It seems I wanted to be a writer.

[reiniat]

I was shifting trough my old 20GB hardrive (I have an original Fallout 2 humongous install!!) and found this folder full of short stories that i made when i was younger, i havent checked them all but i figure most are meh anyway. Still, there was a couple of stories in english and a partial traslation of the Goethe's Faust introduction.

Here is one of those english stories wich I fixed to be readable, my english might seem a bit ugly now, but when i was 15 it was really REALLY awful.

I have no idea what does the last line mean, maybe it was a key to continue with the story, but i think this one was supposed to end in a nuclear submarine somewhere up in Canada, or maybe the protagonist was meant to become Father Time, i wrote a lot about that guy, but i honestly never finished anything.

 

I

They had taken the prisoners inside the house, a big two story house made of wood, not many of them still stood, even less in the snowy merciless north. Four men had to be dealt with first, one looking through a broken window in the second floor holding what seemed to be a crossbow in his lap, and three in the porch playing with cards.

I wish I had a crossbow, thought the armored man, having a crossbow from the start would have been priceless. Despite his own precautions the fall was announced when he was on a fishing trip, the last for-the-fun fishing trip in his old pacific life. By the time he arrived at Redman’s it was almost empty and Redmans son was closing, he had sold all his ammunition, but not all his firearms, the people in the old world had way too many guns and that always made him uneasy, that’s why he had tried to go north, and failed miserably at that for the first six years.

But now ammo was finally scarce, and so was people, and that was fine, he just needed to take this people stuff so he could finish his trip north, whatever north really meant now it did not matter, there was less and less people as he moved on, and more game on the woods, all that was good.

He had thought this long enough.

He rushed towards the porch, his armor making rattling sounds, his steps resounding in the melting snow, holding his two handed sword with one hand, almost two meters long, and a knife with the other, not a throwing knife, but it made no matter. The man in the window yelled, raised, tried to fire, and took the knife in the upper chest, not clean enough, he’ll live that was expected, the rest of the band was in the basement by now, no one would hear. The men in the façade were up by then, two armed with tubes and one with an old rusty machete, they made no match; he swung his sword so hard it crashed against the machete, ignored the collision and went through the man’s neck down towards his spine, he stopped the swing before it got stuck, and impaled the next man towards the façade, by then the third man was getting within reach, he moved backwards and slid his neck with a forward slash.

Snow was falling, he kicked the door wide open, stepped inside, there was a man waiting beside the door, two more behind the counter one holding a bow, the first man rushed in close combat and so the armored man grabbed his sword below the flukes, parried the first blow and trusted his sword in the man’s chest with a downwards motion. The bowman was firing but it made no matter, he turned to face the other man, he was older, he noticed, over his fifty, dressed in a half cut trench coat holding a long knife.

f*ck no, man.

The old man darted to the door, the bowman fired another arrow, this time it struck the armored man’s helmet in a straight angle, splintering away and staggering him for the split of a second, the old man thought he saw a chance and changed trajectory.

No.

The armored man muttered, almost without breath, he swung again, but the old man duked and went forward, the armored man stopped a cut with his arm and pushed the old man aside, it’s the bowman’s fault, he vaulted over the counter, the bowman turned back and tried to run only to be hit in the back, ribs torn apart, steamy blood gushing out of his wound.

The armored man turned back but the room was empty.

He headed to the basement, I’m getting old too, the basement was illuminated by a dim electric bulb connected to a battery, it was warmer there, one of the women, the younger, was screaming as the men took turns to rape her, they were drunk, and they were not expecting him.

He swung horizontally cutting half the head of the first one, the second one trough the neck, the third one in the shoulder, the fourth was out of reach but didn’t try to flee and was cut down the same.

Silence. Only broken by one of the bodies still twitching a little, the pool of blood was spreading through the old compacted soil, the severed heads stood with funny or void expressions, all dead faces look either funny or void he thought, the young woman had stopped yelling, outside the sound of thunder intensified.

There were shelves and bookcases, and they had stuff, and some of that stuff was food, and some of that food appeared to be jam.

Good, the armored man produced a package of old bread from one of his bags and grabbed a bottle of the shelf. Apricot, I hate it.

He sat on the table eating slowly, taking a look at the prisoners, there was four men, one just a boy, two in his middle thirties, perhaps younger, one was really hurt, probably tried to resist, the other was actively struggling to get free, the last man was an old guy perhaps on his sixty, he sustained his glance but said nothing. The blonde girl was in the corner looking at the bodies with disbelief, her hair was so dirty it looked green, and there was another woman chained next to her, she had lines in the corner of her eyes and her red hair had gone grey in some parts.

He went to the old man, he closed his eyes expecting the natural, death, but no, the armored man cut his ropes and gave him the dirk.

This here is mine, the loot mine, your lives are yours.

He went onto pack the liveries, the old man went onto free the other captives. I always wanted a crossbow, the guard was still upstairs, and so he turned his back forgetting the captives and went upstairs to the second floor, the man was dead sitting over an already cold pool of blood, his body was still warm, his crossbow was next to him.

By the time he went back all the captives were freed, scared but happy and getting ready to leave, except the battered guy, he should have noticed, he was getting rusty by then, but hey, everyone makes mistakes.

He was packaging the food on the table, not minding of the freed captives, besides of the jam, there was stale bread, the dysentery inducing kind, and then there was sausages and jams that were not human meat, in fact for all he noticed there was no human meat at all. There are not enough people up north, he thought, and that is a good thing.

And then he turned and saw him, the bruised up guy, holding a gun in his hands and pointing at him, his grip was steady, but then again everyone’s grip was steady by then; all the cowards and all the good people were dead already. The armored man let out a sigh that was magnified by his mask.

That is not loaded.

Slowly he moved his right hand to grip just above the pommel of his sword, a solid two handed grip; it’ll be just a quick slash and if the other people jump in ill handle them all the same.

Look again.

The bruised guy slipped a magazine with one bullet into the pistol, it made a clipping sound as the mechanism came to rest in its place.

It all went too fast, one of the other captives, this one with bushy beard and big yellowish eyes, made a step forward.

Stop you imbecile!

The bruised guy turned for the split of a second and that was all he needed. He pulled his own revolver and fired as the bruised guy fired his gun, the sound was a like a thunder, he had forgotten how was it to shoot inside a room, the sound echoed in the wall leaving a sharp scream in his ears. The bullet impacted in the side of his chest with a small thump, but it was a safe place to land, there was the flag jacket and then the ceramic pieces there, he didn’t even feel pain, the bruised guy fell to the ground with his face made a mess, blood pouring out in thick streams like only gun wounds did, the yellow eyed man was now retiring with his hands up.

Don’t!

Shut the f*ck up and stay there.

He pointed his gun at the rest of the captives, he only had two bullets left, but that didn’t mattered, this time the old man came forward.

Its ok, its ok. Stu was an idiot anyway, were leaving, just point the gun at me, that’s it.

The armored man pointed his gun at the old man and then rushed to his packed goods, and grabbed whatever seemed valuable, there was an oil can with some black substance in it, a couple of flashlights, matches, a few ceramic cups one with an actual handle, in a drawer he found a bunch of packages of old AA batteries, and empty 9mm magazines, a coat hung on a perch, there was more but there was no time.

Stay right here.

He went upstairs past the captives, the red haired woman gave him a reproachful look just before he locked the basement door on her face, the old wooden door wouldn’t hold long enough so he put some chairs over it for good measure then he went out into the now unrelenting blizzard.

II

The armored man whistled for his mount, the sound was engulfed by the blizzard, but the mechanical horse came all the same, it was not just two pairs of legs ready to carry your burden, or an automated minigun, like the military variant, he had gotten his from a circus, and it was modeled after an actual horse, with a fake iron like finish that had fallen away in most parts leaving exposed the grey grainy alloy beneath, and red eyes although one had gone off long ago.

He rode north through dawn and midday, his horse could find his way pretty easily through the snow.

On the noon he went inside the forest and made a fire beneath a tree, so big and leafy that the snow had not fallen in its trunk, he then removed most of his armor. He had pieced together most of it through the years, a ceramic paneled jacket from an old “dragon” vest, a standard Kevlar jacket, curved steel shoulder pads and greaves, and more scaled ceramics in his arms, it was bulky and obviously older than the standard seven years of warranty, but it did the job. The bullet that impacted him had been stopped by the Kevlar vest, which had already a couple of holes and a few marks, he removed the bullet and saved it in one of his pockets, where he kept the others projectiles that had not killed him.

He was tired so he fell asleep almost instantly.

He woke up next morning, wishing he could at least have dreamed something, he couldn’t really remember the last dream he had, maybe he had dreamed about Mary, maybe about the shattered glass rain, maybe about the black rain, there was always something raining in his dreams of that he was sure. But he could not remember much else of them.

He went north west hoping to find the highway that was marked in his map, he had been heading there before he had found the riders, he had spied them for almost four days looking for a chance, knowing he would never reach so far without food, and so short of bullets for hunting, and I wasted a bullet anyway. He was very close to the next town, Baileyville the map said it was called, he could cross the river there or maybe, if it was cozy enough, stay until the climate improved

 

 

 

A SWAN

Edited February 22, 2015 by reiniat