Ron felt darkness weave him into an inescapable web. He saw no light, felt nothing but silently heaved in and out; struggling to breathe. His ears rang despite the sound of emptiness around him. He couldn’t tell where he was or what was happening to him; all he knew was that each breath he drew in took more effort than the last one.  Until suddenly he couldn’t take any more. Now, in numbing panic, all he could hear was himself choking. His throat gurgled helplessly. His body wanted it to stop, so it kicked and thrashed around. His legs and arms violently flailed and trembled as his senses registered nothing but terror.

Ron didn’t know when it occurred to him but suddenly, he was aware that a stranger’s hands were gripping his neck tight and that there were two sharp eyebrows slanting down towards each other; between them, a violent crease; under them, irises that flickered dark-green.

An Irish forest-fire of a woman had been trying to strangle him to death in his sleep.

With the brick-red of her hair and her uninhibited fury, the only conclusion Ron could come to was that this was a murderous demon that rose from the depths of hell. Definitely tasked to destroy him.

On an unrelated side-note, she was kind of hot.

Ron tried to push her off him but she managed her body weight further so she could crush his suffering windpipe. She dug her right knee into his belly and seemed to be psychotically mumbling something he couldn’t quite make out. He was going to die and not even know why.

Each movement his body made got weaker and felt unquestionably futile. But just as his arms dropped to the ground for a second or two, he felt the scuffed edge of his canteen. He immediately grabbed it and struck it across her left temple. Her grip loosened for a just heart-beat but that was enough for Ron to launch her off him like a pinball canon. As soon as Ron heard the thud of her landing and her guttural cry that accompanied it, he scrambled backward towards the wall like some sort of asthmatic crab.

Reaching it, he stood up and kneaded his bruised neck; violently coughing as he did so. In no time, she was already charging at him.

“Oh, Lord, what the f**k?” he yelped in panic.

She swung her clenched fist; landing a sharp blow to his jaw and followed it with a body shot to the left and then the right of his ribs. Ron groaned with each impact.

God, did she have something against him having air in his lungs or what?

He coughed twice and felt his knees buckle but immediately lurched towards her; awkwardly clasping his arms around her waist. Struggling to use his bodyweight to tackle her to the ground. He brought her down and heard the wind get knocked out of her. He held her wrists trying to pin his aggressor but she kicked his belly. Ron, clenching his teeth through the pain continued his effort of holding her to the floor. Of course, his perseverance only brought him a disorienting pimp-style back-hand to the face. Purple cheekbones, great.

After that, she, almost easily, pried herself out his sad short-lived takedown. At the corner of the sun-lit room, where the attempted murder was taking place, laid her back-pack. She rushed to it while Ron leaped back up to, apparently, try the same thing again. But after five athletic lunge-like steps, she grabbed her bag, unzipped it in a flurry of motion and whipped out a silver six-shooter revolver.  

Ron froze in his tracks. In the silence, he could hear the chirping of song birds outside; it sounded like spring had just begun. The walls were softly suffused with the strong yellow sunlight which shyly peeked into the studio apartment that Ron was inoffensively squatting in.

She approached Ron with slow severe steps, while he made no movements. Her face, with its red sun-burnt cheeks, was percolating sweat as she scrunched up her nose in barely contained rage. Her hair, slightly frizzled at the roots, was tied up in a knot. She wore a green cotton plaid shirt. It was dull and faded with a thin layer of dirt while the sleeves were rolled up. She placed the magnum’s muzzle on his forehead, making his head tilt slightly backwards as she pressed it on his skin. It felt cold.

“Why, the shit, didn’t you just lead with the gun?” Ron burst out; overwhelmed by his predicament. “Honestly wouldn’t have tried this much if y’just led with the gun.

“Because it’s not as satisfying.” She drawled menacingly.

“What?”

“I wanted to  see the light in your eyes go out.”

Ron squinted at her, “Okay, Jesus, lady!”

She cocked the hammer back.

“If the answer isn’t ‘I’m a f**king psychopath’, could you, like, tell me why you’re doing this? Y’know before you do this.”

“Are you kidding me?” The woman immediately retorted. “You’re an APU dickhead- it’s very self-explanatory.”

Oh, shit, the jacket!

“No, wait- the jacket’s not mine!” Ron cried, “It’s not mine. I took- I stole it, okay? I swear!”

“Nice try. Creative but…”

“Nah, really, check my mark! I’m not an Alpha!” 

Ron started stripping off the clothes on his torso, getting off the jacket he was wearing but just as he got to the second layer of clothing,

“Hey, hey, hey!” She warned, pushing the gun further.

“No, really- God damn it, I’m not an Alpha!”

“Stop moving.” She growled

“But…“

“Stop moving!”, with that she hit Ron’s head with the butt of her gun.

After a split second of the impact, the sharp sensation violently registered to him.

“Ow, what in the f**k!” He looked her at, stunned, “What’s wrong with y…“

She hit him again.

“Stop…“

And again.

“Jesus, just stop it!”

He dodged the fourth swing and scurried away.

“What is happening?” he yelled.

“I’m trying to knock you out!” She yelled back across the room, as Ron managed to create a wrestler’s circle between them.

“Why?” Ron asked, feeling his right eyebrow swell up and bruise.

“So I can check your mark.” She said as if it was painfully obvious.

“But can’t I just show you?”

“You might be trying to pull something.”

“I’m not. Here.” Ron said and immediately yanked up the back of his shirt but-

BANG!

She, mostly unintentionally, pulled the trigger. Ron clutched the right side of his hip. He collapsed towards the wall behind him and slid down to the floor. He felt a cocktail of pain pounding into his body.

“You shot me!” Ron cried out.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Stay down,” she sternly shouted, although flustered herself. She cocked the gun’s hammer again, placed the muzzle on his head, and squatted to his eye-level. She pulled his collar and looked down his chest. There was no glossy blue circular mark as she had assumed.

“Oh, shit.” She murmured, her eyes widening, “You’re not Alpha.”

“Y’think?” Ron immediately yelled, “I mean, d’ya really think so?”

“Why, the f**k, were you wearing an APU jacket?” She spat out anxiously.

The said jacket was made of matt black leather. It had ‘APU’ printed in large and white at the back. On the front, at the left breast area, was a neatly sewn patch with the blue ‘Alpha Patrol Unit’ emblem on it. On his right shoulder, a nearly inconspicuous silver-streak was stitched onto it.

“For cover, y’crazy b...” Ron immediately stopped mid-sentence realizing she still had a gun.

He tried to focus on breathing which, that day in particular, seemed like a laborious task. His head was spinning. He felt dizzy and drowsy. But mostly drowsy. Dazed, he watched her go to her back pack, zip it up. Was she just leaving?

Talk about a really shitty start to a shitty day.

He didn’t seem to have the energy to keep his chin straight up so he brought it down. He could hear footsteps traveling away from earshot. Tired, he felt his eyes flutter as his body silently beckoned him to sleep. Sleep is good. Sleep is nice. Sleep is-

“Hey, dumbass! Stay awake.”

Ron felt a bony calloused hand smack his face.

----------------------------------------

“Y’, f’**king, digging for gold?’ Ron griped.

“Of course, not. That would imply you have value on the inside.” The woman murmured as she plied at Ron’s wound with a three-inch Swiss Army knife, not gently.

The stiff streets outside the four story apartment building, in which the wounded and the aggressor were bickering, kept a silence devoid of humans and machines.

In the airless afternoon, the block, divided by a narrow two-way road stretching West to East, seemed frozen in stasis. Yet, it eagerly informed you why it was abandoned by all things living, aside from those at room 404 at the fourth apartment building on the block.

On each building’s wall was the same poster.

The poster.

On it, in huge bold letters, read:

‘WARNING: Escapees and Fugitives will be shot on sight. Surrender and Submit to Authorities’

While below in fine print:

‘*non-commissioned non-alphas, undocumented non-alphas and detainment escapees’

Watermarked over the poster was the Alpha-Governate Emblem; a blue ten-pointed circle – the mark of an Alpha. The same mark the woman inaccurately expected Ron to have on the center of his chest but was only present on the front of the jacket Ron wore.

Each poster adherently clung to the wall since they were put up only a month back.

The roads were grey with the ash that seeped into it from when all hell broke loose two months ago. The sunshine that beamed onto the pavement seemed to be making the effort of erasing the dried up blood spilled on it. Now, only conspicuous brown splotches were peppered across the block.

“Hmm.” The woman hummed thoughtfully.

“What?” Ron pursued.

“I think it was a graze.”

“What?”

“Yeah, the bullet only grazed you. All this time I thought I was looking at a huge bullet hole but turns out it was just a fleshy cut…”

“You jammed your corkscrew, bottle opener thing inside me for a f**king cut?” Ron hissed.

She went to her backpack and pulled out her liquor canteen that was aged with scratches and dents. She ran the liquid in it through her palm and, without warning smacked it on Ron’s cut.

“F**k your mother!” Ron impulsively exclaimed, partly from the unbearable sting.

“Sit still or I won’t stitch you up.” She said as she wet a piece of thread between her tongue and her lip. She soon got to work; fusing the wound untidily from puncture to puncture. Ron could feel the nauseous sensation of his skin being tugged at each loop.

Assaulted by the excessive number of needle stabs, Ron groaned “Jesus, make it stop.”

Ron felt like a pincushion.

“Stop whining, y’shit.” She snapped at Ron.

After she completed the suture, she snipped the string with the tiny scissors from her Swiss Army Knife.

Looking at his wound, “Ugh!,” Ron said, disgusted, “It looks like I got a second asshole.”

“Well, it’s the- “

“That got hate-f**ked by Satan himself.”

“Look, it’s the- “

“and he gave it, like, the worst form of herpes.”

“It’s what you’re getting because it’s the best I could do.” She finally got out, rather unapologetically.

Ron, inspecting the wound, surmised, “Are you sure I needed stitches? It seems like a bandage would have done the trick.”

“No, yeah, you’re right,” She said from the bathroom as she rinsed her crimson-stained fingertips. “We totally didn’t need to do all of this.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” She continued; her sarcasm now apparent, “I just went through that whole process for the kicks.” After fastening the tap, she juddered her soaked hands as she came back out to the living room. “Because I’m into stitching up shit. Yeah, that’s what does it for me. I stitch up curtains, dead cats, dying hamsters- “

“Is that supposed to show me how crazy that sounds? Because you saying that out loud doesn’t make it sound that absurd. Actually, now that you mention it, it sounds very plausible.”

She glared at him.

“I mean; you woke me up trying to kill me!” Ron said, then reasoning further, “Who knows what you would have done with my cold corpse? I don’t know you and you don’t even know me.”

“Oh, my God, shut the f**k up.” The woman burst out not being able to stand the sound of his voice.

“You’re trying to kill me… or at least mutilate me. You’re trying to mutilate me!” Ron shouted accusingly, ignoring her humble request.

“I'm not!” She yelled, trying to one-up his volume; she hated being shouted at.

“Are too!” He bellowed, childishly, drowning out her voice.

“Wait, why am I having this conversation right now?” She said out loud to herself, “I’m leaving.”

She swiftly collected all the items into her backpack; her loaded revolver, her matchbox trinket that held the hooked needle, the roll of thread (both of which she used on Ron), her whiskey canteen, and a box of supposedly unused tampons she looted from the bathroom cabinet. She stormed out of the apartment, aggressively shutting the door with a loud bang as she went out.

“This f**ked up the morning I’m having.” Ron muttered.

He heard the door open and shut again. Ron sighed in exasperation. The woman, with widened eyes, had her back to the door.

“What, come to shoot me again and… “

“APU! Open up!” shouted a grizzly voice from outside.