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I had a bad headache, and I was feeling very tired. I was pretty sure I was drugged, and I heard a slight moaning sound from the other side of the curtain.
I blacked out.
When I woke up again, the curtain was pulled back and I could see a small window, around ten or fifteen feet away. In it, I could see a black sky, speckled withstars, with the moon peeking around the left side of the iron window frame. I lay there for hours, watching the moon inch along the sky, then looked at the sun following in it's path.
I passed out again.
When I woke for the third time in the hospital, or what I assumed was a hospital, the sun was just dissapearing through the other side of the small window. That was when I noticed a sour smell coming from behind me. I moved my eyes seeing if I could see what was going on without moving. No luck. I tried moving my head, slowly. My neck tensed up from stretching very far, my chin restin on my shoulder. I slowly moved my upper torso, getting another three or four inches until I felt that area stretch too. I moved my hips, finally able to see, dissapointed that I made so much movement. I saw two men dressed in medical scrubs standing over the other bed in this room. I recognized their faces, but from where? Where...
I went through mental images of places where they could fit in.
First image... Four years old. My house. I snuck outside from my parents to play in the rain. My eyes drifted across to our neighbors house. I saw a smaller kid, who seemed to be about two or three years old. A middle aged man who I now know to be his father bent down to play with him.
The man was smoking a cigar. His wife walked up and yanked the cigar out of the man's mouth, then she pointed his finger at him and said something angrily while she held the cigar in her other hand. The man moved one of his legs back, as if backing away would lessen the blows of her insults. His son was rested on the other leg's hip. When he stepped back, the child was moved slightly closer to the woman. The boy's little fingers moved closer to the cigar, and he grasped the burning end.
What happens next takes less than ten seconds.
The cigar is yanked from the woman's hand, the dropped onto a rug by the child. The man stumbles back, hitting his head on a glass table as he goes down. He holds the child up, and absorbs the impact of the ground, preventing the child from hitting the ground. What he does not prevent, however, is a five inch long shard of glass being slammed into his back, cracking a rib and easing to a stop in his heart. He died instantly.
Richard Johansen just lost one of his parents.
His mother grabbed the baby from the father, who she did not know was dead. She ran into the kitchen, where she filled a ziploc bag full of ice, dropped into a paper bag, and pressed it onto Rich's burnt fingers.
The mother continued to comfort the crying child as the cigar set the rug to fire. The fire then spread to the curtains of the window. The curtains and rug then burned a wooden table, from which sparks caught fire to the carpet on the stairs to the second floor. The front door was now blocked, and as fire rushed through the now departed father's den and to the family room, the back door was also bocked. This was when the mother noticed the fire.
Ten seconds, and one child was injured, one man was killed, and half of a house was destroyed.
The child had cried himself to sleep in the time the fire had spread to the kitchen. Mrs. Johansen, or should I say Ms. Johansen, lifted the child and climbed out of the kitchen's window, where her T-shirt was caught by a sharp object. The firetrucks and ambulances called by a neighbor were three minutes away.
The child woke up, and noticed his mother's shirt was caught. They struggled with it for thirty seconds until the mother's shirt caught fire. The woman shoved Richard away, and told him to get to the street. Two minutes and thrity seconds until help arrives.
Or, porfessional help, at least. Ten seconds after Richie ran to the street, the people from two of the houses nearby rushed over. The man of the house to the Johansen's left side tried to pull the shirt free, burning his fingers, which attracted his wife's attention. The man to the right of the Johansen's, who lived alone, grasped the mother. He pulled at her shoulders until the shirt ripped free. She then stood screaming for ten seconds until she remembered to "Stop, Drop, And roll."
Two minutes later, the firefighters fought the fire for twenty two minutes and seventeen seconds, which was sixteen minutes and twnety three seconds after Sally Johansen died in the ambulance. Richard Johansen was an orphan.
I shook my head, back in the present. the men weren't there. Fast forward five years.
I was nine years old. Richie was eight. My parents had adopted him four and a half years ago. He hated them because, "They were just stupid adults trying to impress the man for being good samaritans." as he put it. I have to admit, looking back, he may have been right... They weren't the CPS guys he called to investigate for, "hating a kid they didn't even need."
Two more years. Richie and I on our own, living on the street. Blade meeting us. Blade. That no good, dirty, son of a *****
If they were at the ambush, and I was at the ambush, that means the only person in the other bed could be... Oh my God.
Author's Note:
In case you haven't noticed by now, the first few chapters make this seem like a sci-fi novel, with futuristic weapons and clones. further along, though, this story seems more like an action/adventure/thriller, the latter is closer, but I will be retyping the first chapters in the next few weeks, so go back to the beggining every once in a while to stay updated with the Bounty Hunter story. Thanks!
-Semper Liber-
Mark G.
