Airel - Aaron Patterson [131]
In the background, I heard Kim screaming, footsteps running toward me, but her voice sounded distant and vague. Somewhere deep within I knew she would be killed—it was inevitable—but I was now bound to my fate, and a prisoner of the events of my life. So short!I turned to face the unspeakably evil thing that had stabbed me, that would finish my life and end it. His eyes had become livid, death had skinned them over. I fell to the earth on my side and rolled to my back, my legs askew. He was crazed and twitching, his muscles stuttering as if fighting rigor mortis. He raised the dagger for the final blow, the severing of my head from my body, and all I could do was wait for it.
The sound of tearing flesh, a sloshing wet sound, filled my ears. I couldn’t tell what was happening, if the sound had come from inside my body as my heart tore itself apart on the line that had been cut into it, or if the sound had come from somewhere else. I wondered abstractly how long a person stays conscious after they’re beheaded.
I now began to long for the end. My life had been so very confusing. And filled up with pain. And short. It made, all of it, no sense to me. The most random bits of memory flashed into my mind and skipped right out again. Things I would have sworn I had forgotten, things that did not exist to me anymore. Memories of old classmates from kindergarten, a lonesome bike ride when I was seven, an old book I had held, a doll I used to love. Everything around me was becoming faintly hazy.
A garbled exclamation broke the silence. My eyes flew open. From the open mouth of Stanley Alexander, protruding like an obscene black tongue, was the tip of a sword. His eyes rolled back in their sockets and blood dripped from the tip of the blade.
The immense and crushing drain on my strength stopped—but I was left with a shattered heart, the violence done against it now complete and total. I both felt and believed that my life had now run its course; the time left to me now a handful of moments.
But Stan had already found his own end. The line he had drawn finally ran out. He fell to the earth and shattered like crystal on impact, the shards metamorphosing into vermin and creeping things that fled to the undersides of rocks, there to hide from the light and warmth of the sun. The bloodstone, in the dirt, rested alone and unposessed, glimmering a deep and blinding red.
I tried to find my bearings, fluttering my eyelids and struggling to sit up. Was it Kreios? Who had killed Stan?
“Airel! You’re hurt!”
It was the voice of the one who had struck down and defeated my treacherous foe.
Michael.
The black sword that he held dropped with a dull clang to the ground, and he rushed to my side, and fell tohis knees. “Airel.” The sound of my name on his lips warmed me completely.
He had come back! He had struck down his own father to… emotion flooded me, drowning my senses utterly.
“Airel, I’m so sorry…”
I looked into those eyes once again, and instantly I knew the truth. Michael Alexander did love me. He had never wanted to hurt me. He had been forced to betray me, and was probably as confused about all of it as I was.
Michael’s face seemed weathered, however. There was a muted look of horror there underneath it all, and as I searched him with my eyes, I noticed James was with him, looking like he had just arrived, standing just behind Michael in his varsity jacket. He had a strange look on his face.
Kim was at his side, saying, “James, what’s going on here?” I turned back to Michael, a million questions popping up, and saw something else: fear.
Michael struggled, looking tortured. I looked to James.
Michael reached quickly on the ground for the piercing bright bloodstone, and brought it closer, holding its dangerous and intense