A Savage Life
Chapter 24

Black ash swirls around my ankles at every footstep as I walk carefully through this barren land. Who knows what kind of Sci-fi creatures wait for me out here? I’m surrounded by a great canyon, filled full of holes, and volcanoes just lie and wait in the background, as if this was a painting of an apocalyptic scene.

The sad thing is, is that it really is a real life painting of an apocalyptic scene. And what’s in those holes? Why are there volcanoes? I hope that they’re dormant because this place isn’t nothing more but a death trap just waiting to happen, and the fear of a volcano erupting on me with nowhere to go frightens me more than that weird sound the wind makes when it howls through those holes.

In fact, I’m frightened right now. Enclosed places scare me. I don’t like feeling trapped, cornered, or otherwised, enclosed in any way. I already had to go through that, thanks to Uncle Johnson, who mooched off my parents and beat me black and blue every night because I was a “Pretty Boy” in his eyes that would make tough competition for him to keep the ladies lined up at his door fawning for his attention.

And let’s not forget Abraham, the store clerk/creep that turned out to be a freaking child serial killer, and I was his next target had the police not shot him dead in front of me. I can still feel the blood all over my face from that man’s heart, and the blood from Uncle Johnson when he decided to saw his own hand off to prove that he was “innocent,” to my grandfather, in front of me. I get shivers just thinking about it.

In fact, it’s taking all that I have not to grab Damien’s arm and plaster myself to his body like a helpless woman who heard a bump in the night. Damien senses this and asks, “What’s wrong?”

I really hate telling people when I’m scared, because it annoys me and makes me look weak, and I’m not weak. “Nothing.” I sigh.

“No, something is.” Damien persists, and I tell him.

Damien nods his head, hugs me tightly, making me gasp in pain, and feel even more claustrophobic than before. I roll my eyes, and as he sets me down, we continue till we reach a crossroads.

I exasperate because there are three paths, each more narrower than this path, and look, the road on the right is covered in bloody footprints, the middle pathway looks about five seconds from crumbling, and the far left one I’ll have to crawl into a narrow pathway. Why can’t people with claustrophobia get a break?

“Ooh! Let’s take that one!” screeches Damien as he pulls me into the direction of the bloody footprints.

I slam my feet onto the ground, breaking free from his grasp, a nigh impossible task to complete.

“Why?” I ask him. There could be literally anything up that path, and I don’t like surprises. Especially in enclosed places.

“Because, that way is safer.” Damien explains.

“Damien, there might be something crazy up there.” I tell him. “We can fight off crazy. We can’t fight off falling rocks and suffocation.” Damien retorts.

He makes a very good point. The middle passageway looks like it could cave at any minute, and I don’t think that the cave to the far left has enough oxygen to give two men. I nod at him and we cock our weapons, ready to strike whatever was down that path. There would be no surprise attacks though, thanks to the whirlwind of ash surrounding my ankles like a herd of buffalo ready to protect their young.

We follow the bloody footprints, but my alarms are going off like crazy in my head. I’ve seen claw marks, gun holes in various rocks, and more and more blood to the point it’s looking like a massacre here. Then I see it, the cause of so much blood. There’s a dead guy, who had been ripped in two, laying with his gun close to his chest. What in the world did THAT?

I look at the holes in rock walls, because the main culprit may still be here, inside those holes. Damien rips the gun from the dead man, and we leave the messy hack of a person with Damien shaking his head, cursing, and then saying, “Well, at least he had a gun, so he was good for somethin’.”

We see more bloody footprints, this time of big, shoed feet, and little, bare feet, and then I start to get even more worried. Not because of the mother and kid, but because of what’s lying and waiting for me some unknown distance up ahead. Maybe this was the little kid’s father, and he or she got to experience what mommy and daddy did and this was our warning to turn back around and run away? But all of you are quite aware that I can’t. So drum roll please, I continue on in my endeavors.