Hello everybody. I just wrote this and it is currently almost midnight and I am very tired, so there may be a few mistakes. I appreciate any criticism you might be able to give me. I normally don't post things this quickly, but i haven't posted anything in so long, i figured it was about time. I was re reading and i realized that there might be a little confusion in the matter of the section marked by asterisks. This is a flashback. I will try to find a way to clear this issue up as soon as possible, but tonight is not the night. Anyways, I hope all of you will enjoy this product of an hour and a half's boredom.
DEATH AND ALL HIS FRIENDS
I watched the flames dance in the circle of stones. The writhed and jumped and then returned to their places, flickering in the shadow of the descending night. All other thought had fled from my mind. I did not think about why I was here or what was happening. I thought solely of the fire. It was beautiful in a way. It had a perfectly chaotic shape that could only be marveled at. As I watched the flames seemed to take a shape. They danced with more regularity and pattern until it looked as if it were a figure dancing in the flames. Soon that figure could be seen. It whirled in the fire and soon other figures joined it. There were six now.
One by one the figures jumped and disappeared out of the fire. When only one remained he began to dance more fiercely than ever, turning circuits around the rim of the fire in seconds. As it danced it grew till it was the size of a man. Then until it was larger. When it was ten feet tall it stopped dancing and looked at me. It looked down at my kneeling form and smiled. Still smiling it reached out its hand to me. Without thinking I did the same, and when our hands touched there was pain. The pain covered my body and overwhelmed my senses. In that moment I wished for death. More so then when I was hit by the car. More then when I had understood that everyone I had ever loved was gone. This was far worse. The pain consumed me, and then it stopped, and in the silence I remembered who I was.
* * * * *
I was eighteen years old. I was a student attending Appalachian State University in northern North Carolina. It was summer vacation and I had traveled south to visit my parents. The cab had dropped me off and while I was crossing the street it hit me. It being a car driven at sixty miles an hour driven by a man talking on his cell phone and yelling at his child in the back seat at the same time. One moment I had been in Atlanta the next moment I was nowhere.
That nowhere was cold. The snow crept up through my shoes and soaked my socks and my feed thoroughly. I had shivered and looked around. I was in a town, a ghost town. I had been there for only a minute and I could tell than no one lived here. The buildings were dilapidated and broken, empty husks leaning over a snowed in street.
I had moved down the street in a daze, wondering if this was heaven or hell, and if it was the latter what I had done to get there. There was no objective to my wandering. My feet moved and my body followed. I walked for twenty minutes at most before I saw him. He was dressed in a long brown coat and his face was hidden behind the brim of a limp leather hat. As soon as I saw him he turned and looked at me. I remembered not being able to see anything but his eyes. They were blood red. They stared at me for a split second, and then they were gone.
A hand wrapped around my throat and pulled me to the ground, then, I lost consciousness.
When I woke I was where I was propped up against a wall near where I had fallen. The man in the coat was tying a horse up to a rail with two other horses. There were two other men around a fire across the road. As soon as I had woke all of the men were looking at me, as if they had heard my eyelids open. This is the first time that I remember actually feeling any emotion at all since the car had hit me, before I had been too dazed. It was not fear, but the exact opposite. I was comfortable. I felt at peace.
One of the men around the fire stood up and walked over to me. The man who had tied up the horse took his place by the fire.
The man had crouched by me and pushed a bowl into my hands. “Eat” he said.
The bow contained a thick soup that looked to contain a couple of times of vegetable and some meat. I went to eat it and realized that I didn’t have a spoon. As soon as I thought about it one appeared in my vision. I took it and began to eat the soup.
When I was finished the man took the bowl and set in on the ground next to me. Then he looked at me. This is a moment I will not forget. The first man had had his face covered. This man did not. He had the same stunning red eyes, and his face was as pale as that of a dead mans. He looked frightening. My face must have betrayed my thoughts because he had laughed and snapped his fingers in front of my eyes.
“You ok man?”
I stuttered out, “yeah, I’m fine.”
The man laughed again. “Whatever you say man. You took a pretty hard fall back there when you saw Matt.” He paused, “Are you sure your ok?”
So the first guys name must have been Matt. “Yeah”, I said, “I’m fine… confused but fine.”
He laughed again and said, “Can you stand?”
I stood with little difficulty and he led me over to the fire. When we were there he introduced me to the other men. His name was Steven, the other mans name was Alex, and Matt I already knew. Matt now had his hat off, and I could tell they all shared the same eyes, and pale skin color. My bowl was refilled with the soup, and as soon as I was finished the interrogation had begun.
Steven took my bowl and set it before the fire. “Do you know where you are?” He asked.
The question had taken me by surprise. No one had spoken while I ate. “No” I murmured.
“Well where did you come from?”
“I died. I was hit by a car and then I was here.”
Alex raised an eyebrow, “Well you don’t disturbed by the fact that you died and are now telling your tale to three men.”
“I do not even know if I am alive” I responded.
“You have a heartbeat, and you are breathing, therefore you are alive. In spite of this knowledge you do not seem upset in the least.”
I shook my head, “I am not upset, I am simply confused. What has, is, happening should be impossible. I should be dead. I am dead…” The thoughts that had flowed through my head at that moment were so incomprehensible I got a headache trying to make sense of them. There was a myriad of emotions including confusion, hate, hopelessness, and finally sadness. It had hit me then that I was dead. My mother, my father, all the people that I had known and loved were gone for me, and I would never see them again.
I told them everything I remembered and they asked me questions. Who was I? I don’t know. What was my name? James. After an hour I stopped listening and just answered.
When night had fallen they stopped, saying, “You need to sleep.”
They cleared a section of the snow and laid a blanket in the dry spot. I lay down and in a matter of seconds I was asleep.
When I woke the sun was directly above me but it was colder than it was yesterday. I had been able to bear the chill, but now it was unbearable and I began to shiver immediately. The three horses were eating grass that was growing from the base of one of the buildings. I rose, and as before one of the men was already with me, Alex this time.
“Good. You’re up. Winter is coming quickly. We need to get back to the city before we are stuck out here, and you need to see a doctor as soon as possible.
I got up and the first thing Alex sis was trade my summer shorts and t-shirt for a pair of thick wool pants and a heavy leather jacket like the one Matt wore. We moved out immediately after that. I rode on a horse with Alex. I had never ridden a horse before and by the end of the day my legs were cramped and sore from holding on. By the fourth night I had gotten more used to it though.
During the four days that we rode I didn’t think or talk much. I just ate and observed. This new place where I had found myself was so different from the world I had died in. The trees were very large. They stretched up and up until their tips were lost in the winter clouds. The limbs were each thick enough to walk on and they intertwined with each other, forming a mat that afforded only rare glimpses of the sky. There had been no trees in the village, that’s why there had been snow. Here, the branches stopped all the snow before it reached the ground.
The first three nights we had not made fires, but had all eaten cold leftovers of the soup and then we had rolled up in blankets and instantly fallen asleep. On the fourth day however, we were out of leftover soup and I understood why we had not made a fire before. The trees were so large that no branches fell through that could be burned. It took us over an hour to find enough twigs that we could start a fire and then even longer to find wood big enough to keep it going while we cooked.
After we had eaten we all sat and stared at the fire. After so long without one it seemed like a gift from god. I stared in the flame for hours. That was when I started to notice the figure dancing about in the flames.
* * * * *
Through the flashback the pain had remained almost unbearable. I continued to wish for death until that heavenly moment when the pain stopped. I lay perfectly still, believing that if I moved then that pain would return. Anything would be better than pain. After what I estimated was twelve minutes I opened one eye and shut it quickly. Everything was clear. I could see the dust particles in the air. I could see all of the nooks and crannies in the tree bark hundreds of feet above my head.
I must have inhaled some smoke or something. This cant be natural, I thought.
“James” The voice of Steven said, “Open your eyes, everything is going to be fine. We have to leave now though. We can’t wait one more second. If you value your life you will open your eyes and come with us.”
The urgency in his voice convinced me more than anything. I opened my eyes and saw Matt, Alex and Steven kneeling over me with looks of intense anxiety on their faces. Once again I was astounded by the clarity of my vision. I could see everything, and looking back on my old memories I could see how cloudy everything had been before. I stood up and went with Steven to the horses.
Hope everyone enjoyed, part two will be on its way shortly.
nice to meet you I'm becki.
