Chapter Text
The first time it happens, Pamela's pretty sure she's having some sort of psychological break. Or perhaps it's a physiological event - a stroke or a brain tumor or some sort of seizure.
She just knows, deep in her chest, that something bad is happening to her, that something is deeply and irrevocably wrong .
It is, unfortunately, not the first time she's felt this particular sensation.
There was high school, when her visions first began to appear. Suddenly she began perceiving people before they came into view. The first time it happened - third period freshman year - she'd suddenly known with absolutely certainty that Principal Broussard was about to walk into the room.
She tried to tell herself it was a coincidence, but it was impossible to ignore the way she suddenly felt colors associated with her friends' moods like she was one of those cheap souvenir mood rings.
Even worse, occasionally, she would feel these gossamer strings connecting her to people. Weird tethers that she could almost see in the corner of her eye.
She was sure she was losing her mind.
There were several times she came close to confessing it to her mother, but asking for help has never been in Pamela's DNA.
Besides, Mom would have made it about her, complaining loudly to anyone in earshot that God must have quite the sense of humor for giving her, the former beauty queen, a morose, queer kid with delusions.
Eventually, bored out of her skull in Ancient World History, she'd mentally tugged on one of the strings. That was how she discovered Brett Barlow, starting quarterback of the Fighting Hawks, was more interested in a different kind of ball handling.
No doubt the revelation would have come as a surprise to Tiffani - with an i - his girlfriend, but Pamela wasn't about to tell her. Snitches get stitches and all.
Fresh on the heels of this discovery, Pamela forgot to be worried that she was weird or wrong for the feelings clouding her mind.
She was too busy tugging at strings.
That was how she found out Jane Anderson was struggling to get enough to eat. When Pamela offered her half of a sandwich, the dark gray of her mood became a bright sunny yellow.
Over the course of sophomore year, Jane had gone from lunch companion to friend to confidant, though Pamela never admitted to the reason she'd invited her to sit down in the first place.
It was also how she managed to embarrass Amber Murphy enough to get her to stop being such a bully. Snitches get stitches but sometimes they also get justice.
She'd eventually grown to accept the mystery of her weird little existence, especially when it helped her figure out her best friend, Alex, had a crush on her. Luckily, Pamela reciprocated and they had burned brightly, the psychic feedback when they touched being enough to make Pamela feel like a rocket hurtling through space.
She didn't know if the knowledge she held about others was just "intuition" plus some weird form of synesthesia, or whether something paranormal was happening, but Pamela learned to trust it.
After all, she was always right, and that felt like proof enough. The whys and wherefores didn’t matter.
By the time she trusted her "intuition" enough to follow the man surrounded by a coal black darkness down an alley, and as a result met Lata Dar, giving her psychic abilities a name was really just a formality. Pamela had been more compelled by the question of why smoke was pouring out of the man's mouth than she was by the explanation offered for her powers.
A demon, Lata had explained.
Compared to that, "psychic" had seemed pretty underwhelming. Besides, by then she had accepted that it was something that was, at its core, an intrinsic part of Pamela.
It was like saying she had brown eyes or sang off-key.
She made peace with who she was and even embraced it - opening a small little storefront where she could do readings (real) and sell the general mystical items (fake) people expect in that kind of shop.
Everything was easy peasy mac and cheesy until her life was once again shattered for the second time by The Event - the day she had suddenly felt the world snap out of being.
But at least this time she hadn't been alone in her misery.
A mass hallucination event affecting hundreds of thousands of people; that was the official explanation.
Pamela doesn't have a better one.
For her, it had felt like being discorporated. She had been reduced to atoms, floating in a dark and endless sea.
And then, suddenly, she'd felt it - a vision but distorted. Foreign. Like someone else was scratching around in her brain. She was back in her body, but it felt like someone else's.
The sound of a deep and horrible voice reverberated through her body. I told you not to look at me.
Pain lanced through her, burning her eyes and into her brain. A scream filled the air. It took a moment for her to realize it was coming from her own mouth.
She'd sucked in a breath choked on the smell of burning flesh.
The vision faded and she was once again floating. She'd wanted to vomit. She had no mouth to vomit from.
A spike of fear shot through her. If this was her future, she didn't want it.
She'd felt herself flung into a new body - no, the same body but a different time. There was only darkness but the injury to her eyes no longer seared through her.
Instead, it was her chest that burned as her lifeblood poured from a wound in her side.
She'd heard her pulse thrumming in her ears, felt the desperation of an unknown man gently holding her.
Her eyes saw only darkness but her mind? Colors and lights and sounds filled her mind.
She'd felt, then, the absence of her pulse. Her life fading, a sensation of falling, then floating.
Pamela.
A soft, sweet voice calling from behind her.
But before she could turn towards it, she'd snapped back into her body, her motorcycle weaving erratically on the road as the panic filling her lungs slowly subsided.
Later, though, she was able to think logically about it.
It was a hallucination. It had to be.
Pamela's been around the block enough to know that sometimes dreams mean something, but most of the time they're just ghosts of memories inhabiting your mind, squished together into a random collage.
Combined with the prevalence of other hallucinations around the world, it was clear that the problem wasn't Pamela. Or at least not just her.
It's been 6 months and most people have largely moved past it. Sure, sometimes you'll meet a conspiracy theorist who thinks they know some deep, dark truth - but the vast majority of the population has left it in the rearview.
What else can you do?
Pamela spent a few weeks worrying about a string of catastrophic injuries heading her way, but when nothing materialized, she did the same.
Until now.
Because for the third time in her life, Pamela finds herself filled with a deep and consuming sense of dread. The sense of wrongness is so pervasive, the pain in her head so acute, that Pamela can't deny the truth.
One minute she was swinging her leg over her bike and now she finds herself falling, tumbling almost in slow motion.
This isn't some benign power manifesting - and its certainly not a hallucination.
As the darkness on the edges of her vision spreads, blotting out the sky, all Pamela can think is: well, at least I managed to get off my motorcycle this time.
And then there is only blackness.
A soft breeze flitting through her hair pulls Pamela back into the present.
She blinks.
Something pokes at the back of her brain. She feels like she's forgetting something.
Something important.
Something about the…sky?
She shakes her head.
Girl, you're losing it. You need coffee.
She refocuses her gaze on the menu taped to the window in front of her.
She worries her lip as she tries to decide whether she wants to spend coffee shop prices for the promise of substantially better coffee than is offered at the Gas N Sip down the street.
She does some quick mental math: she got that walk-in yesterday and she's pretty sure the widow who called her last week is going to be regular.
What's the point of life if you don’t give yourself a little treat once in a while?
Pamela hums happily and turns towards the door just in time to almost bump into a pretty blonde woman laughing as her companion flails her arms around mid-conversation.
Pamela watches as the women walk by, They're probably no more than twenty. Pamela smiles, feeling a twinge of nostalgia for the optimism of that age.
She remembers a very similar day soaking up the sun and making plans with Lata years ago.
The companion continues, paying no mind to their audience of one."I'm telling you, Dee, it’s gonna be the trip of a lifetime. Plus think of the pasta-"
Whatever she's about to say is cut short as she trips over a discarded bottle and hurdles face first into traffic.
The world stops for a moment, the only sound is the screech of brakes. One moment there's the blur of a red Civic and then the woman is flying, landing with a sickening thwack in the middle of the road.
Dee screams.
"Mallory!" She desperately staggers towards the woman not even bothering to look for oncoming traffic.
Dee falls to her knees next to Mallory, a ragged sob escaping from her lips.
A woman steps out of the Civic, her voice shaking. "She came out of nowhere. You saw that, right? I was just driving and suddenly there she was. Oh God."
Around them, there are screams and low, hushed tones as people call for help, but Pamela can already see from the way Mallory's skull is crushed, that it's probably too late.
Dee clutches her against her chest, begging her to stay. "Please. I need you. Please just hold on, baby."
Mallory's only response is a trickle of blood slowly falling from her lips to the pavement.
Pamela is frozen in horror. She wants to do something - anything - to stop the tragedy unfolding in front of her.
Suddenly, in the midst of yells and curses and sobs, a dark stillness tugs at her mind, dragging her gaze up to meet the soft brown eyes of a woman.
Her brown hair falls in waves, somehow undisturbed by the light breeze, but it's the calmness in her eyes that's the most unsettling thing.
In the face of the grief and horror in front of them, she stands perfectly still. It's as if she is entirely unaffected.
Her coral lips spread in a soft smile and, for a moment, she looks almost wistful.
Pamela swallows, a lump forming in her throat. Perhaps it's just the horror of the day, but she can't shake the feeling that there's something else that she's missing. She gets that sinking feeling again like she's forgotten something important.
And below that, she feels the thrum of something in the back of her mind, like there's a tether between them, only unlike the strings she normally senses, this one is just outside of her perception.
She stands frozen in place. Whether it's a moment or an eternity, she couldn't say.
The woman turns away, breaking the spell.
She looks down at Mallory, tilting her head for a moment as if listening for something.
A bright golden light begins to glow, emanating from the dying woman.
The mystery woman holds out a hand towards the light, and it brightens. Her lips move.
Pamela strains her ears, but the distance is too great to hear anything over the sound of Dee's heaving sobs.
Dee.
Pamela looks at the blonde. She's looking around, her tear-streaked face desperately searching the growing crowd that surrounds her. "Please somebody help her."
Dee's gaze passes right over the mystery woman.
In fact, nobody seems to pay her any attention at all, despite the fact that she is now radiating a light so bright, Pamela has to turn her face away.
As quickly as it appeared, the light is gone.
Pamela searches the horrified and tear-streaked faces in the crowd. There's no sign of the amber-eyed woman.
In the distance, a siren wails, rushing towards the scene, almost certainly too late to provide any real assistance.
Suddenly it cuts off.
Pamela blinks and finds herself lying on the ground, staring at a perfect blue sky, fingers clutching a helmet at her side.