I woke up droopy eyed and scratching various places. I felt a moment of incomprehension, trying to sort out my surroundings. The events of yesterday came back to me slowly and I realized Lizzy had left already. I quickly scrambled back into my trousers, took my cloak, and crawled out into the dull gray morning. She had already gotten a fire going and was roasting two fat lizards on sticks. She smiled up at me when she noticed me and wished me a good morning. I found myself answering the smile with one of my own.
“Good morning to you too,” I said.
I hunched down near the fire and wrapped the cloak around myself. The lizards were a species I had never seen before. They were grayish green, with red circles on their bellies. A faint salty odor was rising up from them as Lizzy turned them on the makeshift spit.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Not hungry enough to risk one of them ugly bastards.”
“They taste ten times better than they look, and about thirty times better than they stink,” Lizzy laughed - which didn't make me feel any better about eating them.
In the end though, my belly won the argument. So when she offered me the other one, I accepted it with an expression suitable for the situation, which won me a wry smile from Lizzy. I gave the pot-bellied lizard a dark scowl before taking a doubtful bite. The meat was chewy and had a weird taste to it, but I couldn't say that it was outright bad. It was... well, edible, to say the most. It was still meat and therefore filled my stomach, so I tried to be a good sport about gobbling it down. I even licked my fingers afterward. Whoever said I didn't have any manners?
“Well?” Lizzy inquired after I was finished. I looked up and saw her looking at me with amusement in her eyes.
“The best food I've had in a few days,” I answered truthfully. I hadn't eaten almost anything in the last few days, but she didn't have to know that, did she.
“I can imagine, there isn't that much to eat out here,” she said, “You can go without food for a few days, no matter how good of a hunter you are.”
“Mmhm,” I agreed.
The sun was just poking it's head over the tops of the mountains, making it still quite chilly. Some day I'll have to get myself a thicker cloak, this one is mostly just for show. Don't you look at me like that, looking good is not a vice; there's not many things that are more impressive than a cape billowing in the wind. I hugged my knees and wrapped the just-to-show-off-my-masculinity cloak tighter around myself.
“You never did tell your name,” Lizzy said as a means to start a conversation.
“Oh, you're right, it's Locke,” I answered, pronouncing it the same as “lock”.
“Locke... that's a nice name. Where are your parents from?” she asked, “Your name sounds unusual.”
I was silent for a while, my eyes staring into a time long past. I shook my head and forced the memories away, blinking away the tears blurring my sight.
“I never knew my parents,” I replied guardedly.
Her expression sobered at once. “I'm sorry, I didn't--,”
“It's okay, I know you didn't mean anything by it, you couldn't have known,” I broke in abruptly.
Lizzy gave me a sad look, silently telling me that she was there for me if needed. I looked away, not being able to bear those eyes that seemed to see the childhood sorrow in my soul.
I think of myself as a hard man: I can take pretty much anything, from physical abuse to not getting the last piece of chocolate. Then someone takes up the subject of parents and something in the deepest crevices of my essence clicks; tears well up and my breathing speeds up. I hate my parents for scarring me like this, no-one should go through all those nightmares or all the shattered hopes of a willful young heart.
Lizzy interrupted my painful memories gently, “We should get going while we're still full.”
I got the hidden meaning though, physical stress would help me clear my head; I smiled thankfully.
I got up with a grunt. My whole body rebelled against the commands of my brain, pleading leave due to occupational hazards. I gritted my teeth and took the pain like a true man.
Just a couple of bruises, nothing more. If you can convince yourself that that's all they are, the pain seems to reduce.
The words of my uncle Abraham echoed in my head. I owed my life to him, or used to owe, since he passed away in his sleep when I was 11. Abraham took me in and raised me as his own son when no-one else would. He taught me everything, from shooting a rifle to the concept of honor. He was the only person I truly admired. Memories of him always brought a smile to my face, just like it did now.
Trying with all my might to convince myself that the ache in my bones was just an illusion, I crawled back into the shelter of the tent. Once inside, my eyes took a while to get used to the shady lighting, but in those faithful ten seconds, I managed to hit my head three times. On the same pole. Wow. I've got some serious skills.
I grabbed my rifle and searched a while for my other stuff, before realizing that the rifle was the extent of my worldly possessions alongside the comfortable weight of the pistol in my pocket. I had one of those glum moments where you just close your eyes and feel deeply sorry for yourself. For a long while. So long that Lizzy had time to get worried and yell an inquiry my way.
“I'm fine, I'm fine!” I hollered back.
Grumbling to myself, I backed out of the damn claustrophobic's nightmare on all fours. I got to my feet and--
“You've got to be fucking kidding me,” I spat.
“Drop the weapon, or we drop the girl."
The man who was speaking wore a wide smile on his face. He was a big man, easily six foot four, and was heavily packed with muscle. His hair was a shade of black darker than night, and his eyes were even darker. The most noticeable feature though was his left hand, or actually the knife it gripped and how it was angled across Lizzy's neck. I toyed with the notion of causing a massive cave-in on his facial area, but decided against it almost immediately. I'd get massive amounts of pleasure out of it, sure, but Lizzy would get the short end of the stick in this one.
This is just bloody brilliant, of all the days these bastards had to come for me, they chose the one where I have to baby-sit a woman.
I let my fingers relax around the rifle and gravity did its thing – my ears picked up an almost inaudible thump a second later. The sickly smile of the captor widened even further, but his posture stayed just as wary.
“Could you please step away from it?”
To those who don't get it, it wasn't really a question; it was a thinly veiled threat – punctuated with a sharp knife near tender flesh. With this knowledge behind my actions, I took a few steps to the left.
“Good boy, now bark,” the muscular man with a knife, a hostage and two guns on his side said with
a wicked grin.
The sheer balls of this guy forced me to grudgingly respect him, but the fact that he was utilizing said balls against me made me take the required steps to get into arm's length of him. I performed my favorite martial arts form, “Bashing Someone's Fucking Face In”, swinging out my right fist in a powerful arch. As my balled up fist reached the half-way mark, I suddenly felt groggy; I stopped my motion in utter bewilderment. A split-second later my brain noticed the pain in between my eyes.
Oh... that explains it.
The world took a lurch sideways and blackened around the edges. My vision bounced once and came to rest in a horizontal position with small, uneven dunes cushioning my graceful plummet. An ugly face with a terribly trimmed moustache invaded my personal space.
The moustache twitched a couple of times and my beaten up brain deciphered the sounds made as: “Aschaga gaggel jaha huuga?”
It all made sense in a moment though, as the butt of a rifle appeared in front of my eyes and was rapidly zoomed in on. Someone clicked my off-button and I said good night to the cruel world.
. I understand why they are doing certain things. With the romantic side I'm quite lost. Sorry, it's just that I'm now reading two stories where a chapter has ended with the Protagonist possibly diying. And that can't happen. Locke's(yaaay, we've got his name) opponent seems ready to really push Locke to his limits.
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