Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I mean, I’ve been knocked out before. I go to sleep (almost) every night. People have surgery, right? They get put under anesthetic and then the next thing they know, poof, they wake up in a recovery room with their appendix or gallbladder taken out or new boobs or whatever they had done, and the world still went on around them for whatever amount of time they were under.
So what’s the difference? What’s the big deal? The only thing separating that from death is that you get to “wake up” again and go back to dealing with whatever crap you didn’t have to think about while you were asleep. So, really. What’s the big deal?
But this… if this is what death is? Yeah, it fucking sucks.
Because I’m not just gone. I’m alert. I see everything.
The shock on Alec’s face as he looks to where I’m lying on the ground.
The look of smug satisfaction on Zander’s macabre, reconstructed mug.
The frozen form of that kid Liam, not sure what to do.
The stiffened spine of Eliza, stunned by what’s just happened.
But mostly the horrified, terrified, heartbroken, desperate look Christine wears.
That’s not okay. It’s not okay that I have to see it. It’s not okay that I get to know how everyone else is taking it. The last thing I get to experience of this stupid, broken, ridiculous, fucked-up planet should not have to be this.
I know life’s unfair.
Death shouldn’t get to be as well.
And so—right at the moment I realize I’m not actually dead—it’s a mixed bag.
The bullet didn’t actually penetrate my eye and land inside my skull. I can tell because I now feel the searing pain just sort of next to the eye socket. Like maybe kinda between the eye and my temple. I definitely can’t see out of that eye. I can barely see out of the other one through the ribbons of blood that seem to be dripping down and obscuring everything, giving the universe a wet, red filter. In other words:
I kind of see the situation around me exactly the way it probably should be seen.
As mayhem.
And all of a sudden… I feel an immense peace wash over me.
Because I remember my dream. The one I think I had when I fell asleep on the train. After Alec, Christine, and I were together. When I did, in fact, fall asleep briefly. I dreamed of this. The castle. I dreamed it.
There was running. And yelling. And gunfire. And mayhem.
But there were also other things. A celebration. An island. Me talking with someone. A friend. I had an eyepatch.
I saw this.
Am I a fucking prophet?
Maybe, maybe not, but in this moment, it gives me peace. Because those other things I saw, those nice things—celebration, an island, me alive with an eyepatch—those things haven’t happened yet. And in order to make them happen, we still have to get through the yelling, and screaming, and gunfire.
And if that’s the price to pay for what else I think I saw coming? Some mayhem and a lost eye? It’s probably worth it.
I cough and roll over onto my other side. “Fuck!”
“Danny!” Christine shouts and I feel her hands on my body.
“What the fok are you doing, man?” Alec shouts.
“I gave everyone here a choice. No one seemed to be able to make it, so I am making it for you all. Fortune favors the bold, Alec,” says Zander.
I rub the base of my palm into my un-shot-at eye and wipe away enough blood to see Alec turn viciously on his dad.
“Jou fokken poes!” he shouts.
“Alec, that’s no way to talk to your dear old vader, my seun.”
“Don’t you fokken call me that! Don’t you ever fokken call me that! Jou fokken holnaaier poes!”
The vitriol coupled with the string of incomprehensible Afrikaans swear words spewing out of Alec makes him almost entirely unfamiliar. Alec doesn’t get emotional in this way. He doesn’t assault with venom and fury. He does it with calm, calculating dispassion. Which is what makes him scary. It’s what gives him his power.
What he’s got on display now makes him seem… human.
“Well, too bad you’re such a shitty fuckin’ shot, bro,” I call out, still wiping blood out of my vision and taking up the role of “guy who stays chill in the face of danger,” since that part is typically played by Alec and he doesn’t seem to have it in him to suit up for it just at the moment. “Do we still have the option to just walk outta here? Because I’m good to go with that shit now.”
The flippancy seems to piss Alexei Zander Gorny van den Berg off, because through my one-eyed squint, I see him clench his teeth and raise the rifle again.
“No!” Christine shouts, throwing her whole body across mine.
“No!” I shout almost at exactly the same time. Although my “no” is not directed at the guy with the gun. It’s at her. She can’t. She can’t put herself in harm’s way like this. I had a vision of the future. I saw it. And she has to just let it play out. She has to trust.