Hard Impacts

[Courtography]

(Dan Liu continued from Now, Wait, Wait, Wait for Me, Please Hang Around. I'll See You When I Fall Asleep

Dan hadn’t seen or talked to anyone since Roy had left and there was only one person within 100 miles that he would even want to see. And talking wouldn’t be one of the options if he saw Johnny again.

He wanted to see Roy again too, but he had fucking died. He didn’t even blame Irene for it. If Johnny hadn’t acted like a jackass Roy probably wouldn’t have run into her again.

Dan was ashamed that he had cried when he had found out. It felt weak and cowardly, and he had wanted to just feel angry at Johnny and the terrorists, but in those early hours of the morning he just felt like something inside of him was broken.

The anger at Johnny only crept back as the morning turned to afternoon while he traveled around the portion of their prison that he was currently allowed inside. Hours later his jaw ached from having clenched it so tight.

It was late afternoon now and the sun was starting its lazy decline from the top of the sky. He didn’t like that. He felt tiny and alone with the sun looking the same way here as it did back home. Of course, the universe didn’t change based on the fate of American teenagers, but it felt like it should.

His current surroundings were beautiful, even if he would never have used that word to describe it to someone else. There were flowers everywhere, and besides seeing the occasional bee, the scene should have been enough to take his mind off death, revenge, and the faint smell of smoke.

One bee buzzed around a yellow flower by his foot. His upper lip twitched nervously. He had never been stung before. Could he be allergic? That would be a cruel twist of fate, to get snatched away from home by a bunch of psychos only to die from a stupid little bee. It would be so easy for that to happen with how much of his skin was exposed.

Had he have known to plan for this, he would never have worn shorts.

He walked a little more. The plants tickling and itching at his shins were annoying. He wasn’t sure why he was here. Part of him just wanted to hunker down in a building and wait, but he’d just be waiting for a bullet to hit him. He had heard the gunfire over the past week. He knew that people were using what they had. Just not on him. He wasn’t sure why. It was probably just luck.

Dan leaned over and tore off part of a flower with a thick stem. He self-consciously looked over his shoulder. No one was around. The flowering part was dark purple with large petals. He thought his mom would probably have liked it. The thick stem hadn’t taken that much effort to break off. How much more effort would it take for Johnny’s neck to break the same way?

He felt intensely angry again. His hand squeezed tight around the flower, crushing it. He felt a prick of pain. He hadn’t seen the thorns. He dropped the flower, but that thorn was stuck in his palm. He gritted his teeth as he saw a thin line of red flowing down his dirty skin. He grimaced as his other hand slid over it, felt the skin where the small thorn had slid underneath.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he ripped that thin layer of skin open to rip out the thorn. He didn’t like the red that now added to the darkness of dirt and the bruising from earlier acts of violence.

If someone saw that blood would they assume he had killed someone?

He didn’t have time to ponder that though, because as he started walking again his feet got tangled in the brush, and he fell and hit his head on a rock.

B04: DAN LIU: DECEASED