Moonlit Retribution

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I screech indignantly, flailing violently at the injustice of it all. Here I am, valiantly setting out to rescue a comrade, and something like this happens. I’m beginning to think some higher being doesn’t like me.

I dangle there, arms hanging limply past my head as the blood quickly rushes to my head. I refuse to open my eyes since the sight would probably only succeed in disorienting me more. And the pressure is so bad that I feel like they’ll pop out of my head if I don’t squeeze my eyelids tight enough.

Eventually, though, I figure out that I’ll never release myself if I don’t see what’s got me. Hesitantly, I peel one eyelid open, but all I get is a view of the ground. I try to wrench myself up, but gravity has me pinned down like a tack to corkboard. I can literally feel the blood vessels in my eyes swell at the pressure, but I force myself to get a better look, straining my neck uncomfortably.

The material looks like baling twine. Fairly easy to cut if one has the tools to do so. Only problem is that I have no tools. No knife, no scissors, no nothing. The gun is on the ground about five feet below me; like that would do any good. My nails aren’t sharp enough to get the job done, and I doubt I’d be able to sit up long enough to do it anyhow.

I am well and truly screwed.

My face burns with the heat of the blood rush, and my ears and eyes pop from the pressure. Black rings spin in my retinas, making the sky appear even darker than before. I can’t feel my ankle and foot anymore, but the sharp pressure is still there, vying for my attention among my shoulder and foot and head…I study the baling twine as long as I can keep my head up, but exhaustion combined with a total lack of upper body strength win the battle with gravity, and I sag back down.

Come on! Ríjez needs you!

So now Bitchy Inner Voice decides to get motivational.

Who is it kidding? Ríjez is as good as dead by now. At the very best, he has heard the group of men coming after him and, suspecting the worst, has gone into hiding. Which I doubt. Not because I’m questioning his intelligence or intuition. I just think that he’d be planning for Mella’s and my arrival and would welcome footsteps, not hide from them…

Fuck it. I need to get there anyway.

Squeezing my eyes shut once, twice, three times, I take a deep breath and lean upward to examine the twine. It’s attached to a fairly thick branch about three or four feet above me. Baling twine doesn’t take much to snap, and the branch doesn’t look sturdy enough to withstand what I have in mind.

Sucking in a heavy breath and holding the oxygen in my lungs, I bunch the muscles of my stomach and shoulders and heave to the side as hard as I can. Little happens except worse pressure on my ankle; I move maybe a few inches. This method will be both slow and painful, but there’s nothing for me to grab hold of either above or below me, so I have nothing else to do. I repeat the motion over and over again, yielding no better results as more of my energy is sapped away and sweat streams into my hair; at least it’s not dripping into my eyes, I suppose. I try again and again and again, the futility of the act making tears of frustration slip into my hair as well.

“Don’t. Fucking. Cry,” I grit out with every heave of my body, every swing of my arms. The blood pounding in my ears and breath wheezing out of my lungs are the only lapses in silence; not even that low droning sound reaches my ears. I try not to think if that’s a good thing or not.

The twine has slipped past the fabric of my jeans and is now slicing painfully into my skin, chaffing the flesh, the tiny, rough fibers digging in like hooks. My movements make it rub even more, and the friction burn is awful.

And then, the most glorious sound breaks my pattern. The miniscule, almost undetectable creaking of the branch.

I wrench my head up, wincing as this pulls a muscle in the back of my neck, and study the branch, almost expecting it to still be completely in tact. But it’s not, thank God. Barely noticeable is the tiny fissure between the branch and the tree trunk.

Emboldened by this, I ignore the screaming protests of my muscles, the unbearable pressure in my head, and throw everything I’ve got into swinging myself around. Through my heaving, I hear the creaking turn to snapping, and I can’t tell if the slight dip in height I feel is in my head or not.

My ankle feels like it’s slowly, torturously being sawed off now, and I fear that I’ll lose my whole foot because of this. I try to wiggle my toes a little, but the movement goes unregistered by my foot. Damn.

A great crack rings through the stagnant air, and now…I have a mouthful of dirt, and the air has been punched out of my lungs. And a branch over my back is pinning me to the soil. Coughing and spitting out the offending soil, I heave the limb off me and scramble to my butt, covering my eyes with my hand when the world intermittently flashes from black to color from the excess blood draining out of my brain. With closed eyes, I finger around my ankle and begin the irritating process of fraying the twine and plucking it apart. Eventually, the tough material comes apart, and I open my eyes to see the fabric of my jeans dark with blood. My palms and fingers are slick with it.

I throw my head to the sky with a half beseeching, half infuriated look. “You just can’t give me a break, can you?”

As if in answer, the droning sound is back.

“Fuck you too,” I grumble, peeling the twine off of me and sitting up as far as I dare to go. Which, considering the lightheadedness, the stiffness and burning in my muscles, and the general exhaustion I’ve felt since yesterday, is not very far. And despite what movies and books always claim, the sheer will to accomplish something does not fuel you well enough to complete a task, regardless of its importance.

If there is a script writer or novelist still in existence, I am so suing their sorry ass for false advertisement.

I have no idea what to do about my ankle. I don’t know much about the body’s major arteries or the circulatory system in general, but I know from six years of shaving experiences that a sliced ankle usually bleeds heavily and for extended periods of time. Since this is actually a fairly deep cut and not a simple knick, I figure that it’s going to bleed for awhile. And I don’t have the supplies or energy to fix it.

Fighting wooziness, I slowly crawl my way to a tree and flop myself against it, jarring my shoulder and simply not caring about the pain it elicits. The books got that one right at least: once drained beyond your energy reserves, you don’t bother scrounging up the effort to care what injuries have been afflicted to you.

But I do care that with my inaction comes Ríjez’s condemnation. With my inaction comes the likely possibility that Mella will run into the men. With my inaction comes the fact that we will all probably die for what we did to Andy. But I resign myself to apathy. Really, there’s nothing to worry about. I’d rather die now than be the last human alive.

Blackness overtakes my resigned mind once more. I know what’s going to come next. One of these days I’m going to attach a little camera somewhere on me so I can monitor what happens to me once I pass out…

Howdy, Wattpad-ers.  Sorry to keep you guys hanging for so long (again...)  I have various excuses, none of which you want to hear, so I'll just hang my head and humbly accept your condemnation.  -__-