Sometimes, I write stories. Well, I should say, sometimes, I USED to write stories. Just short stories (though I did try NaNoWriMo once, and got something like 20 or 30 thousand words in), where I'd try to set a scene and an emotion, and leave the reader to fill in the rest. This is one of them:
Human Debris
It wasn’t the first time my big mouth had gotten me into
trouble, but it would prove to be the last. The impact of the first bullet,
just below my ribcage, knocked the wind from me. I guess I had blinked at just
that moment, and at first I couldn’t figure out how he had crossed the room so
quickly and punched me. As I collapsed to the ground, I heard Katie’s scream…
though it somehow sounded muted. It wasn’t until I noticed a dull ringing in my
ears that I realized the bastard had had a gun. I was shot!
Panic began to set in, the more so when Katie rolled me over
onto my back, and I saw the blood on her hands. I thought she had been shot
too, then realized it was my blood that covered her. I felt…. weird. There were
so many thoughts going through my mind at once, and it was like I couldn’t grab
hold of any one idea. This strange combination of the rational and the
irrational flew through my mind, so as part of me was wondering how much blood
I had lost and if I was dying, another part of me was worried about Katie
getting blood on the new nightgown that I had bought for her just last week. It
was too expensive, but I’d wanted her to have it for the trip. I wanted to tell
her to go get one of the motel’s towels to wipe up the blood, but all that came
out was “bluhhhh…” She looked at me curiously for a moment, then began crying
uncontrollably.
Finally, the most rational of thoughts flashed through my
brain, and I wondered where Lewis was with that gun. That thought quickly took
hold, and I tried to look around the small motel room. Katie was kneeling
beside me on the floor, holding me to her, and sobbing quietly. Or maybe
loudly; I still couldn’t hear very well. Either she knew Lewis had left, or she
was in too much shock to care. Though in my weakening state my vision was
blurry, and getting worse by the second, I tried to turn towards the open doorway
where Lewis had been standing when this all began. But my motor skills were
fading quickly, and I found I didn’t have the strength to lift my head.
I tried to take stock of the situation, but my mind seemed
as blurry as my vision. I couldn’t move, I could barely see or hear or even
think straight, I was bleeding to death in front of my wife, and I still didn’t
know if the bastard who shot me was sticking around to make sure he finished
the job.
I felt a jolt in my head as Katie suddenly dropped me to the
floor, and I knew things were about to get worse. Gravity helped me turn my
head to the side, and when I rolled my eyes up as far as they could go, I saw a
blurry pair of cowboy boots just inches from the top of my head, standing toe
to toe with Katie’s bare feet. There was this smudge of blood on the side of
her leg, and it looked like it was in the shape of the state of California. Or
was it a tattoo? Did Katie have a tattoo? I couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t I
remember if my wife had a tattoo?
Strangely, while everything else in my body continued to
fail me, my hearing was gradually returning. I heard the son of a bitch call
Katie a whore, and in my rapidly diminishing mental state I had this
overwhelming urge to bite his toes. I think I even got my head to move an inch
or two toward that goal, when Katie’s feet suddenly disappeared from my side. I
had this wildly irrational thought that she had learned how to fly, until I
heard her body slam up against the wall across the room, and then I knew that
he had tossed her aside to get to me.
With a clarity that bordered on supernatural, my hearing
suddenly returned completely, and over the throbbing in my ears, and Katie’s
screams, and even the shouts of some concerned citizens outside the open motel
room door, I heard the solid metal click, as he cocked the pistol.
Knowing I was about to die was not nearly as frustrating as the knowledge that
there was nothing I could do about it. My mind spun like a misaligned bicycle
tire, each cycle of thought rubbing against the next. I needed to tell Katie
something, but I couldn’t think what it was. Something about life after me,
about raising a family, or being happy, or having a future with someone else,
or just knowing she was loved. There was too much, and the words – the thoughts
– wouldn’t gel, and in the end, I knew I couldn’t speak anyway.
I could actually hear Katie lunge across the room towards
Lewis, and I wanted to tell her that it was too late for me, that I was already
destined to be just one more piece of human debris, and she needed to get out
before this asshole decided to kill her too, but I knew I could no more stop
her than she could have stopped me if the situation were reversed.
The next moment happened so fast, but it was all in slow
motion in my mind. I saw a blur as Katie hit Lewis, and merely bounced off of
him and fell to the floor next to me, and at the same time the room darkened as
someone’s shadow filled the doorway. I heard a voice shout “Freeze, asshole!
Drop the gun!” Unfortunately, I was the only one in the room who knew that
Lewis was not going to give up until he was finished with me.
“No.” he said softly, more to me than whoever was at the
door. Even without seeing, I could sense the insane smile creeping over his
face, his dark eyes burning with fury and hatred, his crooked grin spreading
over his crooked teeth. I could picture it clearly. I can picture it still. I
heard nothing else, but the blindingly bright light that flashed from the
muzzle encompassed all of my vision, and seemed to grow in a moment that lasted
for eternity, until I was surrounded by whiteness…
…and nothing else.
©2007 Gregory S Rodenius
