Shorts With Seekers

Short II

I don't know how it all happened so quickly. Everything fell apart within a blink of an eye, a single cascade of chaos that seemed to drag everything and everyone down with it. I wasn't surprised when people started turning on each other, cursing their names, killing. Stealing. So many other crimes that would have landed you in prison before everything fell to shit.

I can't say that I'm innocent, either. I've murdered in cold blood, I stole what another needed for my own personal gain. I'm just like them, all in all. And I'll keepdoing it, over and over again until we can finally reach a time when things aren't like they are now. Which I doubt I'll ever be able to see again. I doubt I'll even live to see old age.

Maybe I won't even live to see four hours away from now.

My heart steadily thumped against my rib cage as I worked to free my hands from their binds, my eyes darting to the every few seconds. My shoulder burned with each movement, a sharp, almost blinding, sensation that almost made me wish that bullet ended my life. But it didn't, and left me in this predicament. The binds around my wrist were slowly digging into my flesh, rubbing sores across my wrist. Blood trickled down my arm, dripping onto my pant leg. Or what was left of it.

The adrenaline was fading faster than I had hoped it would, leaving me a pain ridden mess with blood drying across my body from injuries scatted across my body. If I could remember how most of them happened, maybe I would feel at least a bit better about the entire situation.

Wails echoed down the hall, their source unknown. Did I pass a cell with a child? I can't remember, everything's to blurry and distant for me to remember. I closed my eyes, tearing at the binding with my teeth, cursing silently to myself. Somewhere down the hall, a gunshot sounded, and the sobbing adruptly ended. I shouldn't feel anything. I didn't know whoever was shot, I shoudln't care. But I couldn't keep my heart from lerching at the image of it.

"Fuck!" I exclaimed, dropping my bound hands back down to my lap. Nothing was loosening the bindings, absolutely nothing that I did caused a damn change in them, only making the bleeding worse. "Fuck..." I repeated, releasing an overdrawn sigh, pain shoot through my side and shoulder. My blood was slowly pooling on the floor. I'm not going to live through the next few hours at this rate. Two more shots sounded. One, two. Closer this time. Executions, perhaps.

Maybe I won't have to bleed to death, now. Maybe a single bullet will do it for me.

I looked back down at my wrists, the binds wrapping around them, the blood seeming to cover them. If I did it slowly, I could turn my wrist without the bids digging into it. But I didn't know how that would help me in the slightest. Whoopty-do, I can turn my wrist. Now, that's a hug step forward on my part... I thought sarcastically, running my thumb over my other wrist. The contact stung, but it gave me a chance to focus my attention on something other than the burning racing up and down my shoulder. I could ignore the rest of my injuries, not that gunshot wound. I had hoped that it was just like the books or maybe even the movies, where after a while you don't feel it, where you get 'used' to the pain. Maybe it's true, but it's sure as hell not working for me.

I stiffened when the wailing from minutes prior returned, quieter now. "Wh-what... the...?" I questioned myself, straining to hear anything else. Several more shots went off, much further away now than they were before, mere echoes rather than sound like they were just down the hall. The child, or whatever it was, quieted down once again, but didn't fall completely into silence, his sobs sputtering quietly.

That didn't make me feel any better about the situation.

Gunshots continued, except now they were getting closer and closer again, and more than there were previously, almost constat bursts. One two, one two. Like it was being exchanged from multiple sources, firing at each other. My first instinct was to push myself as far into the corner as possible, even though I knew it wouldn't help me. Why is that my instinct? It's what got me killed.