The Risen: Courage
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Authors: Marie F Crow
This is a Marie F Crow Book
Published by Marie F Crow Publishing
Copyright © 2013 by Marie F Crow
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Marie F Crow Publishing, 205 Saint James Avenue, STE 2 #333, Goose Creek, SC 29445, USA
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ISBN-13: 978-0-9910199-6-0
ISBN-10: 0991019962
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921897
The following are exclusive trademark properties of Marie F Crow
Publishing: The Risen™, The Risen: Dawning™, The Hawthorn Angels™, G.R.I.T.™, The Risen: Margaret™, The Risen: Remnants™, The Risen: Courage™. These trademarks may not be used for any purpose without the written consent of Marie F Crow Publishing.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, images, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Book / E-book cover design: Darko Tomic
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Manufactured in the United States of America
“Courage is not a goal set in the dark throes of desperation. It’s the need to survive. It’s the need to push through the fears and find the strength to face the perils ahead. It’s not a brass ring to be claimed or a trophy to boast over. It’s the personal level of discomfort we all must face when no outstretched arm is there to help you.”
Helena Hawthorn
The screaming won’t stop. They surround us with their panic-filled screams that beg for random help. The agony of the prolonging screams of misery at the sight of so many lost to us forever. The mind piercing screams of panic resulting from confusion and helplessness at the sights before their eyes. All of this is mixing with the moans of the wounded in a delicate recipe of death. It’s the icing upon Death’s birthday cake. It swirls with the red and crimson colors of the blood that coat the hall and floor like a whipped topping. For today, there will be no celebrating of any birth in a manger. There was no bright star leading us to salvation last night. Today, the only celebration is being held by the wicked, walking Demi-Gods of life.
The ones to which we pretend to not hold homage. The ones whose wrath we fear just the same: Truth, Karma, Death and Fate. These are the ones celebrating today. These are the ones dancing around us. They dance around us and along this hallway of suffering with bare feet of jubilation. Santa did not bring us gifts this year, but they did. Oh, how they did, and their holiday has just begun.
CHAPTER1
R
hett rocks the limp body of my best friend in his arms like a small child with a broken doll. His pleadings are soft murmurings that fill the air like a priest’s chants as he begs God for Aimes’ life. He pleads with her to forgive him, but she won’t answer. Her white-blonde hair with its faded pink streaks sweeps the floor with his movements. It makes her appear that much more fragile in his desperate embrace. So lost in his own grief, he will not let her go. He is too afraid of what it might mean to no longer hold her body to him.
Chapel has given up the fight to remove Aimes. Instead, he attempts to lean around Rhett to hold pressure to the wound that slowly spills her life, hot and red, between his fingers. His tears mingle with her blood as they fall from his face. They are just as hot and escape just as freely.
The same scene is being mirrored behind them as another set pleads over a fallen loved one. Simon is moaning his pain over the unresponsive body of his wife, Shelia. I watch their memories play out across his face with his hope for her survival. His words echo his love for her as he begs her to stay with him. In an attempt to keep her with him he begs for her to remember certain shared events of their life. I know that this is his attempt to mentally refuse the truth. There will be no more events for them.
Dolph is pressing his trembling hands to Shelia’s shattered head. They are covered with more than just her blood from the damage that has been done. The dark, thick matter that has spilt around her and onto him is proof that her bleeding can’t be stopped or slowed until her heart exhausts its energy to fight. Dolph’s hands shake with that fear as each pump of her heart is slowing a fragment at a time. She is making her escape from this world. There is no stopping her death, but they are not ready to accept it yet. Their queen has been captured, tortured, and now lies dying between them.
Ross stares blankly ahead with unfocused eyes. His breath is a rapid, short panting of pain with his wound seeping dark under Richard’s hands. No one cries for Ross. No one mourns the possibility of
his
death. Richard is only trying to prevent it to give his conscience a rest from the guilt it would harbor if he simply walked away. He doesn’t offer simple words of comfort to his friend. He is too focused on Shelia to have anything left for Ross, and Ross pretends to not notice that his death will slip by as ignored as he was by them in life.
There is another who no one is pressing their palms against. His life is already lost. J.D.’s blood flows without pausing onto the cold tiles around him, warming them and painting them with his death. His eyes still stare at me, pleading with me to accept his apology. I am locked in the deep depths of their betrayal. I’m still confused over the “why” of his actions. My body trembles with the aftershocks of what I have seen. My mind is stuck in a loop. It is a queen of details replaying the last moments with vivid accuracy. She holds every scene and sound with perfection, and like any cruel queen, she wields it with brutal authority.
Marxx is whispering something into my ear but I can’t focus on his words. There is too much around me. It competes for my attention and I don’t fully hear him. His voice mingles with the screams like nothing more than a buzzing sound. All of it swirls into a whirlwind of emotions inside of me. The panic and pain of what I am feeling bubbles in my chest. There are too many things to break my heart and I refuse to visit any one vision for too long, or I will run the risk of drowning with defeat. The moment that started it may have passed, but the hour still lingers. It’s drawing out every second of torment in which it can celebrate; every second that can cost us so much more than what we have already lost.
I force my breathing to slow and each breath draws my walls back around me. My eyes begin to focus. I close down the many screams that fragrant the air with their trademark perfume of torment that this new world has shown us. I force past the smells that send my stomach into a fear-filled fluttering.
Fear is a poison. It finds a way inside your veins and burns away all self-confidence. It fills you with visions of false, foreshadowed futures and impregnates you with doom. J.D. has taught me that. The only antidote for his fear was courage; courage and love. I have to find both inside myself now if I want to survive this and protect the ones I love. I am Helena Hawthorn. I have lost one family already, and I will not let fear take another.
Marxx moves with me like an unspoken soul mate. He is cautious and protective of me. He feels my mood switch with a new determination. Like always, there will be time to cry and mourn later. Now, there is only enough time remaining to save a precious few. But which few?
Dolph’s eyes tell me that Shelia is not one of those who can be saved. The green of his eyes flash between anger and sorrow as he accepts Truth’s damage. With a reluctance that echoes through his body, he releases his hold on Shelia’s wound and sags with the defeat of it. It triggers an outcry from Simon that can only come from the depths of a pure loss of a love. In his grief, he rocks Shelia’s body, clutching her close. With his incomprehension of how to accept her death, he still pleads with her as his hands roam from her face to her skull.
Simon has lost everything today at the hands of one man. There are no words to give him. There is no embrace comforting enough to take this away. He is being shredded bitterly with rage and grief and there is nothing I can do but watch. A year ago, this holiday would have been spent around another tree with memory-making moments of love and laughter. The only memory this date will forever hold for him now will be the memory of blood-covered hands and pleadings that went unanswered.
Time is frozen for his family the way only Death’s freezing grasp can master. A little girl will never grow up. A wife will never grow old. However, a husband and a father will be forced to carry on alone. Truth gives this gift to him today. This is the present that Death offers him and his misery is the only acknowledgement they are wanting.
I wonder if Simon will now hear the haunting laughter of what he has lost. Will smells sneak up on him when his mind wanders too deep into the shadows that try to protect us from memories like this? When his eyes are closed, in the moment right before sleep takes him, will they be with him again whispering for his attention? Will he open his eyes, or like Chapel, will he just pray for them to go away?