Short Story Fiction Contest May 2014 | Page 19

my bravery fell. I knew my own powerlessness. And then I knew darkness.

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I slipped in and out of consciousness many times. I was vaguely aware of a measured bumping beneath me, a car. Pain spiked throughout my body with every jolt but it was never enough to keep me awake for long. After a while I became aware of a heavy weight against my back, and I turned to find a ruined face with closed eyes. I slept to a corpse and woke to eyes filled with an existential terror. I caught fragments of the face with every awakening. Once the crushed nose, bigger than any nose had a right to be. Once the grisly left eye, a solid wall of red with only the barest hint of a pupil. The last time he had about-faced, leaving me staring at a mass of black curls streaked with grey, matted to a massive cut on the back of his head. White peeked out and I became violently sick before succumbing to the night once again.

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I came to to find a broad face etched with concern inches from mine. Omar, looking tired and dusty but none the worse for wear. He gave me some space and I sat up, fighting the wave of nausea that washed over me. I was in the houseboat, sitting on a worn blanket. Sabah stood by Omar with puffy eyes. Craning my neck I could make out Youssef on the balcony by an overflowing ashtray. He always chain-smoked under pressure. It’d be the death of him. I massaged my limbs gingerly, wincing when I felt something sting. Ismail stood a little further back than the rest, his eyes wary and searching. They zeroed in on a spot behind my left shoulder, and I turned to follow the gaze. The same crushed nose. The same ruined eye, shut now. A heap on my blanket’s twin. The “spy”.

I coughed and the lance of fire pierced my side again. I might