Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 14:08:26 -0500 Reply-To: Samantha Anne Copeland Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Samantha Anne Copeland Subject: Daddy's Little Girl part 02 X-To: Patricia Terris Daddy's Little Girl Samantha Copeland copelasa@vuse.vanderbilt.edu I feel very encouraged now. Many people have sent positive replies, so I am not going to have to slink off to some corner. Now that I've actualy sent out one part, a second isn't so hard to send out. ******Part 2****** Chris got into the car, and drove to her apartment. As she drove, she mused over the events of the day. That morning, after she had been eliminated in the third round of direct eliminations, she had lent her only Leon Paul epee to a friend and the darn thing broke at the end of the bout. The friend had promised to replace the epee, but she wasn't about to hold her breath. After all, it was an FIE blade, the thing had cost over a hundred dollars. She still couldn't believe that her dad had told her to get the best equipment, and hadn't blinked when she told him how much it would cost. She also still couldn't believe that he let her join the fencing club, since she had the habit of letting her hobbies take over. He often told her that he was sending her to school to get an education, not to play. In high school, band had always threatened to take over all of her free time. The band director was always scheduling sectionals after school and she had never gotten a break. If she hadn't enjoyed the trumpet so much, she would have quit in the ninth grade. During middle school, she had always gotten a hard time from the other trumpeters, being one of the few girls in the section. In the seventh grade, their taunts had finally started getting to her and she had switched to the French horn. She had loved the sound of the instrument, but had hated playing it. She had taken the trumpet up again during high school. It wasn't until her senior year that she had decided start playing the horn again, but this time as a sideline. It almost made her laugh as she thought about how much she used to practice, since she'd hardly touched any of her instruments since the semester had begun. Now she was going to fencing practice three times a week, for three hours some nights. After taking up epee, she had abandoned foil. She was always toast whenever she fenced foil, because right of way never made any sense to her. The coach thought that epee would put her 74 inches to best use, not to mention no more right of way. Then all hell broke loose, the night it happened... She had been at a friend's apartment for a Halloween party. The party had been going on for hours and was beginning to wind down, and she was just deciding that it would be a good idea to leave. After all, All Hallows Eve isn't exactly a school holiday, and she had class the next day. She had gone down to the street and gotten into her blue '67 Mustang. The rain made her miss the her old mini-van, which was equipped with a rear window wiper. Still, she had wanted something with more power than the four cylinders that poor thing had. Her "new" car had a very powerful eight cylinder engine that sometimes reacted just a little too quickly for her taste. She had only had the car since the beginning of August and had not driven it a whole lot since. She hadn't even driven it up from Alabama, she'd had everything shipped up to Seacouver, including the car. After tonight, she was going to wish that she had driven it up instead of shipping it. She drove uneventfully for a few minutes, then she came to an intersection. The light changed and she was forced to stop. When the light changed, she began her turn. Because of the wet road, she had reduced traction. She accelerated more to compensate. She overdid it, going too far to the outside, so she jerked the wheel to the left and lost control of the car. As she quickly slammed her foot down on the pedal, she silently wished she had power brakes. The car went into a tail spin. *Oh Crap!* She should have geared down to two! She didn't get any more time to ponder this because, as the right side of the car hit the curb, her neck snapped, and she slumped over into the passenger seat. After what seemed to her like a few minutes, she awoke to the sound of tapping on the car window. At first, she thought it was the rain, but it had ceased. It was her friend Grace, knocking on the glass. Chris sat up and shook her head to clear her mind. She then unlocked the door and got out. She found that she was a little unsteady on her feet, so she decided to lean against the car. "So, how bad is it?" asked Chris. "Looks like you did a real number on it, the right side tires are at odd angles, but at least there doesn't appear to be any body damage," Grace replied as Chris made her way around to the other side of the car. "Oh great! My insurance is going to go through the roof!... Oh well, these things happen. I'm going to have to call my dad tomorrow so I can get it fixed. I just hope he understands," Chris sighed, massaging her sore neck. * Must be a little whiplash, she thought. * "Um Grace, think you could give me a ride back to my place?" "Yeah, I think I can do that, but don't you think you ought to go have someone look you over first?" "Nah, I feel fine, a little bit of a headache, but fine. If I don't show up for lab tomorrow afternoon, call anyone you want." "O.K., but it's your neck, not mine." "Thanks, let me get a few things and then off we go." Chris tilted the drivers seat forward to get at a discarded shopping bag from the back seat. She returned the seat to its normal position, grabbing her CDs and putting them into the bag, "No sense in leaving any temptations for thieves." She took her bag and walked around to the passenger side of her friend's strawberry Neon. She opened the door, slid the seat as far back as it would go, and got in. "Just what were you doing that would make you end up on the sidewalk?" "I over-accelerated in the turn. The wet road finished the job." "You know, you are really lucky that you didn't break your neck. I can see skid marks on the road." Chris just nodded her head, because a strange thought was passing through her mind. The wheels in her head already turning, and the events just didn't add up. The way things had happened, she almost believed that her neck _had_ broken, but that didn't make any sense, because she was feeling okay, just a little bit of a headache. The rest of the ride was quiet. After about ten minutes, they reached the apartment village where they both lived. Grace lived in the next building over from Chris's. She dropped Chris off there and drove over to her building. When Chris got back to her place, she decided that a bubble bath was in order. She drew the bath and dug out her night gown, a white cotton one that reached to just below her knees. It had puffed sleeves, and a wide square collar. It was by far her favorite because it was so roomy. She laid it on the back of the toilet as she ran the water for the bath. She soaked for almost an hour. She then got out, toweled off, and put the gown on. Before turning in, she took two Advil to help clear the headache that the incident had given her. She then crawled into bed and turned off her alarm clock. By the time she woke up, only her memory spoke of the accident of the previous night. The headache was gone, and there weren't any bruises so far as she could tell. She looked and felt in fine. A few nights later, in the mostly deserted parking deck of a local mall, the almost dismissed events came flooding back. As she got out of the elevator, she felt a sensation, much like the headrushes that she remembered from marching band, but infinitely stronger. As she continued to walk to the car, she heard a car door slam. It made her almost jump out of her skin. A man began to approach her, carrying a large sword in one hand. She began to run toward the car, but, in her panic, tripped on her own feet. He came closer and stood over her. "I am Robert Alexander, and now it's time for you to die. Tis a pity though to take the head of one so pretty as yourself," he grinned evily at her "What the * hell * are you talking about?!?!?!" Chris cried. Robert didn't seem to want to give any answers and raised the sword to strike. As he was about to swing down, a mall security truck arrived. He stopped in mid-swing. He addressed Chris, "I will finish this some other time. In the meantime, I will give you something to remember me by." He reached out and cut her cheek. As Chris reached up to feel the warm blood begin to flow down her cheek, Robert turned and walked away, concealing his sword inside of the long coat he was wearing. Chris got to her feet, wasting no time in getting to the car. The first thing she did when she was safely inside it was look at her hands. She was certain that she had scraped them when she had fallen, but the only evidence was a few flakes of dead skin and dried blood that clung to her palms. * This is really weird, * she thought. Suddenly some of the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. She lowered the vanity and looked at the cut on her face. It was still bleeding, though only a trickle. She reached into the back seat and grabbed a roll of paper towels. She tore one off and wiped her face off them. Then she could see the wound more clearly. It didn't look very bad and she judged that it probably wouldn't even leave a scar. Even as she watched, little sparks appeared along the wound, and within a few moments, the scratch was gone, leaving only a line of blood where the wound had been. * This is really getting weird. What is going on here? Why was he going to cut my head off? * With that last thought, she snapped back to the present. She now knew the answers to those questions, or at least she hoped she did. She decided she would be safer if she stopped pondering things in the parking lot and returned to her apartment immediately. When she reached home, she parked the car in one of the spaces in front of her building. She sat in the car for a few minutes, again pondering the things that MacLeod had told her. If not for the experiences in her recent past, she would have thought that man was crazy, but she knew that the things that he had told her were true. There was no other explanation for all of this. For a moment, she wondered if she was the one who was crazy. If she wasn't already she might be soon. She finally decided that what she needed was a good night's sleep, something that she hadn't had since all of this had begun. She got out of the car, took her fencing bag out of the trunk, and made her way up the stairs to her second floor apartment. She unlocked the door and went in. She walked over to where her computer was and switched it on. The impending program wasn't a line that she had used to get away. She really did want to get it done before her dad flew up to spend Thanksgiving break with her. He was coming up on Monday, and it was already Friday, so she had two days to get the program done. She figured that it shouldn't take more than two hours to write. After all, it was just a simple calculator stuck in a loop type of program. While the computer booted, she went into the bedroom and put on her nightgown. When she came back, it still wasn't finished, so she ran some water through the coffee maker for some hot cider. She wanted to relax a bit before getting down to business. She walked to the cabinet and drew out a cobalt glass mug, dumping a packet of cider mix into it. By now, there was enough hot water to make the cider, so she switched the coffee maker off. While the cider cooled, she dumped the contents of her fencing bag onto the floor. She leaned the two foils and her one good epee in the corner. She took her jacket, plastron, and knickers, and laid them out in the other bedroom to dry. She came back and examined the broken epee. It had broken only a few inches from the tip. It really burned her up that it had gotten broken, but the people that were running the tournament had the bright idea of making it an FIE tournament. She really had no choice but to lend it out, because all of the FIE weapons that the club owned were in use, and the person asking to borrow it was her best friend. She set the broken epee on the kitchen counter. She would deal with it tomorrow. The cider was sufficiently cooled, so she took it with her and sat down in front of the computer. An hour and a half later, the program was done. Now, she could actually relax and enjoy her vacation. She glanced at the clock on the wall, which read a quarter to twelve. * Not bad, I will actually get to bed at a decent hour for once, * she thought. About then, she noticed that her answering machine had two messages on it. She switched the computer off and played the messages. "Hi Chris, I hope you did well at your tournament. If you get in early enough, you might give your old dad a ring. This is also to remind you that I will be flying in on Monday at two o'clock on Delta flight 76 to the Seattle airport" "Hello Ms. Balfour, this is Steve at Ace Body Shop. Your car is ready to be picked up. You can come by between ten and four-thirty tomorrow." She smiled a really big smile. * They _finaly_ finished the repairs. It took them long enough, I never would've thought that it would take two and a half weeks to track down a few parts and fix the car. * She wrote herself a note so that she would remember which flight her dad was coming in on, went into the bedroom, got into her bed, snuggled up to her giant teddy bear, and drifted off to sleep. ______________________________________________________________________ Part 3 is coming soon. As always and forever, just send questions and comments to me. If you pick this up in the middle, I will be happy to send you past installments. Samantha Copeland copelasa@vuse.vanderbilt.edu =========================================================================