The Ongoing Adventures of Stupendous Girl!

Götterdämmerung (Part 6 of 7) 26 Jun 2010

Sometimes, small things make a big difference. The worker who stayed out late shows up tired on the assembly line, and a rivet doesn’t go in quite flush, it’s a bit looser than it needs to be, and a quality inspector decides to check the one before it, or the one after it, and it goes out, and a panel gives way, and a hull breaks apart, and a ship sinks. Call it chaos theory, the butterfly flapping its wings and changing everything. Sometimes the balls just all get set in motion and one weird bounce decides which of myriad possibilities is the one to become fact, and we all have to live with that weird bounce.

Sometimes, a rock trips a running woman. A small rock, smoothed out from the flows of the tide, barely noticeable in the dark against a backdrop of sand, sticking out just enough to catch tired shuffling feet. Sometimes, the hero doesn’t make a clean get away, and sometimes its because of an insignificant little rock.

Irene never saw what had felled her, she just knew that once she’d lost her balance a little bit she wasn’t going to keep it at all, going sprawling ass over teakettle, putting her arms out to effect a less than graceful roll in the sand in an attempt to pop back up to her feet and keep running. She’s too tired, though, and she only makes it halfway through before falling flat on her face, She scrambles, hands scraping desperately for a purchase in the soggy mud as she tries to get up as fast as her racked body will allow her. She’s just up to her knees when she hears Lewis.

“That’s enough. Get up slowly.”

If I could do anything but get up slowly, we wouldn’t be in this spot, thought Irene to herself. Still, not wanting to antagonize a homicidal maniac with a gun, she moves as slowly as possible while getting to her feet, hands high above her to show no provocative intent.

“That’s good. Now turn around. No funny business either.”

Irene couldn’t shake the thought that the voice of the gunman chasing her was somehow familiar, but her mind simply refused to place it. For whatever reason, now that she was about to turn and see him, her curiosity about it was higher than ever before – perhaps because she no longer had to occupy her mind with the act of will of continuing to run, perhaps because someone is often most concerned with a surprise right before they know it will be revealed. But nothing prepared her for what she saw when she got spun around to face her assailant. She wanted to shout out his name, in surprise and incomprehension, but tired and confused as she was, the words, the name of the dead man she had once loved and meant to spend the rest of her life with, simply wouldn’t form for her.

But there he was, holding a rifle, a terrifying grin of murderous joy spread across his face, distorted by a clear venom directed straight at her. It was like the face of a man who, having bit into an unexpectedly sour piece of fruit, had insanely decided to track down the grower and was lost in fantasy of revenge.

“Bet you thought you’d seen the end of me, huh bitch? No more Lewis, and you and John could just go on, right?”

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