You guys continue to amaze, all I can say is thank you. I'm curious to see how you guys think this story will end.
-Hawkfrost
Astrid sat on the edge of her bed trying to stifle her sobs and gain control of her turbulent emotions; it was like being a ship corkscrewing through waves of the ocean. She placed her trembling hands on the hardwood of her bed-frame hoping to draw comfort from the strength of its stability. It helped, a little. She closed her eyes and began focusing on her breathing. It was hard to do since sitting seemed to require more energy than her exhausted body had to offer. Breathe, just breathe. She exhaled slowly through her mouth before inhaling deeply through her nose. Sounds of musket shots Her breathing hitched. His blood spattering on her face She started gripping the wood hard enough to hurt. Please, don't kill me! She stood suddenly and flew into the bathroom, just managing to reach the sink before vomiting yet again. It was an exercise in futility, what little she had eaten that day was already staining the ground where his body lie, lied, it wasn't there anymore now. She slumped onto the floor and cradled her head in her hands, it sounded like there was a war going on in her head, and even the most basic of thoughts seemed to be beyond her comprehension.
"I had no choice." The whisper pried itself out her mouth of its own accord.
That did nothing to ease her conscience. No, her conscience still remembered the look in his eyes, that moment in time when he realized he was going to die and that nothing could change that. She could still feel the warmth of his blood as it dripped down her neck and coated her hands, it was unbelievably sticky, like red molasses, refusing to go away no matter how many times she had scrubbed.
"I didn't," she could feel the tears stinging her eyes and causing her vision to blur "he, he didn't give me a choice."
She placed her hand over her mouth to keep the groan from coming out as she rocked back and forth trying to remember how to breathe. After the deed had been done she wanted to run, just run forever and never stop. She hadn't wanted to look down at the lifeless corpse that used to be a human being. She hadn't wanted to be the one responsible for turning him into said corpse. She also really hadn't wanted to do what she did next. She couldn't just leave his body in the middle of the woods, someone would go looking for him and would no doubt have questions about the circumstances of his death. So she dragged him to the river bank and, using strips of his shirt, tied a rock to each ankle. She then waded out into the icy black that was the water and proceeded with her plan. Or she attempted to, she hadn't fully appreciated how cold the water would be. Especially since it wasn't yet winter. She wasted several moments trying to stop her teeth from chattering and was immensely grateful she suffered through lifting and dragging the rocks on land. It would have been impossible for her to do it now, with her fingers stiff and clumsy. She kept going, half swimming half lunging forward with the body in tow. She had to reach a spot deep enough that passers-by wouldn't notice and he would have enough room to sink. It seemed like she swam forever, the sounds of the waves lapping, her breath seen through the moonlight, the cold that was constant as it was burning.
Eventually, she had reached the desired depth. She let go and watched his body sink. Just before the deep dark claimed his soul, his lifeless eyes stared at her, accusing her.
"I'm sorry." She had whispered it to waves. It was almost mantra for her now, sitting there on the hard, uncomfortable wood of her floor. She sniffed a few times and stared numbly at nothing. She had no perception of how long she sat there, her hair still wet and dripping onto the floor. She might never have moved if not for what happened next.
Thump, thump.
The vibrating sound of knuckles pounding against the wooden door of her apartment penetrates through the walls. At first, she doesn't register it, her brain still addled with grief and coming off the shock of, well shock.
Thump, thump.
There it is again. This time she does react, her head swings around and she leans against the door frame. Her heart accelerates as beads of sweat begin to form on her head, despite still feeling half frozen to death.
Thump, thump.
She licked her lips, she knew now this wasn't a trick her brain was playing on her, someone was at her door, but she couldn't move, couldn't breathe. All she could do was stare at the wooden door. Time froze and she was nine years old again. She had been so excited to show her father her new skill. She remembered wanting so desperately for him to be proud of her again. She had raced up the steps of their little wooden cottage and proudly presented her father with the bow she had spent an entire summer making. She thought he would be proud of her, or at least happy.
But that wasn't to be, her parents had scarcely noticed her there, so busy were they burning piles of documents and bound books they failed to noticed the hoof beats until they were just outside. She remembered the sound of knocking then as well, she could still see the look on her fathers face as he peeked out the window to see two soldiers flanking an officer on both sides. Her father had taken her in his arms and taken her to the bedroom, he told her to climb underneath the bed and made her swear not to come out no matter what. She tried to protest, to tell him she didn't want him to leave her alone, that she was scared. But he just kissed her forehand and ran back outside, closing the door behind him.
She could hear his voice tremble slightly as he addressed them. She could hear the sound of wood breaking and people shouting. There were grunts of pain and the sound of rapidly moving feet. She listened intently as they tore her home apart. It was if they were shoving everything aside, flipping over tables, chairs, desks, anything that wasn't firmly placed into the ground. Papa had shouted for them to stop, but when he tried to speak again he was abruptly cut off. There was more screaming and papa and a soldier crashed into the bedroom, breaking the door down. They wrestled on the ground for a moment before another soldier came into the room and cracked his head with the blunt end of his pistol.
It had taken everything she had not to scream, so instead, she had bitten down on her tongue, bitten down so hard it bled in her mouth. The soldier pressed the gun to her fathers head and cocked the hammer. Papa looked at her underneath the bed, looked at his daughter, at her face screwed up in agony, silent tears coursing down her cheeks, and he smiled. It was a wonderful smile. Just before he pulled the trigger the soldier was pulled back by mama, she had wrapped a table cloth around his throat and was using it to strangle him. The soldier stumbled back, momentarily off balance. In the reprieve, papa used the opportunity to shove the other soldier's head into the wall. Astrid heard a wet snapping sound and he groaned in pain.
"Close your eyes. Close your eyes my Valkyrie." He had whispered the words fiercely.
She shut her eyes moments before the gunshot. The shot cracked into the air as loud as thunder but without the raw power of a storm. She felt the ground vibrate as papa thudded onto the floor.
Her mother had screamed at the sight of her husband's corpse and thrown the nearest thing in her hand at them. The other soldier hit her and shoved her against the wall. She viciously kicked his leg causing him to trip. Once he was on the floor she slammed the fireplace poker into his face. He screamed so she did it again, and again. She kept going until she too was felled by a shot. This time, Astrid's eyes were open, and she saw her mothers head explode. The scene before her was so horrific that she couldn't even scream, she couldn't even breathe. All she could do was stare blankly.
Thump, thump.
The knocking tore her from her memories. She stood on shaky legs and wiped away the tears that were stinging her eyes. Slowly she approached the door, too broken to care what lay on the other side of it. It wasn't so much that she was walking forward as the door was inching closer to her. When she had finally glided to her stopping point she reached out to grab the handle. She froze there a moment, trying to compose herself and feeling that she was failing. Taking a deep breath, she stepped back and opened the door.
00000
He couldn't sleep. He had been lying there for hours now, listening to the noise of the street below him. He could hear the sound of hooves echoing off the cobblestone, the sounds of drunken party goers tumbling back to their homes in various states of inebriation. He heard it all, processed it even, but was completely disconnected from it. All he could think about was her. It had been (blank) weeks since they had spoken. He had told himself to move on, she was a beautiful woman, but he had been with plenty of beautiful women, so what? Be he couldn't. At night, she came to him, in his dreams, she was his. He sat up and rubbed his face, this was ridiculous, he was a highly trained intelligent officer pining after some, some barmaid. It was pathetic. At least, that's what he told himself. Some officer you turned out to be, pining like this. What would your father say? He growled and flopped back down on his pillow. It wasn't her that was keeping him up, it was his damned back injury. Yes, that was it, it didn't signify deeper emotional turmoil, it was simply his back pain.
The damned thing was acting up again and he was certainly not going to take the medicine the doctors had prescribed him. When he had been laid out in hospital in sheer agony they had prescribed him a bit more than was necessary. Nothing against the docs, they had been fine docs, just a bit heavy handed. The withdrawal period had been absolute hell. The opium was a wonderful method of neutralizing pain, along with the rest of his emotions. He remembered the drug-induced nightmares that had come. The feelings of weightlessness and the rage that had followed at seeing his limbs disobey commands from his brain. How he had struggled even to say the most basic of words for his tongue was heavy and useless as lead. The overall experience was so dreadful it left him with a strong aversion to all opioids and anything similar. With a sigh, he tossed off the covers and lumbered into the washroom. After lighting a candle and relieving himself, he looked at his reflection in the flickering light. He saw the shadows dancing across his face, seeming to split him in two, and tried to ignore the poignant message hidden there. Three years, he sighed, three bloody years and they were no closer to victory than they were at the onset. Countless tens of thousands of pounds spent, thousands of soldiers either wounded or killed and they had nothing real to show for it. All they had were a list of close calls and could've beens. So here he was, losing sleep and keeping a near addiction opioid incident at bay, while…what? He was tired of it all he couldn't even coherently lay out precisely who or what he was angry with. He gripped the sink tightly and took a deep breath.
Rolling his neck, he exited the washroom to gaze out his window at his domain below. Sometimes the burden of it all came to him at once. There were thousands of people, all living ordinary lives with ordinary concerns. Never fully appreciating how close to death and chaos they were living. If the British army failed to exterminate this rebel infestation it would mean the end of everything righteous. He remembered with horrible acuity what that had looked like during the seven years war. Those bloody savages in the Wabanaki and Ojibwa tribes had unleashed bloody vengeance on the civilized world. Scalping, kidnapping, and even raping weren't unheard of when they were on the prowl. When he closed his eyes and allowed his mind to wander, he could still hear the bone-chilling sound of their war cries. The demonism of it all only settling in when he was alone. When he was left alone to quietly chant the names of every one of his brothers that had fallen to the hated Indians.
He had been a boy during the campaign that had netted him the scar that bisected his back. He could remember the excitement that he had had. Here he was eighteen, and being one of the King's soldiers. He was going off to the Americas to wreak holy vengeance on the French dogs and their savage butchers. The memories whipping through his mind caused his wound to throb from phantom pain. It felt like his body was trying to fold his back in half. He gasped and fell onto his bed gnashing his teeth to keep from crying out. After a few pain wracked moments the episode subsided, leaving him breathless and alone, slumped there on the floor. There, in the darkness and completely alone, no one could see the tears running from his eyes as the sounds of war and the smell of death came back to him.
Well, who do you think is knocking on Astrid's door at this hour? And does stone cold Henry's heart beat after all?