Traitors Die by D.S. Weissman

Author:D.S. Weissman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: ABDO
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

ERUPTING WORDS

JAMES

ON THE ISLAND, THE SUN ROSE AND SET LIKE ANY OTHER place in the world, but the hours and minutes had fallen away. Time stood in increments of day and night; that was it now, the light or the darkness. Between the light and the dark, James used to hide away—not cowering, but not wanting to be a part of the world he saw in the daytime. In San Diego the daylight was filled with the life he never could grasp and the ghosts that filled the empty apartment of his childhood. He had dug his nose in books to forget about the world he didn’t want to be in, to transport him to a world where he could be happy. Somewhere between the night and the day he forced himself to lead. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment, if it had been a single moment at all.

If James closed his eyes in the empty minutes of the cave, he would have had a hard time knowing what time in his life it was. How long would he be here? Sweat accumulated in tiny droplets on his cheeks. It felt like the last time he had sat in the settlement waiting for judgment, except he had been half-naked then, his bruised body dragged from his room and rushed through the snow. Even in the crushing consistency of cold, James remembered how it felt for the tops of his feet to smear against the snow’s surface while two boys pulled him from his room to the cell. In the vast space at the mouth of the cave the silhouette of trees made the expanse claustrophobic. Life was a matter of balance and the scales never settled near even.

“I hope you’re comfortable,” Abe said. He appeared out of the tree line. He held his hands over his head, the universal sign of submission and peace. His hands were dark in the night but something wasn’t right; a part of Abe was lacking, missing. His index finger was gone, the festering black pointer tinted with green. It either fell off or worse. James could imagine Abe taking a knife to his own finger, trying to cut out the physical embodiment of his own weakness, a symbol of Abe’s black heart.

The scent of boiled deer meat and fish continued to drift out of the cave. James’s stomach didn’t just rumble, it almost lurched forward after the phantom aroma, but the scent wouldn’t fill his stomach any more than wishes and dreams could. He had eaten a meal already that day, but his body didn’t care. Part of his body felt empty, still struggling from the days when he hadn’t eaten, hoarding each bite, the gristle, the sinew, any bone or string. What James had hidden was how he had eaten through the fish bones, had sucked out any lingering meat or nutrients before licking his fingers dry.

“I expected to see myself in ashes or some deadly fast hands the next time I saw you,” James said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.