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FOUR YEARS LATER
CORALINE had a vision of the Apocalypse six months before it happened.
She really didn't understand it at first. She had been at her job when her vision blacked out. Coraline remembered stumbling backward and running to a safe space for shelter, somewhere dark where no one could find her. She had slipped to the floor, gripping the walls around her as the vision took control of her entire body, transporting her to a future where the land was barren and the sky was dark. She remembered how she couldn't breathe in the vision. The air was toxic and heavy. Explosions echoed in her ears, and when she finally turned around, she witnessed the ground implode just feet from her. Coraline began to sprint, and as a cloud of dust prepared to envelope her, she had come back to reality.
They continued throughout the next couple of months. Coraline knew she had to do something, but she didn't know what. Who could she tell? Why would the government believe a twenty-two-year-old rambling that the Apocalypse was near? She surely wouldn't. As the visions continued, depicting a graver fate for humanity, Coraline chewed at her fingers and tried convincing herself preposterous things, like how nukes didn't exist or that God would save them all. That was her biggest mistake.
2021 was a bad year, but 2020 was even worse. On her 21st birthday, one of the most important days in a young adult's life, Coraline's father died. He had actually planned meeting up with her and her mother for dinner that night, but someone had other plans for him. As Jacob had been crossing a street to get to the bar where Francesca and Coraline sat, he was struck by a car driving over the speed limit. He was killed instantly.
After he first left them, Francesca vowed to never stop hating Jacob Avery. However, once they buried him in the ground, she clutched her chest and realized the love she still had for the man who broke her heart. It was almost unbearable to believe that he was gone, and her daughter now had to live without a father. Coraline never thought that she knew her father that well, even before he left, but now she wouldn't ever know. She wouldn't ever see him grow old. She'd just see the flowers on his grave wilt and die.
In her grief, Francesca turned to God. She had never been one to care about religion, though she had made a hissy fit when Satanists had moved to their small, California county in the past. Now, she was almost out of control. Francesca attended church every Sunday morning, bright and early, and in her best clothes. She read through the Bible when she began to think about Jacob's death. She even forced her daughter to get cross tattoos to honor him, right on their wrists for everyone to see. Coraline wasn't even sure if God existed, but she would do anything to make her mother feel better.
Jacob's whole fortune was left to Coraline, much to her surprise. However, she didn't use it unless it was truly needed. After finishing her Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology at a California state college, Coraline got into bartending. Although she had the money to pursue something greater, she wanted to feel normal, like she didn't have thousands of dollars waiting for her to inherit in her bank account, or visions of an apocalypse that plagued her every damn month. Getting a bartending license screamed normal. The money at the bank was used for more important things, like groceries and taking care of her indigent mother, who wouldn't stop preaching about God's love.
