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| Current mood: |  exhausted |
| Current music: | Loreena McKennitt - The Highwayman (Yes, Again) |
Stand and Deliver! Your Money or Your Life!
Well, it's done.
All 23 pages of it.
I really only expected it to reach 9 or so. Funny how these things go.
Only thing is that I'm really not sure about the ending. Or to be more specific, I'm really not sure about the last three or four lines.
Still, I supose it's only 3 or 4 lines. If I don't like it, I can always change it. Not like I'd have to start again from scratch.
I'll send it to a few people and see what they think of it. I'm pretty sure that the rest of the story's solid enough. It's just the last little bit. But then, like I said, endings are easily changed.
Anyhoo, I said I'd post some of it up here when it was done, so here goes. . .
Stand and Deliver
"Stand and deliver!" the man said in a voice that filled her whole world.
She sat herself up at last, and could hear Scott groaning and rolling over onto his side in front of her. At last, she looked back up at the man, nothing more than a dark shape against the stars.
"I don't know what you mean . . ." she squeaked feebly.
The man narrowed his eyes.
"Just give me yer fockin' money. . ." and after a pause "Get out of the car."
Beth nodded and climbed over the back door, landing barefoot on the cold, hard mud. That's right, she thought absently, I took my shoes off at the party. I wonder where they are . . .
She wrapped her arms tightly about her waist and looked up at the highwayman, shivering. Beneath his three-pointed hat, waves of dark hair escaped and curled around the collar of his coat. Again, that sharp, acrid smell caught at the back of her throat. She shook her head slowly.
"Is this some kind of joke?" she asked, in a voice that sounded a lot weaker than she'd intended.
"Give me yer fockin' money," the man said again in a low voice as soft as velvet, fringed with the barest of accents. Irish maybe, Beth thought.
"I don't -"
"Jost . . . give me yer money," he said again, his voice falling to the starkest of threatening whispers. Beth looked up at him, caught in eyes as dark and furious and wild as hellfire, she realised her hands were shaking. All around, the thousands of tiny, coloured eyes stared out at her from the leafless forest. She could hear something shifting behind her, but she didn't look, she didn't want to know. Instead, she reached into her handbag and held out her purse, small and leather and filled with the few coins and notes she hadn't managed to drink tonight. The highwayman took it without looking, and slid it into the saddlebag of the vast, black creature that stamped its knife-sharp hooves just inches from Beth's bare, numb toes.
"And him," said the highwayman, nodding to the car behind her. Beth frowned for a moment before she realised that he meant Scott. Jesus yes, Scott, she'd forgotten all about him. She turned her head a little and looked over her shoulder, looking into the car. Scott wasn't in the front seat where she'd left him, bleeding and possibly dying. Instead, he was lain across the back bench of the dead old Cadillac, the air rifle his father kept stowed under the seats resting against the sharp, pink flank of the car, the barrel pointed at the highwayman beside her.
"Like hell I will," Scott hissed under his breath, small streams of blood trickling down his forehead and cheeks, wrought almost black in the moonlight.
Beth called out for him to stop, but there was a sudden, sharp crack like the snapping of rabbit's necks, and all around, the little coloured lights went out in the thicket. Beth turned fast to face the highwayman, expecting to see him thrown to the floor hurt and dying, instead, neither the horse nor the man had moved, apart from to rest his hand against his shoulder for an instant, after which he drew it away, and stared at the tiny, round drops of blood that stained his palm like dewfall. There was another sharp crack from Scott's air rifle behind her, this time the highwayman didn't even flinch. In an almost entrancingly fluid movement, he drew the other flintlock pistol from his belt, throwing it into the air and catching it in the other hand, before levelling it, what seemed to Beth to be straight at her, his dark eyes glinting like polished basalt beneath his hat and waves of unruly hair. The pistol went off like a firework with a noise that reverberated off the bare trees and rocks, there was a flash of bright orange-red, and a sudden, sharp pain in her shoulder. Beth dropped to her knees on the frozen-hard ground, and heard Scott cry out, gasp, and die behind her.
There was a hiss of fabric, and of raven's wings as the birds that had been staring from the roadside took to the sky. The highwayman dismounted, and took a few steps towards her, his boots clicking on the iron-clad earth as loudly as on marble. Beth could only stare at the floor and grasp at her shoulder, the blood and lead-shot running between her fingers as the highwayman passed her, and leaned over into the car, lifting Scott's wallet from his lifeless body before walking back towards his mount. For a moment, Beth thought that he would leave her here, that he'd ride back off into the mist and the shadows and she'd lie here and die, but after slipping the wallet into the saddlebag of the huge black creature that waited loyally and pawed its razor-hooves on the razor-earth, he returned to her and knelt before her.
He rested his fingers under her jaw-line, the leather of his gloves soft and warm in the cold of the night, and lifted her face until she was looking up at him. He smiled a little and exhaled so she could feel his breath on her skin, this close, his face looked kind, adoring, not like the face of a man that would shoot and kill her boyfriend.
"Yer'll be alright," he said softly with that same slight, lilting inflection to his words. "If I was going ta kill ya, I would have." He paused for a moment, still smiling that same, intimate smile, and brushed her hair away from her face with a leather-bound hand. "There's a house not far from here, if ya go there, they'll see ya alright."
The highwayman patted her lightly on her good shoulder and straightened up with a creak of protest from his leather boots. He turned, and swung himself effortlessly onto the back of the horse, which immediately began to teeter on its hooves and gnash at the bit as if it may bolt into the darkness at any moment. Beth slowly struggled to her feet, taking hold of the door of the Cadillac and pulling herself up. She looked down into the hollowed-out body of the car, and stared into Scott's wide, dead eyes. There were a dozen or so small, circular wounds scattering his face and neck, and blood dripped from his tattered skin and onto the floor of the car with a sullen tat-tat-tat, running from skin to floor with the memory of what it was like to flow in his veins. The blood, still warm and red and living, fleeing the body like rats flee a sinking ship.
She shook her head and turned away, looking up at the highwayman to find him looking down at her. She smiled faintly, and pulled Scott's jacket a little tighter against the cold.
"I don't even know your name," she whispered in a voice that could barely be heard over the sound of the impatient creature's hooves striking the ground.
The highwayman laughed a little, and turned his mount to face up the trail where he had emerged from the fog and the dark.
"McMills. Danny McMills."
"Beth," She muttered as the highwayman dug his heels into the steaming flaks of his horse and disappeared back up the road, the air resounding with the shriek of his mount, the ringing of his laughter, and the clatter of hooves upon the winter earth. |
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