Fractured

Chapter 69

 Chapter 69

A rush.  A panic.  One that I knew would haunt me for years to come.  Because I knew... this man didn't deserve what was just handed to him.  What he was now struggling with.  What would never stop my eyes from playing over that terrible sight; what I knew wouldn't ever leave Francis too.

My heart split in half and seemed to have fell to the floor as I watched his running body fall with it.  It was a thud, a body hitting the floor that made my stomach turn and it made me audibly gasp, as if I was the one that was just shot.   Because through the air of the gunshots came his reality, crushing without mercy. 

Francis always somehow seemed invincible in my eyes.  Like nothing could stop him. It was shattering to watch this now.  What was worse though than his hard collapse to the floor was his emotional groans - and words that tore at me even more. Oh how I wish I could have gave him what he wanted too when he demanded it with his howls that felt nearly as powerful as a gun.

The moment he went down, and the moment the man who shot him fell dead to the floor as a victim to Luke's gun, there was nothing in this room that existed besides the three of us.  Of Luke and I... and our focus locked hard on Francis.  I never gave the now dead man that shot Francis a second glance.  I couldn't look away from Luke's brother, and after Luke lowered his gun and saw him, neither could he. 

Our frozen state and stare lasted a second.  Shortly.  But it was enough to stay engraved deeply.  Of watching Francis's knees buckle from where he was trying to run.  His legs could only offer one solid shake of resistance before he crashed to the floor, sprawled out on his side then rolling slowly to his stomach.  His forehead pressed into the floor, body tense and blood pulsing through the back of his shirt too fast.  He released the affect the bullet had on him.

The most heart breaking, mind stopping scream I have ever heard.  As if it wasn't enough to watch him fall, but to hear him too....  My ears became witnesses to that brutal scream Francis let out.  A scream with so much pain and feeling; it shocked me in a way - because it was just so full of torment and agony that nobody would ever know of if you weren't him.  Agony... because it was a struggle just for him to choke it out. When he did, it was filled with so much hurt and resistance though.  You could hear it in his voice.  That new brand of pain that was all his.  And just as his scream seemed to have put Luke and I to a stop, we couldn't let it.  We needed to help him; and I owed everything to him now.

"Francis!" Luke hissed with his own agony filtering through his urgent words.  Luke was in front of me as our feet seemed to have acted on instinct.  We rushed over to his withering and panting body under the shadows of the new night; yet everything was very visible and clear to us.  We saw very clearly how much blood was releasing from him now, soaking into the back of his shirt.  That blood soaking down his lower back, staining his shirt and even more so, his begging voice seemed to have echoed such a pain.

"Ah, ah no!" he screamed through the pain with anger and need - and through the cloth in his mouth.  Somehow, I could hear him clearly with it tied around his head and mouth.  It made him sound in an even worse condition.  "No!  No I can't die," he belted out in a hard pant, that anger breaking into desperation as he breathed unevenly and heavily into the floor.  His forehead against the wood, he turned his cheek until it rested on the floor with the cloth in his mouth - and just that turn made him whimper.  I saw his eyes searching with no destination now, his body shaking hard, and his eyes spilling tears over. I could barely stand it to be honest.  But I needed to.  Don't think, just act.

I dropped to my knees at his side and the moment I did, I was working to get that cloth untied from his head and mouth.  And though he was shaky and I was still slightly doing that same, I managed to get it lose and pull it away.  It hurt me more... to see his tired lips now gasping more and more desperately, and to hear it was painful.  But I didn't stop.  His arms were trapped under his body, tied together and now bound under his body.  I was careful to move him slightly to be able to drag his arms out from his body but with Luke kneeling on his other side at this point, he helped me get his arms lose.  The moment I did, I picked at the tightly bound rope and just as I was losing my patience, I got it off him.