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Topic: WEEKEND AWAY (short vacation) (07/23/15)
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By Elijah Bluhm
07/30/15 -
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The office would survive without me, for a weekend. I had to escape. But the problem with solitude is it’s the one place I can’t avoid myself. I feel human. I feel like a woman.
A day alone, and my thoughts pick at my conscience the way a finger picks at a scab.
“I can’t do this job anymore.” It’s the first voice I’ve heard in a day, and it’s my voice, hard as ice.
A twig snaps at my six. I stiffen, back against a tree.
I grip the cold hilt of my pistol, tuck my hair behind my ear and steady my breathing. Ten feet away, slightly to my right. I hear one more step and spin, finger on the trigger.
“Hey, Bek!” It’s Cole. He’s smiling, like usual. I lower my pistol.
“How’d you find me, Cole?”
“Really? You taught me.” Still smiling. It’s a game to him. He’d been my favorite student, despite his arrogance. “Aren’t you proud, Rita Voskamp?”
I’d have to get a new alias. “What do you want?”
“We need you back. I’ve radioed our location. They’ll pick us up down the mountain at o-four-hundred tomorrow.”
“What’s going on.” I march toward my cabin.
“Don’t you want to know why I radioed already?”
“You’ve already been to my cabin. You saw my stuff. Now, why’re you here.”
“We’re going after the League of Rogues. They’ve killed three agents in forty-eight hours.”
“Who.”
“Fuller, Higgins and Banks.”
I pause. Good agents. The League was getting good. Too good, too fast. “What’s Director Faust say.”
“We have a leak. A mole maybe; probably high up. This might be the beginning of a wide spread attack.” I set off, faster now.
In the cabin, Cole cooks some venison, and I try to eat in silence. Cole won’t let me.
“What’s with this cabin?”
I glance at a dark stain on the hardwood floor. “My parents were murdered here.”
Cole gapes at me. He’s not smiling. “Some vacation spot. I guess you gotta’ be a basket case to be a great assassin. Why do come back here?”
I stare at him. “We’re not assassins, Cole.” The venison is chewy like rubber. “You’re a miserable cook.”
“Don’t change the subject. Why do you come back to this place, Bek?”
“To remember.”
“To remember your parent’s murder?”
“No. To remember I’m human.”
Cole blinks, and takes a bite. “I am a lousy cook.” He smiles and glances into my bedroom.
“Don’t get any ideas.” I brush my hair away from my face.
“Ha! You’re not a lady; you’re Bek!”
I put my plate in the sink. “I’m going to bed. We have an early morning.”
I lay in the dark listening to crickets chirp. I never sleep, not when there’s another person. I rest. Sometimes I drift into the fog, but never sleep.
My thoughts pick at the scab again, but I close them out. Vacation is over.
The crickets stop chirping, and I lay stone still. Nature quiets when humans move. I stop breathing.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” The shots go through my bedroom door and hit the bed dead center. But I don’t sleep in my bed. I sleep on the hardwood.
The door bursts open and I see a silhouette. “Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The assassin drops to the floor and his gun rattles from his grip. I run and put my knee on his throat. Grabbing his face with one hand, I pull my knife with the other.
Then, I wonder if I’ve stabbed my own heart. I’m holding Cole’s face. He smiles.
I throw the knife and pull him to my bosom.
“I’m sorry.” He says. I feel warm blood pouring all over me. I feel. I wish I was numb, but I feel.
“Cole…” I look at his smiling face. I’m shaking. I can’t stop.
“They’re coming for you, Bek.” He puts a flash drive in my hand. “You can trust a dying man. Now run.”
His head falls back and I tremble violently as I his body thuds against the hardwood. I wipe hot tears from my face and stare at the pool of blood on the floor.
A fresh stain for the hardwood. A fresh stain for my soul.
I run out the back door into the winter night, where I will be numb.
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