Continued--

Continued—

Muffled shrieks of laughter were desperately being swallowed back just on the edge of the recently vacated woods, and they kept on full force all the way to the strategically placed getaway buggy—a very innocent atv parked behind an enormous brush pile. And then the Things lit it, (brush pile, not sidebyside) also very innocently, and drove speedily away. Their work there, in more respects than one, was done. And one (two, actually) cannot give up a good cover story!

                                                            ~*~

They wouldn’t even look at him. Either one of them. He had tried apologizing, he really had. But every time he got close, they vanished into thin air. Glanced at each other, mutually agreed on something by way of mental telepathy, and flounced off to parts unknown. And he’d had about all he could take of it, LET them be furious if that’s what they wanted! He’d have to tell Bryan that his mystery girl had a talent for carrying a grudge. Maybe that would cure the guy. He kicked furiously at a stick in his path.

With a snap unlike anything heard in those woods since the windstorm of ‘05, and a corresponding whir not unlike that of a released bowstring, his worldview flipped upside down.

There was a terrific tug at his left ankle, his ballcap went one way and he the other, one swooping down, whilst the second party went rapidly upwards. His hat, having settled neatly on top of a rosebush, was the one that went down. 

Its owner, writhing and having conniption fits whilst suspended in midair, was not so fortunate.

He was very much up, and he very much did not wish to be up, he could not for the life of him figure out why he WAS up, and he wanted down. 

He wanted done right this minute, yesterday already.

And the trailcamera, strategically placed a safe 20 feet away and triggered by all the sudden movement, calmly went on recording, exactly as if flying humans and hat-wearing rosebushes were nothing compared to SOME things it had seen.

It began picking up hints of a second intruder at this point, like a doe being drawn in by the careful calling of either a hunter, or a very eligible  young buck, which, obviously, was nothing new either.

The does did not generally come crashing in on only two feet, however, and that WAS something new. Neither was it customary for them to be carrying rifles, as the sun glinting off the barrel inescapably proved this one was. All in all, it was a very new spin on any story it had ever seen playing out before. 

The buck should be doing his best to impress the Falien of his dreams at this point, not thrashing fiercely about with heels pointed skywards. 

He was, however, and the sight of it did not impress the fair maiden much at all. It did knock the breath out of her, though, when he swung her way at a furious rate of speed and did not quite succeed in steering his rope swing around said fair maiden.

There was quite an alarming thud, a moment of speechlessness on her part, and breathlessness on his part because the air got quite knocked out of him in the kerfuffle.

The silence was broken by a hollered apology fading off into the distance as he swung back, and simultaneously, by extremely irritated howls echoing his way, courtesy of the knocked-over Un-Falien.

While he spent the next minute or so flying about the air, she proceeded to spend the same space of time equally split between shrieks of fury and of mirth mixed with complete disbelief.

The pendulum continued to screech for assistance, and after an unmercifully long 3 minutes of watching him do so (with unrestrained hysteria, one must admit) she finally decided to put him out of his very obvious misery. 

Up came the barrel, down went her head, the finger of her right hand moved towards the safety…. He blanched. Surely not. She—she wouldn’t. She COULDN’T be!!! 

He began to struggle violently as he realized what exactly it was that she was holding. 

She paused in exasperation.

“Hold STILL, you idiot!!!! You wanna get shot or somethin’???” 

Hearing it straight from her made him go weak with dread. Did he wanna get shot?? NO he didn’t wanna get shot, why did she wanna shoot him??? That  was the better question.

One burst of adrenaline later, he had swung himself right-side-up, and was doing his very best monkey impression up that rope.

But it wasn’t enough. His hands slipped, and in a split second he was right back where he started, and staring blankly at a pair of exasperated cowboy boots. Well anyway, the voice that went with them was exasperated. And forever after, when he told the story of How Daddy Got All Hung Up (and the youngsters tried their hand at sniffing out clues no one else had managed) the exasperated boots made a prominent appearance.

At the present moment, however, becoming the stuff of legends was the farthest thing from his mind. He was much too worried about the fact that he’d BE history to care much about the stories that followed his extinction!

And with that comforting thought, the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up. That, as every idiot north of 48 knew, was the small, cold, and heartless click of a trigger being pulled back. He braced himself for impact, and impact came. 

Only—This wasn’t what he expected dying to feel like.

It felt an awful lot like being dropped squarely on his head. It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt like a headache, and a broken nose, and a black eye, and this wasn’t right somehow. 

Weren’t there supposed to be angels? And gates? Where were the harps? 

At that moment, as he strained desperately to hear the harps that were not, and was just getting worked up into a terrified lather— he found a new hurt. This one was pointy, felt like. In his side, like a stitch. Only it kept kicking at him, which was a very strange thing for a stitch to do. Also it was very distracting, and he momentarily forgot the harps and opened the eyes he was pretty sure were both gonna be black. 

What he saw made him screw his eyes back shut. It was Annie Oakley. And she still had her rifle. And it was one of the Exasperated Boots that was poking at him. He stifled a groan.

The poking stopped. Loud rustling was happening close to his head. He squinched his eyes shut even tighter. Whatever she was gonna do to him, he didn’t wanna see it!!!

There was another nudge, but this one was strangely gentler. Careful even. He held his breath. If she’d use him for a target at a distance, there was no telling what she’d do at close range! He summoned up every game of Statues he had every played, and lay stiller than most rocks. 

There was another nudge. What was it with the nudges? If she was gonna get him, why didn’t she just get it over with??? Probably set that trap for him on purpose, too.

“Hey. Hey, buddy, you okay? That was quite a spill you took there.” 

Okay, that was no gun barrel. That was something else. That was….. Hey, that WAS Something Else!!!  It shocked his eyes open, and he found himself staring at Annie Oakley herself. Or not exactly herself, but sure her protege if it wasn’t.

Funny…. The eyes he saw staring back didn’t look all that murderous. Not even menacing. Not even scary. More like…. Was that—was she worried about him???  All the signs pointed to it. She looked like it, she sounded like it, even the nudges could potentially be interpreted as concern. But it was gonna take more than a good act to fool him, he had HEARD that shot!

Dazed all over again at the memory of it, he decided too much looking into bright blue eyes might possibly not be a good idea if he intended to stay on his guard. Eyes can be tricky things, especially when they come with curls.  

So he looked up at the sky instead. It was big, it was blue, but it did not have curls, and that made it safe.

Or not so safe. He had been hanging up there not one minute ago, and it certainly had not struck him as very safe then. And now it had a rope hanging in it, neatly silhouetted in the sunlight filtering through the branches he had so recently kept company. Only—it was a shorter rope now. A much shorter rope. In fact, it was a ridiculously short rope. How on earth had it gotten so short???

He looked at it, confused. Then he looked back at the blue eyes, forgetting they came with curls in his bewilderment.

Then it hit him, and he started spluttering incoherent things at them. Quite a lot of incoherent things.

“You—Why did you—How—You coulda killed me with a stunt like that!!!! Didn’t your mama ever tell you not to point guns at people swinging innocently in trees? You coulda killed me! You almost DID kill me!! How am I not dead? I was sure I was dead. But there were no harps, and there WAS you. And you still have that darn thing, and will you PLEASE get rid of it??? Did I mention you could’ve killed me???”

They widened a little, and he thought he saw a laugh lurking somewhere in their depths…. But he couldn’t be sure. 

She patted him on the head soothingly. 

“There, there.”

 (There was a chuckle in there somewhere, he was sure of it) 

“The only danger you were ever in, Tarzan, was of cracking your head open swinging into trees.”  

At this point she pulled away and glared at him. 

“And the next time you go innocently pleasure swinging in trees, do me a favour and learn to steer first!”

Now he was mad. What was more, he was furious, and spinning head or no, he was gonna give her a piece of his mind. She couldn’t be allowed to go on thinking she could just trap people and get away with it any ol’ time she pleased!

“Pleasure swinging? Is that what you call being snared out of a clear blue sky and suspended in midair for hours on end while dangerous people shoot at you???” 

The blue eyes lost their softened edge instantly. They turned stonily furious in one blink of the lashes that went with them.

The owner of them sat back on her heels with an angry huff. 

She scowled darkly at him, and he had the sudden feeling maybe that hadn’t been the wisest thing to say. After all, she did have the advantage here.

With an even darker grimace, which was quite a lot like the scowl that came before it but with greater levels of disgust in it, she went on. 

“Tell you what, buddy, next time you pull a stunt like this don’t scream like a little girl, and people won’t go ‘round rescuing you when you don’t wanna be rescued.”

She was well and truly wound up now, gearing up for what looked to be a Grade A storm.

The curls shook, and the eyes were snapping things not lawful to be uttered.

And he couldn’t help it. A chuckle worked its way loose. He tried to stop it, but it came bubbling out like water from an underground spring…. And it sprung. It hurt his head, but that couldn’t stop him either.

And in the meantime, somewhere between chuckling and outright side splitting laughter, he discovered that his nose very likely was not broken after all. This, in and of itself was a very comforting discovery to make, but to top it off, he began to have serious doubts that he’d have even one black eye, let alone two.

The headache still stuck around, but even that was eased considerably by the time the blue eyes opposite his lost their edges, and began snap with hilarity instead of fury.

The End. (Of What We See, Because The Road Bends Here)

Like so, vanishing from sight…