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| >> Campfire Creative >> Fiction >> Fantasy >> ID #1324366 |   |
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| [Introduction]
† S I D E W I N D E R † There are cracks in the road we laid But where the devil fell The secrets have gone mad This is nothing new, but when we killed it all The hate was all we had Who needs another mess? We could start over Just look me in the eyes and say I'm wrong Now there's only emptiness Venomous, Insipid I think we're done - I'm not the only one! † Slipknot † For six thousand years, a war has raged between the Fallen and the Daemonkin. It was thought that the true Daemons were safely sealed away beyond the boundaries of this world, their doors tightly locked. They were trapped in Hell. It was thought that only their kin, the halfbreed Daemons were able to slip through, and the children of the Fallen were able to keep them at bay. They believed that they could keep the tides of death behind closed doors. They believed this because only the Fallen were able to open the doors to the Hell. Only the Fallen themselves could set them free. It was believed those doors would never be opened. Until they were. |
 .Wolfie.  This is what she remembers:She remembers being six years old. She remembers standing in the rain and watching the world end. She remembers the sound of her mother screaming and dying and she remembers her father laughing as the gates ripped open and released Hell on Earth. She remembers the sound of Colin crying and holding her hand because his twin sister has always taken care of him. She remembers thinking that everything is over now. Then everything goes black. She does not remember anything else from that year. She feels like she should. It should be something she can remember even when she’s twenty years old and her parents are likely long dead and the world is no longer what it used to be. She knows that whatever she saw that night is important in ways she can’t fathom, but she couldn’t describe to anyone why that was. She remembers sometimes, when she’s dreaming, just what it was that happened that night and over the next few months, but when she wakes up it’s gone again, a living nightmare that she can never quite recall. Her name is Angela Morgan and she hunts the Daemonkin. She wishes she could say it was because of what they did to her and her brother, how they destroyed her life and took both her parents from her when she was too young to understand what it would mean for the rest of her life. Part of it’s true, but mostly she hunts them because it’s good money. It’s still dark when she wakes up. She swears she can’t remember a day it hasn’t rained in Boston. She scrubs a hand through her dark hair and for a minute she just stares at her sheets, memories and dreams still vibrating in the air around her. She feels like there was something important she was supposed to remember but now it’s gone, floating out the window in a breath of air and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever find it again. Maybe she’ll remember what it was when she turns a street corner and finds a gun pointed at her face or when she wakes up with demon claws ripping into her stomach. Of course if that happens she won’t be awake for long. Something woke her up. That was part of it. She reaches under her pillow, fingers wrapping around the waiting pistol. The clip is within easy reach and it slams home with a quiet click. She slides out of bed and into her boots because she decided a long time ago she was going to die like that, with her boots on and a gun in her hand. Though if she starts being honest with herself, even the gun isn’t totally necessary. It’s nice and it’s comforting and she likes using them, but she has never been entirely human. It runs in her family. There’s a light coming out from under the bathroom door and she thinks maybe that’s what woke her up. She relaxes in degrees but it is only then that she realizes just how hard her heart was pounding, trying to climb its way out of her throat. Now there’s a different kind of weight settling in her gut, because she can hear him now, coughing and gagging behind the door because of what she did to him, for him. She exhales some of the breath she’s been holding and leans against the doorjamb. “Colin?” she calls softly. The coughing dies down in degrees. “Come in,” he says after a moment. His voice is quiet and harsh. She isn’t surprised when she opens the door. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen a thousand times before, nothing that isn’t getting any harder every time. He sprawls on the floor, one arm still dangling on the sink. There is blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and more of it splattered across the porcelain. He is in the process of lighting a cigarette that hangs from between his lips. “Hey Angie,” he says softly and the smile he forces is so fake it hurts. She hates the dark circles under his eyes. She sits on the side of the tub and runs a hand soothingly through his hair. It’s always been like this, for as long as she can remember. She and Colin are blood, and blood takes care of its own. She hasn’t depended on anyone else for a long time, and she tells herself she doesn’t have it in her to trust anyone but her brother to watch her back. People are worse than demons sometimes. They can lie, cheat, betray, buy each other off just to survive. With demons she knows where she stands. Kill or be killed, and that’s all there is to it. “You’re not sleeping again,” she says quietly. He just shakes his head. She bites her lip to keep from speaking, to keep from telling him she’s sorry. She can’t say that, because if she hadn’t done what she had he would be dead now. He would have been nailed to a door and a demon would have climbed through his intestines and then who knows what else it would have killed. Not that she would have cared at that point. She can’t lose Colin and it’s the only weakness she has, but blood takes care of its own. She doesn’t realize that her knuckles are turning white around her gun or that her hand has stilled in his hair. “Angie?” he says quietly. She blinks and looks at him, and then she hears it. And she realizes what it is she’s forgotten in dreaming and why she sleeps with a gun under her pillow. She realizes that it wasn’t Colin that woke her up after all but the gate that was opening up within a block of here and she can’t fucking believe that they would open it up this close to the center of the city and how she missed Daemonkin this close to their home, but it doesn’t matter now. “Get your gun,” she tells him. Wenston He thinks maybe it’s humanity that he misses the most. Because whatever’s leftover after the gates opened is so scarred and broken it’s like looking into a mirror and wondering who the hell is staring back at you. Who is this stranger you used to know so well? Does he remember how to smile? There are three fresh gravemarkers outside the church tonight and Ash can’t for the life of him remember the names of the people he laid to rest. They don’t bury their dead anymore. The world doesn’t grow on bones. Everyone burns nowadays and the church reeks with the stench of smoke and flesh and rot. But it’s home and home is all he has. The collar is too tight tonight and he loosens it as he raises his drunken eyes to meet those of God’s only son hanging nailed to a cross at the front of the sanctuary. Poor bastard. If he could only see the world he died for now. Bet he’d think twice about putting stock in mankind. He pulls a flask from his coat pocket and takes a swig, curling a lip at the crucifix when the eyes seem to dim with the room. Faith. He used to have it. Used to believe in a higher power, that there was always someone watcing, someone who cared, someone who loved and was waiting with open arms to welcome his children into paradise at the end of their lives. But he knows better now. He knows what comes after death and there are no pearly gates or angelic cities in the clouds. There is only the dark. Only the cold. Only the maggots and the rot and the fading memories of better times. He’s so afraid of death he drinks until he forgets how many people he’s put in the ground. And how many he’s brought back out. The door opens and Ash’s world is spinning so heavily from the liqour he just closes his eyes and lays his head back, hand reaching beneath his jacket. The smell of life fills the room and quiet footfalls echo off the stone walls and he loosens his grip on the hilt of his knife tucked near his ribs. This is not evil that approaches. “Father?” Her voice is quiet, small. He tries to forget her name. She’ll die one day. Better to start forgetting early. When he doesn’t answer, she clears her throat. “Father Ash?” He brings his head up and forces sobriety before he gains his feet and plasters a dull smile on his face. “Sara,” he says, thick and low. She stands a good two feet shorter than him and she’s wringing her hands as though she’s got something important to ask him. He doesn’t like it. Why can’t they find someone else to go to tuck them in at night and promise everything will change? That one day everything will be all right? He’s growing tired of lying. “I’m sorry to bother you so late,” her eyes glaze and she wipes away a tear. He gives her a moment. “I miss him.” He lets out a breath. They burned her husband today. There had been hardly anything left to burn. “He is in God’s hands now,” he finds himself saying before he can stop himself. It is habit now, to lie. It is habit to promise the peace of their loved ones. Habit to offer false securities and comforts. He doesn’t believe a word of what he tells them and he knows that deep down, they don’t believe him either. “I know,” she says and her face falls. “He’s in a much better place. Away from…away from this.” “God holds a place for us all. He - ” “I’m pregnant.” Whatever rehearsed words of comfort he’d been about to let roll from his tongue fell away and instead he could only stare at the small, terrified woman standing in front of him. Her hands going to her stomach. So lost. So broken. “Your husband left you the gift of life…” “I cannot bring a child into this world, Father. I cannot.” He stares at her, not finding the right words to say. “What is it you need from me?” “Tell me God will forgive me.” He’s doesn’t ask her what she’s begging forgiveness for. He doesn’t need to, he already knows. He thinks about telling her the truth, that there is no one out there to offer her forgiveness. That there is no one she has to answer to but herself and the wake of sorrow she will leave behind her. But he doesn’t. He offers what little he can. “He will understand.” And if Ash believed there was a God, he knew that it would be true. “Thank you, Father.” She leaves and Ash finds his seat in the old wooden pew. He leans back and pulls his flask again, finishing its contents and closing his eyes as the world swirls again. He runs a hand over his eyes and lets it linger there for a moment before he opens his eyes to glance at the golden band around his ring finger. It weighs heavily tonight. She’s be angry with him for giving up. For losing faith. But hell, she probably wouldn’t recognize him anymore anyway. Tomorrow morning, he’ll bury Sara and her unborn child. Tomorrow night he’ll forget her name. Mynt Colin grips the sink and pulls himself to his feet. At first his balance is shoddy and he leans heavily on the sink as black specks dance across his vision. His head feels light from all the coughing and lack of sleeping, two things that never mix well. After a few long drags from his cigarette, he decides he’ll live for now.Behind him, he hears Angie flick the safety off on her gun and load a bullet into the chamber. Always the no nonsense girl, ready for anything the world dares to throw at her. He snatches his own pistol from the sink’s edge but not before catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. No wonder his sister looks so concerned. The dark circles around his eyes make the blue look hollow and the unnatural pallor of his skin makes him look deathly. He takes a moment to wipe crimson flecks off his lips with the back of his hand before straightening his back. Colin hates making Angie worry, it’s not as if they don’t have enough to worry about already. He sucks in a lungful of smoke and checks the clip on his own gun. It seems full enough, not that he actually needs the bullets. Neither of them do. Still, he pats down his pockets and feels out a spare clip. Always good to keep a back up close. He follows his sister in the darkness of the bedroom , ignoring the ache in his muscles. “Where is it?” he asks, his voice cracking. He sounds horrible, even to himself. He takes another drag off his cigarette and pretends it soothes the burning in his throat and lungs. She pauses to look at him, always the big sister. “About a block from here.” “Shit.” He frowns and gropes around for his boots. When he finds them he quickly tugs them on. A gate so close to their home and in the middle of the city. No part of that could be good news. Angie grabs the keys for their truck off the nightstand. The needed to move. He wishes he could say the need to protect the populace drives them to fight the darkness, but to tell the truth he can careless about other’s safety. They need to get there before anyone else can claim the bounty. Colin is right on his sister’s heels out the door. .Wolfie. There is a little girl and she is twelve years old.She stands in the living room of her grandmother’s house and she is staring at a man on the floor and he isn’t breathing. Neither is she. She tries to swallow the lump in her throat but she’s afraid if she tries then it’ll just come right back up again and she’ll throw up or scream and maybe never stop. Her eyes close. She pretends she’s somewhere sunny and warm with her mom and dad and Colin and they’ll be happy forever. Her eyes open and she is standing in a living room with a dead man on the floor. “Grandpa?” she says quietly, and the word sounds gross and thick and heavy in the silence. She takes a step forward but she doesn’t remember telling her feet to move. They do it anyway, going through the motions. She kneels at his side and takes his hand in her smaller one, staring at his face that is still and slack. His eyes are open, but he isn’t looking at anything. They are blue like hers. “Grandpa?” she says again, and no one answers. She feels sick, feels something churning in her stomach and it wants to claw its way back up. She feels lost, like she is in a dream, only no matter how hard she tries to wake up, it just goes on and on. Her fingers tighten on his palm and she says his name again, but it is lost in the stillness. She starts to scream her grandmother’s name and she thinks she could just go on screaming until she is dead too. Her grandmother runs into the room, Colin on her heels and she thinks that he shouldn’t see this. He’s seen enough in his years and he doesn’t need to see their grandfather lying on the living room floor, all still and pale and breathless. Her scream dies out and then she looks at her grandmother’s face. “He won’t wake up,” she tells her. There is a girl, but she isn’t little anymore, and she doesn’t feel sick when she sees dead people. Sometimes Angela still thinks she is dreaming, but usually she just thinks that it’s business as usual. Mostly she is just disgusted that there are corpses already, that no one else noticed the Daemonkin this deep into the city. She’d have guessed that the official members of the Fallen race would have beaten her and Colin to it, but this is their lucky night. “Jesus Christ,” her brother mutters, stepping over a severed torso. “Stay quiet,” she snaps back, casting him a look over her shoulder. Her gun is held tightly in one hand and she stays against the wall as they enter the building. Once upon a time, when the world was still shit, but not full of Daemonkin, it was a museum. It had been one of the nice, upscale types with fake marble pillars and a lot of red velvet rope. Now she only sees pools of bloods and bits of humans. Some of the bodies jammed into the corners are old and she shivers at that, the thought that she might be walking into a nest in the center of the city. She doesn’t know what to expect at this point, maybe cultists or Daemonkin or a mix of the two. She doesn’t know how big of a gate they might have opened but a little part of her is scared because there are old things here, and old things are dangerous. She pushes through the tattered remains of a curtain and then freezes in her steps. The sound of chanting reaches her ears, somewhere up ahead, which causes that little lump of fear to grow bigger until it fills up her gut. If they are still chanting it means they are still holding the gate open which means God knows what’s going to come next. She bites her lip and pushes forward, ignoring the fear. Behind her Colin chokes down a cough and she can hear his chest rattle with it. Don’t think, she tells herself. Do your job. Collect your pay. It’s so much easier said than done. They stop at the edge of the room, peering out into what used to hold an old Egyptian exhibit. Thirteen cultists in dark cloaks are surrounding a door the size of their apartment and they are chanting in a language that she has heard but still doesn’t understand. She knows the meaning, anyway. There are bodies piled in front of the door, and all of them look like they’ve been chewed up, spit out, and bleed dry. It takes blood and death to power a gate, the death of a Fallen, and it is that knowledge that chills her to the bone, freezing her inside out. There are at least five Daemonkin in the shadows. She can sense them; feel the world around her pulse with their presence. She can only see three of them and her stomach churns. There is a girl and she thinks she is going to die, but she shoots a man in the head anyway and there is a thought that skitters in one ear that she can’t tell who the monsters under the bed are anymore. The cultist convulses after he hits the ground and then the Daemonkin are coming across the room at record pace, barely flinching when the twins try and take them down. One of them hits Angela head right in the gut and she drops to her knees and tosses it over her head. She hears it thump into the wall but knows it isn’t going to be enough to stop it. Something slithers up behind her and she feels something cold and sharp on her neck. “Little girl,” it hisses. “You shouldn’t play with guns.” “Fuck off,” she says. She feels power course through her veins, feels it take over like it always does, just a little more than she’s ever been comfortable with and then the shadows are dragging the Daemonkin into the ground. She sees its eyes, red and wide, just a second before she shoots it through one of them. She is not a little girl anymore, but she is feeling like she is in a dream again. At some point her gun runs out of bullets and she has to duck behind the wall again to reload because now the mortals in the room are firing back at her. She can see Colin pressed up against the wall opposite her and he is smiling and laughing a little bit because he’s always been just that little bit off and then she is laughing too. Then there is a bullet hitting her in the stomach and she isn’t laughing anymore. Colin is across the hall in a second, sliding to her side and pulling her away from the room. Something skitters in the darkness and one of the Daemonkin is leaping like the most morbid jaguar to ever exist. Colin whirls, his gun blaring sharp and bright in the shadows and all she can do is watch and try to hold herself together. “Fuck,” she curses through grit teeth. “I’ll get you out of here,” Colin promises, and she hates it that he is trying to take care of her. She pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the blood pulsing out between her fingers. They are still being fired at and bits of marble are flying off the wall and clattering to the ground. Colin has his back to hers, shooting back at the bastards and she hopes he kills more than a few of them. They disrupted the gate anyway. It can’t be held with less than seven and she’s pretty sure she saw at least six bodies on the floor. She wonders if they aren’t about to add to the tally. “I’ll get you somewhere safe,” he tells her, and she wonders foggily why they can’t just go home. Then she realizes what he’s thinking and she shakes her head. “No,” she tells him. “No and no again. No with a goddamn fucking cherry on top-” the words cut out as something slams into them both and her face slams into the ground. She feels bits of marble and blaster and maybe bone cutting into her skin and then she feels Colin roll off her. She hears his gun go off again and something dark and rank hits the ground next to her and then it is right in front of her face. Cold demon eyes are staring at her as the claws come back. She rolls away with more strength than she thought she had and then her hand is stretching out and shadows are wrapping around it and slamming it back into the wall. She hears it crunch and shatter and scream and then she hears nothing as it goes silent. Then she slides back to the ground, trying to breath around the blood bubbling up behind her lips. “Fuck you,” she tells Colin once, before letting him pull her back to her feet. There is a girl, and she is going to the last place on earth she wants to be. Wenston Ash wonders if religion was ever something that was supposed to be taken seriously. Like the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. Did the stories pass down through so many generations that at one point people just forget the punchline: hey, it’s not real. Does anyone actually believe any of this crap anymore or is everyone just playing along to make themselves feel better about mortality. Everyone dies. Doesn’t mean you have to like it or explain why. Ash wonders if people believe him when he spews out the lies about religion and faith and belief. He wonders if they actually follow the sermons he gives or practices the teachings he offers. He wonders if they know he went to school for this and what he thought was going to be an education about faith and holding true to your beliefs was actually an education about bullshitting the masses. Most of all he wonders if he just isn’t acting like a scorned child whose father walked out the front door one day and never came back. All his life he’d believed this Christianity bullshit. He’d gone to school, gone to seminars, devoted years and years of his life to a deity in the sky. And when the time came that Ash needed someone to come and save him from the horrors of the Daemonkin, no one came. God didn’t swoop in and take him away to a safe haven. He didn’t offer him solace when he watched those he loved die and fade away. Where was God when the blood was coming in rivers? Maybe he was just a brat. He wasn’t the only one suffering. But he’d been the most devout person he knew. Why couldn’t he just have a sign or a vision or something from God to let him know that he was there. He’d thought for a while maybe it was a test of his faith and for a while he’d held out. Then the Daemonkin had come into his home and shattered the life he’d made for himself. They’d only left the ring on his finger and scarred memories lingering behind. He wonders if the Daemonkin hadn’t come, would he still have his faith? Probably. And he’s disgusted by it. He’s giving communion to an old man with a missing leg. He’s saying prayers he’s memorized and doesn’t even have to think about before they roll off his tongue. He’s said them so many times he can recite them in his sleep. They mean nothing to him anymore. He’s drunk. Again. It’s becoming habit. Maybe he’ll puke in his sleep and this whole nightmare will be over. He would be so lucky. Tires squeal in the distance and he pauses in mid-prayer to listen. He can feel his knife tucked near his ribs and knows there’s a shotgun beneath the third pew from the front, another tied behind the crucifix at the front of the church, and a third hidden in the baptismal urn. There’s two handguns in the pulpit. There’s a two pistols hidden beneath the cushions in the choir loft and a small arsenal along with a sword in the confessional booth. His ammo is all tucked away in his quarters, with another shotgun and handgun by his bed. He’s prepared for war. He has to be. The Daemonkin love holy ground. He thinks it’s their way of saying, “Fuck you,” to people of faith. The tires squeal again, this time closer, and he hears a car pull up a ways down from the church. He smiles at the one legged man sitting in front of him and gives him his wafer and wine, then heads to the window. He doesn’t recognize the car, but he recognizes who tumbles out of the driver’s seat. Colin. It’s been a long time. He thinks about taking the ring off his finger, because he knows where Colin goes, his shadow always follows. She won’t be happy to see him and she’ll swear at him and curse him and call him names and she’ll mock his way of life and his clothes and his lying faith and then she’ll ask about the ring and he doesn’t think he can explain it to her yet. He never told her he got married after she left. And he doesn’t know how to tell her what happened. He hasn’t talked about it with anyone and she’s the last person on the face of the earth that he wants to feel sorry for him right now. But he wonders what she would think about it. She’ll probably be pissed off. She gets pissed off at everything. He leaves the ring on. He watches Colin run around to the passenger side and he notices the bruises and the blood and he knows not all of it is Colin’s. He watches Colin pull her out of the car. She’s half limp, half protesting and despite the sorry state she’s in, he smiles. She’s looking forward to seeing him about as much as he’s looking forward to seeing her. He stills cares for her and he hates it. She won’t return the feeling. He wonders what happened to the girl he used to love. He wonders what she’ll say when she sees it’s his house Colin brought her to. He wonders what the fuck kind of trouble will follow them here. He wonders if he’s getting too old for this shit. Probably. He wonders when he stopped caring. Mynt Colin doesn’t think smoking is allowed in a church. Maybe it’s sacrilegious, an insult to God. Or maybe it’s in poor taste to smoke in front of a poor bastard nailed to a two by four who can’t move away from the second hand smoke. Isn’t that like smoking while holding a baby? He tries to lie to himself about smoking around a baby but he knows he would do it. He stares up at the larger than life idol of the nearly nude Jesus Christ nailed to the cross and takes a long drag off his cigarette. When did Jesus have time to sculpt his abs between wandering the desert and being tortured? Shouldn’t the saviour adorning the cross be more emaciated and sun scorched? Colin can’t remember if he has ever read the bible but he thinks he would remember the mention of their savior stopping for a routine workout or getting a lot of shade and food while being nailed to some wood. Maybe he’ll ask Ash. A priest should know these things, even a drunk one. Thinking about the priest with his bloodshot eyes and liquor-laden breath draws Colin’s gaze away from the all too creepy statue to the door along the church’s far wall. He hasn’t heard anything from it in a while. His sister should have a flurry of verbal assaults to ready launch at Ash. Or a few choice curses for Colin for bringing her here. Angie always has something to say, the fact that she isn’t lashing her tongue can’t be a good sign. The flood of thoughts that follow this realization make his stomach churn and he tries to return his attention back to Jesus. Angie is tougher than that. She’s been through worse. He closes his eyes and mashes the heels of his palms into them but the image of blood seeping around her splayed fingers from a tiny hole in her gut is burned inside his eyelids. Colin knows she isn’t going to die but she could’ve, couldn’t she? What if the bullet had hit something important? He knows what but he tries not to think it. He is trying not to think at all. He would’ve been bringing Ash a corpse to bury. Or burn. How would the drunken father handle that one? Dammit. He coughs, his chest aching from the force of it and he feels more than excess coughs threatening to follow it. For a moment he his thankful, the fierce cough shaking any thoughts out of his head, but then the ache and pain settles in. He moves his cigarette to his lips and frowns when he finds hardly anything left than an extra long ash of burnt paper and tobacco. Ash. Angie. He drops what’s left of his cigarette onto the church’s hardwood floor and crushes it beneath the heel of his boot. Colin allows himself to cough, something he would make an effort to stifle any other time. When his muscles are throbbing and his sides and back are aching from the force of the fit he doesn’t find himself thinking about much. Definitely not about his twin sister choking on her own blood from a bullet wound. He barely thinks about himself choking on blood, just a few thoughts about how tired he feels and how a cigarette would make it all better. He tries to fish out an abused and crumpled tissue from his jacket pocket before he can dislodge anything blood or thicker. He already tastes the metallic, saltiness of his blood in the back of his throat. He presses the tissue to his mouth, ignoring the copper flecks of old blood already staining the weathered tissue. Whatever is cemented in his chest is starting to loosen, he can feel it with each bone-rattling cough and he contemplates lighting up another cigarette. They don’t help. He knows that. He thinks he’s getting pretty good at pretending that sucking tar laced smoke into his lungs soothes instead of burns but he knows he’s not. He thinks he can pretend that it doesn’t tear up his already raw throat with each breath but knows better. It’s like trying to put a fire out with gasoline; it only makes it worse and not even counting the further damage he’s doing to his lungs. Something heavy forces its way out of his throat and into the tissue. Maybe it isn’t something but it isn’t anything, just black and blood. Colin isn’t sure what it is, shadows maybe? Pure concentrated darkness? Whatever Angie did to him. He stares at it, his eyes burning with fatigue, whatever it is. It’s solid but slimy, coated in phlegm and blood. It used to make him sick to see the black pieces his body is trying to eject from his system but he’s grown used it; the thought brings a rueful smile to his red speckled lips. He wishes he never had to get used to it. There is movement in the other room, maybe a chair scraping against the hardwood floor. Noise brings a mixture of relief and apprehension and he finds himself trying to muffle the sounds of his coughs behind his lips. If Ash is coming he doesn’t want him to ask. Maybe he won’t ask, maybe he’ll ignore it. Maybe. If Angie is coming he doesn’t want her to worry. Colin doesn’t think Angie should have to worry about him after she’s the one who got shot. He always makes her worry and for once he wants to be the one that worries and tells her she shouldn’t be up and moving after taking a bullet to the gut. He knows she’ll ignore him but he still wants to say it. He wads up his tissue, black slime and all, and shoves it back in his pocket in exchange for a hand rolled cig. He strikes a match, watching the flame dance before lighting the tip of his cigarette and waving it out. He doesn’t think he’s allowed to smoke in a church. Maybe someone will tell him. © Copyright 2007 .Wolfie., Wenston, Mynt, (known as GROUP). All rights reserved. GROUP has granted Writing.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work. |
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