Ramona Blaque's Story

The man glanced up from his food nervously as Ramona spoke to him. "No no, nothing wrong here, just have a lot to do today and little time to do it." He said with a weak smile. The man took a deep breath and looked down at his finished breakfast and back to Ramona as he reached into his grey jacket and pulled out an old beat up wallet. "Here this should cover the meal, and keep the rest as a tip, you deserve it." He said with a weak smile as he hands a thick wad of money to her.

As the man reaches the door, he turns back to Ramona "For what it is worth, I am sorry." he spoke one last time before hurrying out the door.

When Ramona looked at the money in her hands, she would discover nearly $1,000 in various crumpled bills.

"Neil come in!" said the doctor in a thick Irish accent while looking at a chart in front of him. "So I understand you have been having some headaches is that correct?" the doctor added taking off the jacket he was wearing tossing it into a container marked for disposal and grabbing a new jacket off the back of his door. "Sorry for my ragged appearance, I just got off my shift as an EMT and was filling in for Dr. Johnson while he is sick." The man added wiping the sweat from his forehead. "I am Dr. Jonas, now lets take a look at you shall we?" Dr. Jonas said with a smile.

The Doctor did look nervous, it was indeed Neil's chart in his hand. The clock was exactly 42 seconds slow. There were 56 tongue depressors in that jar. The sheer amount of information again causing Neil's head to hurt.

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Phil smiled and shook Gracie's hand. "Here is my card, will be in contact with you!" He said witha simple smile. As Gracie walked out, she sees two police vehicles, a fire truck and an ambulance fly by, sirens screaming. Heading in the direction of her side of town. She could see smoke above the houses and tree lines.


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The man flinched as Ramona caught back up with him, attempting to thrust the money back at him. "No look, take it, I don't need it and you soon will, forget we met and don't tell anyone. You might want to look into getting out of town for a bit, now I have to get out of here." the man said in a panic refusing the money and jumping into a shabby grey car, starting the ignition and zooming out of the parking lot.

"Is everyone ok? What happened?"

Gracie was embracing her flustered mother when she heard a familiar voice behind her. "Mona.., oh Mona! I'm so glad to see someone I know" Ramona and Gracie had always been good friends through out grade and high school. Ramona was doing it again, Gracie could tell how she kind of spaced out when she saw the burning flames that were once Gracie's house. Gracie felt the heat on her arm from Ramona's hand, she reached out and gently took Ramona's wrist "Hey Mona come back okay just let it go", she said trying to bring her back from the fire.

Gracie and Ramona had found out very young that Mona had some kind of connection with fire, an incident that had hurt Mona pretty badly. But that didn't mean Gracie wasn't "different" either. No matter how entranced by the fire Mona got Gracie could always pull her out of it. In fact Gracie often had that sort of affect on people. Someone on the brink of killing themselves of someone else would do whatever Grace asked is she tried hard enough. She first figured this out with her parents as a child and could convince them of anything or get her whatever she wanted, but thats a story for another time. When the fire fighters began to put out the flames, Grace tried to catch Mona before she hurt herself falling to the ground.

"Is she alright?" asked Gracie's mother

"She's fine I think it's just the heat coming off the fire", answered Grace as she knelt down next to Ramona. "Hey Mona, it's alright" she said brushing hair out of Mona's face. "Wake up Mona, or their gonna try to drag you off to the hospital", she shook her friend gently.

Gracie was glad to see that her friend had come out of it, "We don't know what started it" she looked back at her house "Im so sorry mom I don't know what could have happened" she said.

Gracie's mother sighed as her husband walked up she took him to the side to tell him everything that had happened.

Gracie felt for them, she knew now that the trip that they had been planning for years had just gone up in smoke, she turned her attention to her friend "Mona you need to be more careful or people are gonna think your some kind of crazy arsonist or something" she said under her breath as she took hold of Ramona's hands. "At least you don't hurt yourself with that anymore, I think that the teachers at school were beginning to think you were hurting yourself or something , she sighed and looked back at her house. "Damn what am I gonna do now my job won't start for a couple of weeks", she said sadly.