Below The Fold

It’s cold. I’m shivering, and I can see my breath in little bursts of steam as it comes out of my mouth. I’m breathing hard, and the steam comes quickly. It’s dusk. Or maybe dawn. I can’t quite tell. The sun’s either just set or moments away from rising, and everything’s gray.

It’s quiet, but a very dull quiet, like when my head’s under water. Occasionally I hear something popping, muffled, tiny bursts of sound that I more feel than hear.

My ears are ringing. I just realized this, about the same time that I realized I’m standing behind a pillar. It’s brown, and there are grooves criss-crossing it like the deep creases of my grandfather’s face. If I squint, I can almost see him in the pillar, there’s his long nose and deep set, slightly down-turned eyes. His mouth is in a crooked smile. The focus drifts away and the pops occur with more frequency. It’s not a pillar. It’s a tree.

I can smell wood burning and I look up. The tree’s on fire. Little pieces of burning bark cascade intermittently around me, falling lightly past my face as I’m transfixed by the bright orange flames and the hickory smell of the burning wood that reminds me of campouts and boy scouts and the taste of charred rainbow trout.

The pops have more definition now. It’s gunfire. A piece of bark explodes from the tree just inches away from my head. My head jerks reflexively to the left to avoid the splinters that lodge into my cheek and neck.

There’s Aprillo. I yell to him. I tell him to cover me. He just stares at me, unblinking. I scream again to cover me. Give me some sign that he understands what I’m trying to do and will help keep me from getting my ass blown off. Something. He stares at me. Why won’t he answer? I turn back to the right, and I see them charging through the smoke. It’s getting brighter. Must be dawn. I look back at Aprillo. Then I realize I’m not looking at Aprillo. Just his head. His body’s nowhere to be seen. His mouth is open and he’s screaming, but no sound is coming out.

I whirl back around the tree, and they’re everywhere. Something hits the top of the tree then, and sparks fly everywhere. I dive to the left, into some thick brush as I hear the sounds of bullets zip past me. My heart is pounding and my breath is coming even faster and I’m shaking. I raise my hand to fire, but instead of a gun, I’m holding a rope. What the hell is this about? I pull the rope, and it’s attached to something. I start pulling it in as fast as I can, hand over hand, dragging something heavy through the bushes. It’s crashing through the thick growth and meanwhile I hear them looking for me. And I keep pulling and pulling, because I know there’s a gun at the other end, and I’m dead if I don’t get it. So I’m pulling faster and faster and faster and the rope is piling up in front of me and they’re getting closer and closer and I can hear them hacking through the brush with their machetes and the dogs are barking and finally the end of the rope bursts from the bush in front of me, tied to a metal gun case. I go to open the latch and it’s locked. Christ, it’s fucking locked. There’s a rock next to me and I grab it and start bashing the case over and over. The sound attracts them and they’re zeroing in on me, but I just hit the case harder and harder and sparks and pieces of rock fly off and suddenly the latch gives and the case pops open just as one of them stumbles into me and we lock eyes and he levels his gun at my chest and I reach into the case—

“Cannon!”

“Cannon!”

I blinked for a few moments, confused as to where the hell I was. Then I remembered.

“Yeah?” I answered hoarsely, rolling over to my side and sitting up groggily.

“You’re up. Open fourteen!” He yelled.

The door to my cell slid open with a loud clank that told me I had a vicious headache. Two guards stood there. One tossed a pair of handcuffs at me.

“Put ‘em on.”

I slapped the cuff around my left wrist and then the other around my right one.

“Come on. Your mouthpiece is waiting for you. Arraignment’s in an hour.”

They took me into a small room and frisked me.

“Wait here,” he said.

I sat there for a couple minutes, enjoying the quiet and trying to formulate some semblance of an idea of what the hell I was going to do next, when the door opened.

“Christ, Quinn, you look like hell.”

Of course it was. The way this week was going, it had to be.

“Can’t say the same for you, Marin. You look as beautiful as ever.”