any technology around.

Guilt rushed through her body. It was really stupid that she was in that room. It must have been closed for a reason. She wasn’t even sure what she was really expecting to find but it was definitely less than nothing. She thought she would perhaps see some family photos hanging around or maybe some ex-girlfriend’s stuff left behind, but no. There was really nothing except books and some papers on the table. On the pieces of paper there was a bunch of numbers and a list of names that went on and on, placed in alphabetical order. She realized she never even asked him if he had ever had a serious girlfriend before. She grabbed one of the papers with names and raised an eyebrow. Perhaps they were names of the employees in his parents business. For a brief moment, she wondered if it was a list of ‘chosen ones’ and she entertained the idea that Evan was an Alter from another planet preparing for the depopulation. The implausibility of the thought made her smile.

She heard a noise from the kitchen and rushed out of the office, hoping she would not have to explain why she was there because there was no reasonable explanation she could come up with.

Quietly, she closed the door to his office and somehow it felt disappointing that she hadn’t found anything revealing about Evan’s past.

She entered the kitchen but there was no one there, only the darkness and the storm behind the windows. She exhaled in peace.

“Hey.” Evan’s sudden voice made her jump. He was right behind her. “I was just thirsty,” she said quickly and wondered if he had seen her coming out of the office. He surely wasn’t in the hallway when she walked out but that didn’t mean he couldn’t see her, she thought. Evan smiled and walked to her, gently giving her a hug. The warmth of his body calmed her. She exhaled.

The next morning she woke up alone in the bed. A smell of eggs, bacon and coffee came all the way through to the bedroom. Evan was truly the best boyfriend ever, she thought. He left a note on the kitchen counter next to the breakfast saying he needed to run errands and would catch up with her later. She poured some coffee and walked to the window overlooking the city from the sixth floor. It looked like it was still raining but the sun was peaking thought the dark clouds. She sipped from the coffee and looked onto the living room table. The diary was on it but the bills were gone. The diary suddenly reminded her of the list with names in Evan’s office. She thought she would take a peek again but the office door was locked once she tried to open it. This was strange. It hadn’t been locked last night. He must have seen her coming out of there, she thought. She wondered what he thought of her now, if he knew she was going through his stuff.

She walked back to the kitchen and ate some of the eggs and bacon on kitchen counter despite the fact that she wasn’t hungry. She never really liked to eat in the mornings, and mostly stuck with drinking a little coffee. But the fact that Evan put effort into preparing a breakfast for her made her feel that she should at least try to eat it. Perhaps he was not angry at her for going through his office, if he had cooked her a breakfast.

She drove back to Amy’s house shortly after and walked straight inside Amy’s small office upstairs, where Amy was sitting in a chair. She had never been in that room before. As a matter of fact she had not been in most of the rooms upstairs other than in Tommy’s and Ashley’s bedrooms. Amy’s office was cluttered with bags and accessories. Liv had never seen so many bags in her life. Bags and purses of all shapes and colors. She had a wide and long desk with sketch pads and pencils all around. Liv always knew that Amy was a talented artist but the designs she had drawn were undeniably the best drawings Liv had ever seen. Every small detail made it look so real, each shape and line perfectly shadowed with the pencil.

Amy had one pencil behind her ear. She wore sweatpants and she was not wearing any make-up which was a rare sight. She was sitting on her chair with a napkin trying to cover her slightly bleeding palm. “I have cut the edge of my hand with paper… again,” she said and laughed. It was somehow funny that a thin piece of paper could possibly cause so much bleeding.

“I have opened the FedEx box.” Liv said quickly and paused. “With Jason’s belongings.” It felt strange to say “grandpa,” since she had never known him and never really thought about him until she moved to Miami.

She handed the diary to Amy who grabbed it with her left hand as her right one still had the bloody napkin pressed against the cut. She glanced through it and rolled her eyes.

“Yeah… this one is one of those stories he used to tell us when we were children about how he worked with aliens to restore our world and to make it a better place for the next generation, for us. I think he called the aliens the Alters. There were from some type of a faraway galaxy but they came to earth because our population struggled to live in peace. And then they created some type of a proposal which was a promise and step-by-step process to restore a world order to avoid a war with these aliens.” She gave a slight laugh and passed the diary back.

“These are quite strong stories for children,” said Liv as she remembered her mother telling her stories about princesses and castles while Amy was told much more grown-up-sounding stories of aliens and restoring peace to the world.

“Yeah, tell me about it. But that was Jason.” Amy shook her head, as if she hadn’t believed any of it for a second.. She kept wiping her bleeding hand which was slowly getting better. Liv was confused about why Amy had never questioned these stories, even when Liv had told her about Jake and Eve’s conversation a week ago. They had mentioned the chosen ones as well and it still meant nothing to Amy.

How about the beautiful creature he mentioned?” Liv asked as she opened the diary again and remembered the woman he’d been interested in before Clair appeared. Amy didn’t seem to be interested. She started looking for a bandage on her desk. Her desk was so cluttered with bags and her sketches that it would be a miracle if she could find it, Liv thought. She moved one thing from one place to another. “Mmm… she was an alien that hated people and I think he said this creature had some kind of obsession with Jason.” Amy seemed to give up searching for the bandage. She scratched her head and exhaled deeply, looking at Liv.

“Liv, you know these are just stupid stories he made up, right? None of it is true.” Amy maintained eye contact as she waited for a response or an acknowledgement of her being right about the diary being just a bunch of stories. But to Liv they somehow felt more than that. “Of course.” Liv smiled and gave a slight shake of her head. It was the acknowledgement Amy seem to be waiting for. Amy looked at her hand again. It seemed to have like it stopped bleeding. “How did he die? I mean Jason.” Liv had never known how he died. She would stop asking about the diary but not about him. Amy seemed to hesitate at first and there was a moment of silence.

“Oh honey. Jason got very sick over the years. He was convinced that the Alters were able to read thoughts but somehow not his own thoughts. I think, he said it was due to a brain abnormality which caused him strong migraines. He was so obsessed about finding out what was causing this brain abnormality and the whole idea of the aliens that he couldn’t tell reality from his dreams.” She paused. “Later on he committed suicide.”

“Suicide?” Liv looked onto the marble floor, staring at her own reflection. It felt strange to know her grandfather had been ill. Suddenly she felt Amy’s warm hands on her cheeks.

“He shot himself in the head. But it’s in the past. I should have never kept these diaries nor given them to you. I don’t know what was I thinking. I should have given them away when the government came to clean up the house.” She let Liv’s cheeks to go and turned around as Tommy was yelling something from the hallway.

“The government? They came to clean up his belongings?”

Amy took the pencil from behind her ear, put her hair into a ponytail and wiped her eyes.

“Yes, but they never knew about the secret room underneath the shed of our old house. It was a place that Jason had said would be a hiding room in case something bad ever happened and we needed to hide. He kept all these diaries there.”

Liv was convinced there must have been some truth in what he was writing about if the government had come to go through his things. But then Amy said it was because Jason was in the army and he might have some things at home that needed to be destroyed. Tommy suddenly entered the study room and asked for a help in the bathroom.

“He had mental issues, Liv. There are no such thing as Alters. And these stories are not real,” whispered Amy before she left the room holding Tommy’s tiny hand. Everything about the Alters felt unreal, but then something about the stories still niggled at her. She looked at the brown paper back diary again and thought of her grandfather. She wondered what had really happened to him and why his stories felt so real.

Liv slowly walked down the stairs, heading to her room though the sunny hallway, holding on to the diary that had created so many more questions. It was hard to let go, despite Amy’s assurances that Jason had been ill. But was he really?.

As she walked through the hallway leading to her room she noticed her door slightly open. She was sure that she hadn’t left it open. Perhaps Amy’s maid Carlotta had left it open, but then she heard a noise coming from inside. Slowly, she opened it and spotted Jake going through her desk.

“What are you doing?” She raised her voice and he turned around. His eyes were on hers, his chest moving in and out. “Where are they?”

“What?”

“The diaries!”

Liv glanced next to her bed where she had last seen the rest of them but the FedEx box was not there.

“I don’t know but you have no right being here.” She tried to appear angry but she was more terrified really. He moved closer to her, still breathing heavily as if appearing to manage his anger. She took one step back and suddenly the contents of the diaries did not seem as unreal; his obsession was clearly disturbing. “Where are they?” he asked again, stepping even closer, staring into her eyes. “I don’t know,” She whispered, as fear took her voice. He suddenly grabbed the diary she had in her hand. Then he pulled her by her hand inside the bathroom. He turned on the shower as he clearly did not want anyone to hear their conversation. “This is dangerous.” He whispered and held the diary in front of her eyes.

His voice suddenly sounded friendlier, like he wanted to protect her instead of hurting her, but she still wasn’t sure enough what to believe or what to think from his words and acts.

“They were in a box on my bed but they aren’t there anymore. I don’t know where they are. I swear.” He placed his hand on top of his head and appeared as if everything was falling apart for him.

“The stories are real, aren’t they?” Liv asked but fear rushed through her body as he grabbed her arms again and pushed her all the way to the vanity table. He was close, too close, she thought as he looked into her eyes and breathed heavily. Her heart was pounding just like the time she had ended up in his arms. She noticed his face expression slowly turning into something more genuine, perhaps even kind. Maybe he was calming down.

“Did you tell anyone about these diaries, other than Amy?”

Liv shook her head. She was afraid to tell him that Evan knew about them. She still wasn’t sure if Jake had good or bad intentions and the last thing she wanted was to jeopardize her relationship with Evan.

He looked disappointed, as if he knew she was lying. “Just keep out of it. I can’t protect you forever,” he said and left her in the bathroom. The shower was still on and Liv was breathing heavily. “Protect me? From who?” She thought out loud. Everything was so confusing.

She turned off the shower and walked into her room. It was a mess. He must have go through each inch of her room and she still could not figure out where the diaries were. Even the one she had been reading was gone, he had taken it.

Whenever the diaries were, it felt like a sign of a trouble. She thought that they must have somehow been important and she wondered what else was in them and why Jake had been so desperate to find them in the first place. Liv walked to the window where the family photo of her grandfather, Amy and Christopher laid on the ground. She picked it up and shook off the broken glass, staring at her grandfather. “What happened to you? What did you do?” she said.