On a cold winter’s evening, I wanted to give a gift to my ex. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone exactly to plan.
I missed him. It wasn’t intentional, or good. True, I’d had feelings for him. Even loved him, sometime before he’d become a tyrannical despot, or perhaps while he was on the path. Rose-coloured glasses make it hard to say. So I could see how all this looked.
I’d loved him, so I missed him. But what really happened was he slipped on ice, my shot went over his head, and now I’m wading through the sewers.
I can hear guards behind me, or ahead - the echoes are confusing and between the eye-watering stink and the pea-soup darkness I sure can’t see them. I’d light a match, but who knows what that might do. Assuming the hip-high shit hasn’t ruined them, a spark might give away my position or send me skyward on a plume of flame and farts. Neither option appeals.
Pressed up against a wall in pitch-blackness, trying not to think about what exactly is seeping into my shirt. That’s where my generosity’s got me.
Torches flash further down the tunnel, back where I came from, so I go in the opposite direction, as quietly as someone wading through waist-high effluent can. Seems to be quietly enough, because I gradually leave them behind, step by soggy step. I need to get to a ladder, and my theta escape rendezvous. Alpha through zeta are out of the question and eta... well, no-one’s going to let me into a helicopter smelling like shit, so theta it is.
My foot skids on something, ducking me beneath the surface momentarily and I emerge gasping. I freeze, in case someone heard the splash, my ears pricked for sounds of pursuit.
If I’m caught, I wonder if he’d spare me. I doubt our shared past counts for much, or that he’d appreciate my trying to shoot him in the head, even if it’s meant to be a gift from the only person in the world who still cares about him. The one person who, sure, wants him deader than disco, but who’d also prefer it if his death was quick, and painless.
It’s been a while since I saw light, which is both good and bad. On one hand: no pursuit. Yay! On the other hand, I’m more lost than Shakespeare’s ‘Cardino’. Even keeping my palm flat against the wall so as not to get turned about, there’s only so much I can do without any illumination.
I could be lost here forever.
Or...
A distant flash from a torch strobing down the pipe glints off metal. Slick and cold from the wet - how I wish it was water - but when I grab it, that ladder feels like salvation.
I emerge into icy cold. The white fog of my breath obscures my vision for a moment, then clears to reveal an empty street and crisp white snow. A familiar street. I glance upwards to a nearby rooftop, where I secreted a second gun. Perhaps I can still deliver.
Note: I wrote this one for the AWC’s Furious Fiction competition this month, and made the long-list of entries - top 3% of stories submitted. :)
