Book I: Chronicles of Michelle Evans

by
Lisa Y. Drexel

It's funny how looking back on my life, I can see where someone could think that my first thirty years of life were unimportant.

They didn't prepare me for much—in the practical sense. I didn't learn how to wield a sword or the intricacies of how to change your identity in the computer age.

Or that Immortals, about whom I had already known for most of my mortal life, weren't the only supernatural beings that walked this earth.

Nope, my mortal life gave me none of this knowledge.

It gave me much more important things.

It taught me to hold love and life close to my heart; that family meant much more than blood and that sometimes it was the little lies that were the most heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize any of this until after my mortal life had ended.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

At thirty, I was a mess, literally and figuratively.

I was sick.

And hated being sick.

It soured everything in my life. It bled all the color and love from my soul and left me empty...and when not empty-angry.

At twenty-seven, I began to feel the constant ache in my body. Every morning I would wake with hope in my eyes, only to feel as if someone had drawn and quartered me the night before while I was asleep.

I hurt. I hurt like I'd been training for a triathlon and my muscles never got used to the strain.

And this is not good for a Watcher—especially one on the field following a young, but extremely active Immortal. He had money and time—he went everywhere and challenged everyone. I never knew where I was going to sleep the next night. I could be in Rome one day and Sydney the next. It was almost as if he knew that he was being followed and decided to play with me as well as all those unfortunate Immortals he ran across. I called him Speedy Gonzales the Prick. Steve Thomas just didn't fit him—even if it had been his name since he'd been adopted during the Depression.

Did I mention that I hated him?

I finally gave in and called my boss. I remember everything about that phone call. In some ways, it was the call that changed my life. It was when I finally admitted out loud that something was not right in Denmark (Denmark being the body of one Michelle Elizabeth Evans-me.)

We were in the States—Atlanta to be specific. I was exhausted. In one week, I had flown over more time zones than I had ever thought possible—and I needed to sleep.

And I needed to heal. I still hurt and by that time, had been hurting for over four months, and I think I was even becoming a bit psychotic. I started to have dreams of beheading Speedy—just so I could get a good night's sleep. At night, I would log on to the Watcher's network and go into one of the chatrooms and bemoan the hardships of following Jetlag the Wonder Boy (another name for him—the need to vent was almost overwhelming). Everyone would laugh at me and tell horrible stories of what they saw their Immortal do that day or that week and tell me that I didn't have it that bad.

Everyone except the alumni watchers of Speedy Gonzales the Prick. We all knew the truth. Someone needed to take his head real quick—before he killed off the Watchers by sheer exhaustion…

Oh right, the phone call. Since I was in the States, I called Joe Dawson.

I liked Joe. I'd known him since I was a kid. You see, my father was a Watcher too. But he had sane Immortals. We only moved once in all those years he followed Immortals, and by that time I had been eighteen years old and thought Chicago was a definite improvement from St. Louis.

I can't tell you how many times I wished I had my father's Immortals. Anyway, Joe and my father had known each other since the mid-seventies and the blues player had even become Uncle Joe to me. I loved his craggly voice. I was endlessly fascinated by his prosthetics. I didn't think he was less of a man for them. I thought he was cool, because in a few years time, he could be Steve Major and have bionic legs…just like the six million dollar man.

Hey, I was young. Barely ten years old when I first met him.

So, I called Joe and told him that I needed a break. I needed to go to the doctor and I needed to find out what the hell was wrong with me. In that order—before I went totally gaga.

He authorized a last-minute vacation for me and the next morning I was on a plane to Chicago.

Two weeks later, I had a diagnosis. I was actually really lucky I got one so quick;y. The gods must've been looking out after me because a lot of Fibromyalgia sufferers go years, sometimes decades without ever getting a correct diagnosis.

But that did little to calm my anger and fear. To know that this was it—this was my life. There was no cure. I just hurt and would hurt until I went into remission. And remissions were never permanent and sometimes in reality, they felt like a bad joke—to have your body back to where it was prior to being sick, for just a day or two—only to have it ripped away from you again.

It made the pain ten times worse.

So, it was in Chicago—at my father's house—where we talked of my future. You see, I'd been a Watcher since I was twenty-two. Although I had a psychology degree, it was only a bachelors. Pretty useless unless I went to graduate school and then on to get my doctorate. The big question in my mind was, 'If I couldn't follow, could I still Watch?'

Did I still want to Watch?

It was at times like that I had wished my mother was still alive. Even though she had died of cancer when I had only was seven, one of my most prominent memories of her was her wisdom and her ability to remain calm despite any calamity that came her way.

She would've been able to look at my situation, wade through the emotional bullshit and help me see the truth.

It happened anyway, it just took my father and I a bit longer, that's all.

And we both came up with the same idea: it was time to change divisions.

So, I called Joe again and asked him if he needed anyone to do research on this side of the Atlantic.

And lucky me—he did—in St. Louis.

Within a week, I had the movers over and my apartment packed and was settling into my new flat in St. Louis.

I was home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

One of those sayings that float around the Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia community is that it won't kill you, but you wish it would.

Within six months, I was in complete agreement of that assessment.

At first, being one of the few researchers in North America meant that I still had to travel a lot. There were always bookstores to wade through, libraries to enmesh myself in and silly me, I hadn't considered the idea that they wouldn't all be in St. Louis. Although St. Louis was a good place to be, it wasn't the *only* place. As one of the oldest cities west of the Mississippi, there was a lot of history to be found in its dark recesses. Immortals always like getting away from it all—and St. Louis being the stepping off place to the great unknown for over two hundred years, meant there were a lot of records to be found in my hometown.

But that didn't preclude my traveling.

Soon, that became an issue as well.

So, I started playing around with my computer and, lo and behold, I discovered a whole new world at my fingertips. And I was good at it. Within six months of my moving back to St. Louis, I had become THE computer researcher for the Americas-an honor, let me tell you.

It was from there—the world of cyberspace—that I first met Adam Pierson.

~~~

Would you like to read the next story in the series, Watcher is as Watcher Does?

If you have any comments or like what you've read, drop me a line!

©2000 Lisa Y. Drexel