Page 2 of Lost to the Orcs

“Please! Can I use your phone? I’m being followed and I need to call my parents!” Their panic is infectious and their fear bleeds into me. There have been several robberies in the neighborhood recently. I hope they weren’t resorting to assault/kidnapping.

“Yes! Come in. Come in.” I pull them inside and walk to the phone. “Should we call the cops first?”

“No need.”

Lifting the receiver, I look at them over my shoulder in query. “What?” The loud bang of the gun reverberates and rings within my ears. I feel a sharp pain bloom in my chest and the next thing I know, I’m gasping on the floor.

The teenager pulls out their cell phone and starts looking around the room. I taste metal on my tongue. Bubbling in my throat. I clutch my chest; unable to move through the pain.

I hear more footsteps and suddenly my place is filled with teens and adults alike. Only, they’re taking my stuff and ignoring me. Oh god. I’m going to die here. These assholes shot me and are taking my stuff!

I’m shoved out of the way so they can grab my TV. “Prick.” I cough. Spilling blood out the corners of my mouth. This is some absolute bull.

The one who shoved me laughs and shoves me again. The pain sloshes like waves slapping the sides of a ship. My world is tunneling. The edges going black. I’m glad no one will be worried when I go. But damn do I wish I didn’t have to die this way. I want to live.

Before the black engulfs me, I remember my tweet to that author. And I try to think about what her next book will be like. The thought makes me smile a little.

I want to live.

CHAPTER TWO: WHERE AM I?

“Pht!” I gasp for breath, clutching my wounded chest.

“We’ve got a live one!” Someone shouts.

Oh, thank god! The paramedics are here! I cough and wince as the lancing pain jars me. I feel like I haven’t breathed in ages. Fuck this hurts. I squeeze my eyes and clutch my chest. If I didn’t know better, I’d feel like this were a slice and not a gunshot wound. Considering Ijustgot shot, I think I’d know what that feels like. But this? This feels like a paper cut. Only larger.

Someone’s hand presses on my wound. But not where I’m pressing. Their weight causes me to hiss in more pain. “Fuck!”

A laugh rather grating on my nerves, “Must’ve not been a lady, eh?”

“I am a lady bud.” I grit. He’s cleaning my wound. From hip… to shoulder.What?I try to open my eyes only to see that I’m in the direct sunlight. Squinting, I look over at the man crouched over me. He’s wearing a coarse tan shirt and brown pants. Oddly enough, there’s leather, actual leather looping around his waist like a belt. It looks gaudy. Andprimitive. “Where are… Where’s the paramedics?”

“Para-what?” The man leans over and forcefully opens my eye. I flinch in the sun. How did I get outside? “Hallucinating most likely.That was a lot of blood you lost. You’re lucky you didn’t die.”

“I was shot.”

The man’s thick brows meet in confusion before he shakes his head. He stands shouting, “We’ll probably have to give her a few days! She seems confused! Saying odd things!” To me, he adds, “Let’s sit you up and bandage that wound.”

He takes my hand and sits me up. I hiss in pain. “Son of abitch!”

He chuckles like last time. “Definitely not a lady.”

I glare at him. “What are you? From medieval times?”

He shrugs and murmurs an apology before I hear a loud tearing. A shocked gasp escapes me as the cold air touches my bare skin. Did he just—? I feel his fingers wrap a bandage around my torso. He adds a cloth that ties at my shoulder and back to cover the bandages and thankfully my breasts. Breasts that hadn’t had a bra attached. My tattered top in ruins on the ground. But it’s not my band shirt that I’d been wearing when I’d gotten shot. In fact, it’s not even a shirt. It’s the top of a dress.

I look at my legs wrapped in a skirt, my feet in moccasin like shoes. No socks. My fingers tentatively touch the bandage at my hip. The wound that glides up to my shoulder in an arc. Like I’d been sliced. “I was shot.” I murmur for what seems like the millionth time today. “I don’t even know anyone who owns a sword.” For this is definitely what I’d call a sword wound. No knife could make this unless I let them carve me up and I certainly did not!

The man gives me another strange look. He thinks I’ve hit my head but he can’t find any injuries. And his friends think I’m ‘touched in the head’, to put it politely. Stupid. If they wanted to be crude and blunt.

“You were lucky to survive.” He tells me again. “Your family probably died in this massacre.” Massacre it is. Dead bodies litter the ground. They look like travelers. An encampment. Wagons, tents. The like.

“My family has been dead.” It’s true. My parents died in a crash nearly 15 years ago. I’d gone the last six years of my childhood in a home because I’d had no other alternative.

“Then your husband. Whoever took care of you.”

“I’m not married.” He squints at me. Someone mutters something about the possibility of my being a slave. I just shake my head. Fearcoursing through my veins. Where am I?

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