At the Cusp of Death

I wrote his for a short story contest at school, and I won, but this isn't my best work by far.

 

The sun was setting as slowly as ever that night, as if even IT was afraid to lose itself in the darkness of forever. Christen knew the sun wasn’t afraid of anything, especially not the dark- it was just a child’s foolish nonsense talk, after all. The sun wasn’t alive and couldn’t possibly feel anything, much less emotions, and was the only potential dark killer before man had discovered fire… Dark fled the sun like a child would flee a dog with rabies.

     The teenager shook herself out of her lost thoughts, noticing a shadow approaching at a fast pace from the corner of her bleeding eye- a boy he was, not much older than she. His rushing steps shook the hard ground where Christen was lying motionless. She could feel everything and nothing at once- the void of Death was opening its doors for her, and her mind was everywhere at once.

     Kill.

     Hurt. Play.

     Feed your anger.

     Her ears (which were still intact on her destroyed body) caught the sound of the man’s voice, but his words, so far away, were muffled by the distance and her dying link of the material world. Yes… one more kill would be delicious… Her material body still had enough strength for that.

     Just that.

     Her cold blue eyes, still crying the crimson liquid, shot out towards the boy approaching her motionless body. He was now only a couple of meters away from her- she needed him to be closer still.

     The boy flinched when Christen’s gaze of death landed on his oval face. He stopped dead in his tracks, reaching for the revolver hanging on his belt with one shaking left hand. “You… you… you are under arrest,” he managed to say in a shaky voice as he raised his weapon with two unstable hands.

     A sad smile made its way on the girl’s white face as her eyes grew even bigger.

 

     Michael Richards’ breathing quickened as the cruel blue eyes grew as large as could be. This was not the Christen Jones he had grown up knowing. She had always been a lively, happy high school student, two years younger than he was, and her large eyes had always been filled with warm hope that someday life might give her a chance.

     Life hadn’t given her a chance.

     Cruel was fate to her family, slowly killing it with time (diseases, accidents… and even murders), and stealing her sanity as her fragile mind was destroyed, neuron by neuron. Gradually her eyes had begun to lose the magic sparks that had made Michael fall for her… and had replaced them by the shadows of fear, hate, and agony of life. With time, the teenager’s liveliness had evaporated, and before long she had disappeared- mentally and physically.

     No one heard of Christen for a month or so; Michael heart had broken painfully by then. He missed having the sweet young girl by his side and seeing the sparks of love in her beautiful blue eyes… and the worry for his loved one crushed his thoughts nearly all the time. After graduating from high school a week later, the young man had set his thoughts straight- he would become a policeman, this way avenging Christen’s disappearance and her murdered brother.

     Michael was now an apprentice in the job. For the past several months people had been brutally murdered the same way Christen’s brother had been killed- was the murderer finally going to be caught? When the killer had been traced and located in the cemetery that night, the young policeman had been assigned the task to arrest him.

     Her.

     The scars that had begun to heal in his soft, fragile heart had been torn back open when he had recognized those cold blue eyes… Christen Jones… a killer. The sight had stung the very back of his soul so bad it almost hurt him physically. But it wasn’t the fact that the love of his high school life was a killer that hurt him the most… it was to see the love of his high school life in the state she was in.

     She was nude, showing what was once a gorgeous body under the dimming light of the sun. Blood covered every inch of her skin like a shiny red jacket protecting her from the chilly autumn evening. Michael could see her destroyed skin under this crimson liquid; it appeared as if it had been grated with a cheese grater, slowly spilling out the blood all over herself and the grass. Not having seen her disturbed blue eyes, he would not have recognized this as a human’s body… Even her face was destroyed like the rest of her was, only leaving the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears.

     “Help me…” Her fingerless left hand weakly stretched out to touch Michael’s leg, but he was too far away.

     “Christen, I…” The waterfall of emotions poured in his head and blocked the words he painfully wanted to say. His revolver dropped from his sweaty hands at the same time as his knees let him go. The tears ran down his cheeks and choked everything he needed to tell her.

     The sun was gone by now… Only the angry chill of the night remained between the two lovers as one laid crying and the other laid dying. Christen’s other hand (the one with remaining fingers) reached out to stroke Michael’s back lovingly, wanting to reassure him. Everything would be alright soon… They would be together. Forever.

     The policeman gasped in agony when something sharp dug down the skin in his back.

 

     Christen’s long sharp nails furiously dug in the young man’s back as he twisted in terribly agony. His fists flew everywhere except on her… as if he didn’t believe, couldn’t believe, that it was all her doing. Her skinny fingers made their way through the flesh, down to the blood and muscle (the screams of her lover became louder and louder as she descended deeper and deeper), while she focused on avoiding his thrashing members. When she sensed the spinal cord between the tips of her fingers, she held it tightly and pulled.

     The shriek she heard was rapture for her senses.

 

     The pain blinded Michael of everything; all that mattered anymore was to escape this torture. He wished for Death; Death was a luxury he couldn’t be given, for fate wanted him to suffer this still…

     Suddenly, he lost his legs, or, the feeling of his legs. Panic flowed into him like a gigantic tsunami come to drown him forever, fear crushed everything else. The pain didn’t matter anymore- the instincts of survival and the joy of life took over him in a matter of a semi-second. Focusing all of his courage and control in one place, he managed to move his left hand out to the side and search for his fallen revolver.

     It wasn’t there, it wasn’t there!

     Michael felt another jerk of pain at the base of his neck, but did his best to ignore it as he searched for his weapon. Survival was all that mattered… kill or be killed…

     Relief washed over him when his hand touched something cold and hard. Without losing an instant, his fingers rolled around the gun before he jerked it around to hit his attacker right in the face. The impact of gun against bone sent a loud cracking sound in the air, and his neck was freed of the thing.

     Michael’s vision settled as he panted, face on the ground, out of breath. Before he had time to celebrate his victory, he felt himself being dragged backwards on the bloody grass, but still couldn’t feel his legs. What had been done to them?

    His fingers clung deeply in the dirt as he struggled to make his legs move, but they wouldn’t budge. Whatever was dragging him back was pulling him by his feet, and dragging quicker and quicker by the second. His instincts told him to turn around and shoot the predator before he was introduced to more torture- but when his torso twisted so he could see the attacker, he refused to believe it was Christen.

     The girl let go of his feet and settled on the ground, clawing her bloody fingernails in his lower legs. She immediately jerked them out and clawed them in closer to his middle, her cruel eyes focused on his own eyes all the time. Closer, and closer, and closer…

     When they dug in his lower belly, he felt it.

     He could feel his insides being embraced by the tips of the girl’s nails before they jerked out again; the cry of agony he let out pierced through the night. As she continued, he never left her gaze…

     “Christen… why? I love you… please remember me…”

     Christen, who had been about to plunge her fingers once again into Michael’s flesh, froze right where she stood. Even if it didn’t seem possible, her eyes opened even wider and seemed to… warm up. Her head cocked sideways in surprise and remembrance. “Who..?” Her voice seemed filled once again with the innocence of her childhood.

     Michael panted in pain. “Michael… your love… I love you, I love you… I never stopped loving you…”

 

     Everything was wrong. Insanity had stolen her memories, and was now giving this one back to her. She wanted to live forever in the pain she was in to make herself pay for what she had just done! Her eyes never left Michael’s. Oh, but what had she done to him?

     “I…” Her voice lost itself among her thousands of thoughts. The pain of forgetting was stronger than the pain she had inflicted upon her skin only minutes before he had shown up. She had decided to end her life like she had ended so many… but she couldn’t stand the pain anymore. “Love..?”

     “Yes, Christen…”

     His voice was so sweet to her ears. She didn’t deserve to hear it after what she had done. With her good hand, she took the revolver (which had fallen with the pain) and pointed it at herself. “Forever sorry.” She handed it back to its owner in a position that still aimed at her. “Kill me? It hurts too much. Please…” Her eyes roamed on her destroyed body, showing what she meant.

 

     Michael couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, but he knew the girl would die even if he didn’t… but if he did, it would spare her many minutes of torture still. “I love you,” he whispered once more before the sound of the shot echoed in the night.

 

     When the rest of the policemen arrived at the cemetery, ready to give out a helping hand to Michael, they were too late. Both the murderer and the agent had been shot in the head, dead.

 

Author's Note

Tell me what you think of this, and how I could have improved it.

Reviews

[An owl on the moon]

Powerful! The intense write was so vivid and perfect. The scene was set with such clarity and you breathed such life into the characters (their past and their present). Brilliant!

[nostal]

awesome.I wish my school was like yours.I wish my school actually held writing contests.

[Jarrett]

I don't think you could improve much on this- though short, I think that it's one of your best works. It's not hard to see why this one won the contest, I loved it.