Flash Fiction: Three More Bullets

Chapter 1

It started with my finger. Just the one. Moving ever so slowly. Eventually it was two, then three, until I could clench my fist. Slowly feeling came back into my arm, then my body began to awaken. It was agonizing like my entire body was on fire. The pain threatened to make me black out, but I held on to the glimmer of light at the edge of the darkness. I cracked my eyes open and my vision went white, blurred against the blaring sun and reminding me of just how dry my mouth was. My lips cracked as they spread and my throat felt like it had a layer of dust in it.

My sight still a blurry white smear, the night before came flooding back to me.I could still see his laughing face leering over me. The smell of his breath, like bad whiskey and onions. The memory of hate was the only thing that hurt more than this pain. I could still picture his two laughing cronies over his shoulder as he held me down, bashing me with the butt of my own gun. The gun my father has used in the war. I remembered my boots being pulled off and my shirt and jacket removed as they punched me repeatedly. Never letting up. I remember him throwing the gun in the dirt as he motioned for his men to go back in the house and pull them out. My wife, my daughter.

I remembered as they beat me with wooden clubs until my bones cracked. Hitting my feet until they were blackened lumps of blood and meat and I couldn't stand anymore. Bringing them across my hands and face until I could barely open my swollen and puffy eyes. Hearing the sobbing sounds of my wife and daughter as they pummeled me. Then laying in a pool of my own blood as they turned on my girls. Raping and murdering them in front of my eyes. Punching my wife in the face over and over until she couldn't even speak.

Afterwards he took my gun and shot them in the head, laughing as his friends pissed on their mangled bodies. I screamed with rage until my throat was dry and hoarse; the whole time unable to protect them. When they were done, they turned my own gun on me and shot me once in the stomach. A slow, painful death they promised as they tied my broken hands behind my own horse.

My arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets as the mare sprang forward, the weeds and thickets surrounding my homestead tearing at my exposed flesh. The last thing I remembered was the sound of laughter falling further behind me.

As the blurry white nothingness faded away, I began to hear something at the edge of consciousness. The sound of crying, and suddenly I could see her face. Blond hair and smooth skin, tears flowing down her cheeks, eyes alight in blue from the watery tears. She had to be an angel.

Then she spoke.

"You're ALIVE!"

End of Line.
Gerrad!