Page 8 of Mountain Man's Valentine
3
Valoria
There’s just darkness. It’s darkness, but it isn’t blackness. My eyes are closed, but there’s light beyond them. It’s just the bleeding of the last of daylight, and it’s fighting to remain in my consciousness.
Or maybe that’s me, searching it out. Fighting the darkness.
I’m laying on my back. That much I can feel. But I’m not cold. There’s cold snow and ice beneath me, but I’m not cold. It’s strange, because I can feel that it is cold, but I am not cold.
I feelnothing.
This might really be happening.
I see the man’s face appear in my vision as my eyelids flutter open.
“You need a man, don’t you?” he says. His voice is lewd. He licks his lips.
I close my eyes again.
And I don’t know how much time passes. But I feel the night enveloping us, the sun floating away in the sky, finally dipping over the edge of the earth, leaving behind the sharp line of the horizon.
And I wait.
Then I hear a gasp.
And I open my eyes.
There’s nothing in front of my eyes except for the white branches of the tall forest trees laced over the black sky.
“Fuck, man!”
The man speaks. But he isn’t talking to me. There’s someone else here.
A hear a whoosh of air. It’s like the air being let out of a hot air balloon as the flame keeping it afloat is extinguished quickly, as though all the propane has run out. Like someone didn’t pack enough for the balloon ride.
Like someone wasn’t prepared.
I scramble to my knees and my hand flies to the back of my neck.NowI can feel something. I can feel the imprint of his hand where he grabbed me.
But otherwise I seem okay. And my heart has slowed down. I didn’t realize it before, when I was on the ground, but I wasn’t breathing.
I suck in my first breath of clean, pure, cold air, filling my lungs completely.
The sounds behind me continue. The whooshing of air and a few desperate grunts. But I don’t know exactly what is happening. I can’t work it out from just the sounds.
I look over my shoulder.
And I see who the guy who grabbed me was talking to. I see why he was grunting in pain.
The guy who grabbed me is kneeling on the ground, his lip busted open, his fingers coming to his mouth and then down so he can see the bright red blood streaked against his hand. He keeps doing it like he doesn’t realize what’s happened. He doesn’t realize what’s happening.
And standing above him, amanis pointing a rifle right between his eyes.
“Go.”
The man with the rifle growls. Hegrowlsand my insides flip. The guy on the ground puts his hands up above his head like he’s a criminal who’s been caught by the police.
Heisa criminal, but I don’t know who the man with the rifle is.
