Kamikaze

The Gun, The Knife, The Girl. (Pt 1?)

The Gun, The Knife, The Girl.

The graveyard was silent, except for my own slowly beating heart. Fog surrounded me on all sides and the evening darkness carried extra cover for the stones. Besides the markers, only a dead tree stretched one branch across the aisles of graves ahead of me. The rain pelted the already damp earth.

Dismissing any of my fears, I walked forward. My shoes sank into the mud by my second and third steps, slowing me down, smothering the bottom of my shoes. But I was supposed to be here, and I wasn’t just going to turn around. My guess was that my companion was waiting on the other side of this tree.

I neared it, and paused. A rusted knife waited to be drawn from my belt, but I had no idea why I had even brought it. Gut instinct? No. A graveyard, she had said, would be a cool place to meet. That struck me as creepy. And not at all like her…

“I know why you came here.” A voice from the fog called. A voice, sounding confident, of a man I was familiar with.

In one swift motion, my blade was drawn and I rushed to the tree. I looked over each side methodologically, and flattened myself against the bark. Everywhere within my limited sight looked clear.

“You’ll never get her.” In this voice, I detected anger, resentment, and hate. And I shared the same for the speaker. I knew him well… well enough to know we’d like eachother not to be alive. “She’s far better off without you. Away from you.”

The truth value of any of these spoken statements were challenging me, setting my mind on fire. I’d wondered it before, but I would be an idiot to analyze his words and ignore the fact his voice was giving away his location. He was directly to my right, and when I turned my head, I could see an outline through the thick fog.

“Go home.” He demanded. “She’s not even here and never would she have invited you.”

He must’ve been wrong, I’d talked to her on the phone before. Her voice as clear as day. Either she was in on it or she acted under duress. And she didn’t seem the type to betray, so I figured, chances are, she’s tied up in his trunk or worse. Maybe not the clearest of thinking, but nevertheless, that was my conclusion at the time.

So, the urge to attack him couldn’t be suppressed. I leapt up and sprinted toward the outline. Flying by grave stones, I swung my arms fast and as efficiently as I could. Mud flew in my wake, and the figure before me gained more and more features. I pulled the knife back and prepared to nail the figure’s chest.

The last row of graves propelled past my feet and the figure remained stationary. I came to an abrupt halt, sliding in the mud, and lost my balance. Knife still in hand, I crouched before a statue of a man with its arms crossed and its head tilted down.

I spun to face the new direction of the voice, back across the cemetery, surely behind the tree. “If only there were money on the line, right?” He spoke angrily, yet also sarcastically. “What was it she said?”

“Two million.” I broke my silence. “And I think it might be too much.”

Pause. Was he moving? Was he getting ready to attack?

No, although he must’ve considered it, as his voice came from the same direction. “You’re sick. You need serious help.”

I approached the nearest grave stone and knelt behind it. “And you’re just fine, luring a friend of a friend into a trap.” I was ready. My knife was ready. I only needed visual contact. “Did you threaten her?” I lifted my feet from the mud, ready to move. “I know her voice, I know that was her on the phone.”

Footsteps, sloshing forward, covered by fog, moving around on my right. They suddenly stopped, and I heard a click. “She told me what I needed to hear.”

“So what do you plan to do?” I crouched a bit lower, and, figuring I could get better cover, stealthily crossed the aisle to sit behind the statue.

“I’ll save her for myself - and from you.” With that, I heard footsteps begin to come towards me.

I looked over my shoulder to see the walking movements of an foggy shadow coming into sight, where the voice had been. To my misfortune, his right arm carried a weapon of some kind that stretched down to his knees, looking very much like the barrel of a gun.

“Now, get the hell out of here and leave with the knowledge that if you ever so much as talk to her again, I will kill you.” He paused, eyes watching my statue as he continued forward. “Or come out here and get it over with right now.”

There was no way I would have even a chance fighting him if the object in his hand was a gun, but neither was I going to give up. If I was going to run away, I would have right when I heard his voice the first time. All I needed was something better than a knife - or an additional weapon. My environment seemed to entirely bare of objects I could even pick up, except the grass and mud surrounding me on all sides.

But then something caught my eye. A couple of sticks on the next cement block, looking small enough and close enough to the size of a gun barrel that they could be mistaken for such. I lifted one, and decided it was good enough. Then, for whatever reason, the thought ran through my mind: Two fake guns are better than one. So I grabbed a second. Knowing they were only good for intimidation, my chances of getting out of the current mess unscathed were slim at best.

Ersatz guns in hand, I took one step out and turned to face my enemy. Luckily, we were still at the range where each of us were barely gaining coloration in the fog. I said nothing, but he stopped instantly, his eyes surely tracing the contours of my outline, two barrel-like extensions from the ends of my hands.

The same thought must’ve run through both of our minds. One of us is about to die.

With only decaying tree branches in my hands, I had the benefit of knowing which of us it would be.

Little drops of water ran down our faces and feet sank into the ground. Unblinking, my eyes weren’t leaving the gun in his hands.

To my surprise, he didn’t lift his gun right away. “You know what I’m going to do after I shoot you?” He raised his empty hand, and a thread dangled down his palm. “Piano wire.” I could see his teeth, even through the fog.

“Piano wire.” I said to myself.

“Poetic, isn’t it?” He was only talking to himself, holding the string in one hand and smiling blissfully.

I faced certain death. Unless…

My enemy’s weapon was long enough to require both hands to aim, I guessed, and he was using one of those hands to taunt me. That meant I had an opening - a small crack - but an opening anyway.

So I put one foot in front of the other and ran towards him. One of the sticks fell from my shaking hands. That made me remember the other, and I chucked it at him, although it was useless.

The projectile knocked across the side of his head, doing minimal damage, while he struggled to put the wire into his palm, grab the barrel, and aim it at once.

And, whether I had picked the best time to charge or not, the barrel was rising. At the closer range, at about ten feet, the gun he was holding revealed itself to be a double barreled shotgun. I wasn’t too good looking to start with, but, like most guns, those make very pretty things turn not pretty at all. I jumped to the nearest gravestone and collapsed behind it.

Half a foot above my cranium, cement exploded from the stone and fell all over me like bread crumbs as the shotgun let loose. The bastard barely aimed that one, and, at less then ten feet, I figured things were about to get ugly and painful real quick when the second shot came. The second, oddly, took a branch off the only tree in the graveyard - and that was nowhere near where I was hiding.

After hearing the tree branch collapse reluctantly to the earth, I thought for a moment, maybe I’d been wrong all this time about the afterlife. Maybe I was there? Maybe I’d just had a shotgun blast to the everywhere?

Nah.

I looked over the tombstone, where my nemesis held his right hand close to his body, two of his fingers bent at a painful forty five degree angle. Without his second hand holding the shotgun, the recoil had been far too much. He dropped to his knees, seeing me rise from behind the stone, and clutched for the gun with his good left hand.

I was charging again, before I knew it. Half a moment before my foot struck him in the nose, he grabbed the shotgun with his functioning hand, and then collapsed backwards onto his back with blood dribbling from his nose.

Wasting no time, I hopped over his legs with little resistance and cocked my arm for the first of the finishing blows. But, before I could even send the impulse to my arm to smash his face, I looked down the end of the shotgun - struck with defeat.

Surrendered to death, I thought: Well, he’s going to break a couple fingers on his other hand at least.

Then he pulled the trigger, at nearly point blank.

Filed by kamikaze189 at July 30th, 2007 under Fiction with little or no point