This is the second of two stories to go up on this site. Enjoy and please reveiw.
Death Warmed Over
It was late and the fire was burning low, logic told me that I should be cold, but the temperature didn't bother me anymore. Even in the subzero climate of the Canadian mountains I was perfectly comfortable to sleep in a simple pup-tent with no coat. It was hard to believe sometimes how resilient I'd become since that day…
It was early in the morning and the sun was just warming the grass over my father's orchard in Texas. I always liked to gaze out the window of my loft and sip a mug of our best apple cider. It was hard for me to sit around all day with nothing to do, sometimes I felt like sprinting a line down the entire forty-mile stretch of my father's land from the copious amounts of energy I had, but the doctor had made it clear that my heart couldn't take the strain of manual labor anymore.
" Jimmy, you up already?" my mother's softly accented voice came calling from the barn below, she'd grew up in the north but when my father married her and moved her down she picked up on our southern drawl, and I heard her soft footfalls from the staircase.
"Over here ma," I said from the window, "isn't it the most amazing thing you've ever seen?" I asked as she came to stand behind the chair in which I was seated with my bare feet on the window sill. She gently hugged me and placed a gentle kiss on my cheek,
"That it is my boy," she replied. I leaned into my mother's gentle embrace, thinking of all the things that had happened in the past year and mourning the life I could have had. I was only eighteen and strong, but because of my rare heart condition it seemed as if my whole future would be over before it started. I sighed,
"It reminds me of a simpler time, before the beetles ruined our crop a few months ago, before that man ran over Trixie (our dog), and before my damn heart stopped ticking right. It just isn't fair ma, I don't know why it has to be so hard." My mother took a deep breath and sighed in return,
"I hear you boy, but all we can do is pray that the good lord will put this behind us." She said as she always did when I spoke of such things, I wasn't so sure. I stood and put my hands on the sill, gripping until my knuckled turned white,
"Ha. Where is GOD now that I really need him?" I grumbled. Before I could tell what was happening she spun me around and slapped me a good one,
"James Arnold Taylor, you can curse and spit and huff all you want, you can lock yourself up in this loft and refuse all the pretty girls who come to see you, you may even harass the workers in the orchard because you're bored but I will not have you cursing GOD in this house!" She screamed at me, "Do you understand me?" I looked into the fire in her eyes, that had been a mistake, she hadn't used my middle name since I'd taken father's truck for a spin without permission and hit an apple tree. I cupped my burning cheek in astonishment,
"Yes ma'am." I stammered. She smiled and patted my arm as she turned to go,
"Good, breakfast is on the table in five minutes, be there if you want to eat. I won't have dawdlers in this house, heart condition or not."
SNAP-
I heard a twig snap from the woods that sorounded my camp, turning slowly I observed the landscape around me but I couldn't find anything out of place. Suddenly a shot rang out and I was knocked to the ground, a piercing pain in my shoulder. I lay still listening, pretending to be dead, and three men stepped out of the wood. They were wearing matching parcas, black with some kind of silver emblem on the chest, and they were all heavily armed.
"Check and make sure he's dead." One of them said gruffly. Another approached and kicked me with the toe of his boot,
"He looks dead boss but the bullet only hit his shoulder." I sprung my trap, jumping up I grabbed the man in a chokehold and spun him around to face his buddies. The other two men pointed their guns, two nasty looking submachine guns, directly at their buddy.
"Hey put those away or your pal gets it." I threatened, pressing the barrel of the .44 I'd been hiding in my wasteband to my hostage's head. The men laughed,
"We don't negociate with muties." And with that they opened fire, the bullets from their guns slicing right through their friend and ripping into my flesh. I dropped my now dead hostage and clutched my chest as their guns clicked uselessly,
"Shit, why isn't he dead?" one of them screamed at the other. My vision was going and I couldn't make out their faces anymore, this was bad. I stumbled back toward the cliff that I knew was behind me and slipped as my foot hit the edge,
"Hahaha, now where to go now freak," I heard the sound of a knife unsheathing, shit! I'd dropped my gun when they shot me, and they were obviously not going to stop until the job was done. I felt the sting of cold metal driving into my side and grabbed the offender's arm.
"You're coming with me." I growled through gritted teeth and launched myself off the cliff. The man screamed all the way down to the rocks and water below but he was quiet once we hit. Water filled my lungs and my body gave in, everythinhg started to go black. Please let this be it, I don't wanna wake up. Please let me meet my maker today. I thought as the crisp, cold water from the river filled my lungs and then my head hit a rock and nothing.