Another short story. Except, this one's not finished. I don't know if I'll ever finish it. It was just turning out to be too long for the assignment. Anyways. It doesn't have a title right now. All I had for a title was the prompt for my Creative Writing class. Character is Fate.
I guess I should have seen this coming. Once someone gets into this life,
they never get out. Unfortunately for me, this is the life I was born into.
Constantly on the move, playing this sick, twisted game. It’s only a game when
you aren’t a part of it. From the inside, it’s a vicious cycle that consume
every part of every day. It never ends well, but it always ends. I guess if you
believe in heaven and hell, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it could end
well. I doubt that anyone who’s part of this life makes it to heaven. I think
we’ll just leave one hell for another. This is the life I was born into,
knowing that I’d die in the game I never wanted to play. This is the fate that
I am facing now.
We call ourselves the Shadows. We are all pieces in The
Game. Both names were given by outsiders who wanted desperately to be a part of
the lifestyle that I would give anything to leave. We are the Shadows because
we race all around the country, do various jobs, and leave—all in the dead of night.
The Game seems to have no real beginning and no hope for an end. There are
rumors that it started years ago when a multi-billionaire with no children and
a sick sense of humor was writing his will. He left an untold fortune to the
victors of the game. I don’t know if any of the stories are true, but people
believed them. My parents did and that’s why I’m here.
The jobs we are assigned are random and usually illegal.
We get a new task the evening after we finish the previous one. The rules are
simple: 1) Read your task and don’t share it with anyone outside your family; 2)
No one is allowed out during the day. Travelling and completing of tasks must
take place when the sun goes down; 3) finish your task exactly according to
your instructions. If any of the rules are broken, well, that’s when people can
finally leave the game, to whatever comes after this life. Also, since it’s
somewhat of a race, the last person to do what they’re assigned in the certain
period of time… well, things don’t end well for them. I don’t know what happens
to those people; I just know that we never see them again. Since we get our new
job the day after we finish the last, we never really get to rest. I don’t know
how we get the instructions. All I know is that they show up in little white
envelopes while we are sleeping.
We got our most recent
envelope two days ago. We had just finished a trek from Cincinnati, Ohio, to El
Centro, California, to pick up a package and deposit it in an unmarked cargo
van. Like any time we finish a certain task, I just hope that maybe our next
message will tell us to rest for a few days, or that we’ll wake up to nothing.
And just like always, that wasn’t the case. The instructions on this card were different
than any other we’ve had before. Usually, our jobs are laid our step-by-step,
exactly as we are to complete them. This time, there was only one simple line:
St.
Matthew’s Parish. Kalispell, MT. 4 a.m.3 days.
“But why doesn’t it tell
us what we’re supposed to do?” I asked my mom as we were leaving the cheap
motel. The Game pays for everything somehow, but they definitely don’t splurge.
“I don’t know, but it
doesn’t really matter. We’re going, and we’ll find out then.”
As I threw my duffle bag
into the car, sullen and confused. I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending
doom. I told myself that it’s just the nature of the game, and I tried not to
think about what could be waiting in Montana. I turned up my iPod and tried to
drown out the voices in my head shouting at me to run. I closed my eyes to the
city lights, and faded into dreams of what a normal life would have been like;
dreams of high school football, parties with friends, and a real life.
When I opened my eyes,
we were just pulling into the rest area of some Podunk town in Idaho. The sky
was turning blue with the dawn, so we had to stop for the day. I’ve always
wondered how the people who run the game know where we are and if we stopped
for the day. I can’t imagine that we are followed or spied on with tiny
cameras, but with how twisted the Game is, I don’t put anything past them. Since
I slept all through the night, I was looking at a day of being awake in the
back seat of a car, not able to even go out and walk around the town. My
parents both fell asleep quickly, though. Leaving me to my own silence and wondering.
After a few hours of sitting in silence, I couldn’t take
it anymore. Screw this stupid game. I
had to do something. Besides, this town was all but a ghost town. What could
possibly happen? I could walk around the town and back to the car before my
parents could possibly know I was gone. They were good at sleeping during the
day; they had been doing it since before I was born. I was sick of being afraid
that The Game was following us and knew our every move. I felt it was time to
challenge that. I figured that if they caught me, it just meant that I would
escape the game faster than expected. Maybe a little suicidal, but at that
point, I didn’t care. I was 17 and had been in The Game my whole life. I had no
friends to miss me, and my parents… well, I loved them, but let’s face it, and
they are the ones who dragged me into this lifestyle. They couldn’t possibly
care that much if this was the life they chose for me. My life wasn’t much of a
life, so its value was all but non-existent.
I was good at being quite. Everything we did for the
tasks required sneaking around. Silently I opened the door, slid out of the car,
and shut the door behind me. My parents didn’t even twitch. I was free. I
couldn’t believe that I actually did it; that I was brave enough—or maybe
stupid enough—to go through with it. All I knew was that I had an hour or two of
freedom. To be out on my own in broad daylight. It was exhilarating. I set off
across the rest area parking lot and into the tiny town. Although it was just a
little town in the middle of nowhere, this little place represented a whole new
world to me; if only for just a few hours.
This dusty little town might have looked like nothing
special, but to me, wandering around on my own for the first time, it was a
treasure chest. The sky blue water tower that I saw from the road stood by a
lazy little creek running through the middle of town. Main Street made a loop
around town, parallel to the Union Pacific railroad line. It crossed over the
creek twice: once by the water tower, and once by the football field. I could
almost smell the small-town spirit that would envelop that field for a
homecoming game. A field of cows watched me as I idled along past the
elementary school playground. How many memories had children made over the
years on those swings? How many best friends had been found on that jungle-gym?
It was beautiful. This little town, surrounded by sage
brush and a horizon of mountains, was so simple, but so much more than I had
ever had. It was so silent, compared to the cities we usually do jobs in. The
only noises were natural, happy. The whisper of Idaho wind through the trees, a
child’s giggle as she was pushed by her mom on the merry-go-round, and a dog
barking at a chattering squirrel. Simple noises, but the happiest ones I had
ever heard.
Soon I knew that I had to get back to the car, before my
parents woke up. Yanked from my blissful daze into the reality of impending
doom, I finished the loop around town; past a little café and the only gas
station for 40 miles any direction. I took one last forlorn look back at the
town. This little Podunk town would forever hold anything good in my memories. If
I ever could manage to break free from this game, this twisted way of life, I
think I would come back and live here. Maybe I would go to college first, or
maybe I would get hired on as a ranch hand.
I had entertained my desires for a real life long
enough. Shoulders hard and my face devoid of any emotion, I walked back to the
car. Inside my head, however, I kept the happiness that I had felt today. I
didn’t notice the black car parked a few spaces away from ours. Once in the
car, safely and quietly. I finally noticed it. It was a black sedan with pitch
black windows and small chrome accents on the doors. I couldn’t remember, but
it seemed as if this car was familiar. It was, more or less, a fairly
nondescript car, but I could have sworn that I had seen it before.
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