Untitled

I figured I would post the story that I talked about on my Tumblr, the one that got me 2nd place in the contest. I'm not sure if I'm proud of the story, it's very ... alright to me, not that great, but hey. As much as I don't like it, it has given me a little motivation to really sit down and write something seriously again. If I can get 2nd place for a story I wrote in two hours, then who knows what I could come up if I put my all into it. I don't know. I try to find motivation in anything when I'm lacking it. Anyway, here's the story. It's untitled btw.

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Snow covered everything in sight save for what couldn’t be seen. Even then Valor could imagine that the sides of the underside of things were still glossed over with a powdery coat. He couldn’t imagine that anyone would be on the roads in weather like this, not if they had any concern for their safety. While he pondered this he placed two overnight bags beside the door and dawdled back to the room where his wife rested.

Carefully prodding open the door, he stepped in and peered at her sleeping. There were times when he had considered leaving her. Not spur-of-the-moment times after fights that had been in the making for weeks, but deeply contemplated times. With a glass of Scotch in one hand and his head in the other, he would think of the advantages. They had fallen in love too young, too quick. Life was to be lived! In the growing months she had become sicker and sicker however, and with each shot of Scotch his guilt built inside him like neatly stacked bricks. 

Throughout the great litany of tests she underwent she professed concern for her beauty. Not for her, but for him. She knew why he had picked her. Not that she minded; there was a dimension to him past the two. He always wondered how such opposites could ever attract. When they met at a coffee house she was reading a book, Emma by Jane Austen. She enlightened the stranger in the eye-catching suit about the lack of heroines in literature, a fact lost on him due to her striking beauty. As she spoke he studied her, how her eyes lit up while talking and the way her ears wiggled when she smiled. Captivated, he offered to buy her a drink, which she refused, an action unbeknownst to him that would chart him on a journey that now found him contemplating a change of scenery

Closing the door, he walked to the kitchen where a bottle was sitting out in the open, next to a glass. He sat at one of the chairs that he remembered picking out with Isabella.

“Everything in this damn house reminds me of her.”

Not a second after the words left his mouth a quiet, but clearly audible thud emanated from the window of the kitchen. Valor was certain that it was no one. They had been ordered to evacuate a week ago. If not for Isabella and her deteriorating health, he would have left with the others on the street. Contemplating how bad it would look if he left his ailing wife alone was enough to keep him cooped up for just awhile longer.

Just as he raised his glass to take another sip he heard another noise, this time from the side of the house. He walked over to the living area where it sounded like it was coming from, and peered through a tiny slit in the curtain. There was nothing there but falling snow and darkness, the two nearly indistinguishable. 

It was not nearly as indistinguishable as the sound of broken glass from the bathroom.

Feet stuck the ground, he quickly thought of what he should do. “Maybe it was just a tree branch,” he thought, although that didn’t seem to explain the last two sounds that he had heard. He knelt behind the couch and listened. There was nothing.

Just as he rose from the couch his ears picked up voices, coming from the front door.

“No one is here, all these people done left days ago. Let’s see what we can find,” a man was telling someone else. “Still, take that gun out. Shoot who you see.” 

Valor trembled with fear. This couldn’t be happening he thought. He wondered if he could make it out through the kitchen door before realizing that Isabella was in their room. 

“Valor?”

He could hear her call his name. The broken window must have awakened her. He immediately recognized the problem that this posed. She was sure to try to come out in the hallway and be the first thing that those guys outside saw.

His mind raced as he heard two shots go off, each connecting with the handle of the door. This was it. If he wanted to go, he had to go now.

“Honey, what was that? Valor?” Isabella asked, slightly louder.

Turning his head to her voice, he took a step to the kitchen. The front door trembled under what must have been the weight of a shoulder. He could see his wife’s face, the calmness on it that transformed to fear to match his. He stared at her, and mouthed the words “I’m sorry” just as the front door cracked.