[rr_double_rr]

Hey all,
This is the first time that I have ever posted anything I have written in a fully public venue. I look forward to any and all suggestions. I know that I am not the best writer, gramatically speaking, and probably need a bigger thesaurus. Let me know what you all think.

Thanks,
RR

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Resting on all fours he tries desperately to gather his breath. The sweat coursing down the middle of his back causes goosebumps on the rest of his flesh as it mixes with the cold night air. The air itself stings like a thousand blades on the insides of his lungs. It's a necessary, excruciating pain that he has to do to survive. In fact, his whole life has been an exercise in that principle. In order to survive he has had to endure pain and loss like few others around him.




"NO! This is not the time for self- pity. There will be time for that later, provided I can make it out of here alive," he tells himself as he fight to regain composure in the soft, cold, exposed earth.




The sound of leaves rustling behind him shake him out of his inner turmoil. He quickly and silently turns around to see how much time he has. It is a clear night, close to the end of fall. The world has not yet taken the full plunge into the death grip of winter. Small signs of life still protrude from the carpet of dead leaves on the ground. It has not rained in days, leaving the foliage fragile; his one lucky break tonight. If he can manage to stay more silent than the beast stalking him, he can guage its position, plan for its next attack, and, God willing not only survive, but defeat the fearsome animal.




He is alone in this fight. Thrust, once again, into the world by himself as it had happened so many times in his past. Each time he had to face foes that were stronger than the last. This is certainly no exception, and this fight has pushed him further than he thought possible. With the others he could use tactics, plans, and traps to his advantage to corner his enemy and eventually kill it. This time was totally different. Each time he tried a tactic, the beast adapted. Every plan he laid, the creature planned one that was better, and the creature had an uncanny sense of where traps were and how to avoid them.




All of this pushed him off balance. Everything he had learned was no longer relevant. He was used to not having everything work for him, having to adjust his tactics on the fly; but to have nothing work? For the first time in his life he honestly felt that this fight might be the last. He started to really consider the idea that he may not walk out of here. In that fleeting thought, while watching the silver clouds wisp over the full harvest moon, he found solace. There was a strange comfort in thinking that he may not survive this, and at the same time, something liberating. During the last minutes of regaining composure a warm thought washed over him. That all death is inevitable. All that lives must also die. We can try to fight it, we can try to rebel against it, but death comes to all of us. Whether it's a bullet from a gun, a fall from a cliff, a heart attack in your sleep, or old age; we all will die.




Rising to his feet he felt renewed. Not only because he was able to compose himself again, but because his epiphany was holding him like a warm blanket. He was ready to fight. He had nothing to lose anymore. His life would end here, or it would end somewhere else. He started walking further into the woods, the gears in his mind grinding to formulate a new strategy. Taking the mental map of the terrain that he had created over his 3 days in this place, he began to analyze it for ambush points, choke points, areas of necessity and to overlay that with plans of attack and retreat. He would need food and water, and the beast knew this, too. If he could keep the creature's attention focused on the field of battle and away from the areas where he could refuel himself, and regroup for another salvo then there was a chance that he could make it. It was a mandatory gamble. He couldn't last much longer without food, without water, and without at least a little sleep. He was at home making plans, and plans about plans. They were comfort. Even if reality didn't match the plan, at least there were contingencies that could be enacted; other avenues that could be utilized. Feeling readily relaxed for the first time in several days he rounded a large boulder heading up a hill to high ground.




That's when the attack came. The beast had also been realizing that it could play shadow games as well. The rustling leaves were intended as a distraction so it could move into a better position. A way to give false comfort to the prey that it had the upper hand on its predator. It was a tactic that this creature took great pleasure in using. It was a rush of adrenaline when he could watch his prey turn around listening for more steps that would never come, an even bigger rush as the prey flushed in the exact direction he wanted it to go. As his prey rounded the boulder, one the beast had chosen specifically for its size, its placement on the game trail to the peak of this ridge, and for its ability to diffuse sounds around the flat that he had just been observing.




There was no wind tonight and the creature's fur, black as a black hole absorbing all light from the immediate area, bristled at the thought of the attack to come. Saliva created a river from his powerful jaws down his chin, while muscular hands and feet tensed in anticipation. The sounds of his claws on the granite in front of him caused a rush of admonishment. How could he be so foolish as to possibly give away his position right before his plan came to fruition? Chiding himself, he listened intently to the sounds of the partially dead world and relished in finding that his prey was still coming right into the trap.




Hearing the twig snap, one that the beast had placed specifically to indicate when to spring the trap, he ferociously fell upon his prey. His body weight collapsed the much smaller frame of his prey, forcing him to the ground. The quarry twisted, trying to roll his attacker off him and regain the upper hand, but was no match for the battle hardened body of the beast. Claws tore at clothing, tattering them and exposing the prey to the cold of the night for the first time. Then claw met flesh.




He could feel the weight of the beast resisting anything he tried to do. He couldn't roll away from the attack. He couldn't raise a hand to defend himself. He could only sit there in horror as the attack commenced. He felt the claws ripping his clothes away, he felt them sink into his flesh, tearing muscle and skin from bone. That's when the window opened. In his eagerness to press the attack, the beast had left him an opening to move.




Remembering what he had discovered earlier, in that all death was certain, he put everything he had into this attack. He had no hope of stopping the attack directly, he had to stop it at the source. Reaching up with both hands he searched for the hungry mouth of the beast. He felt the snarling lips with the rivulets of saliva, running in anticipation of the meal to come, and the roughly cut, sharp blades of the beasts teeth and slammed his hands home. Grabbing purchase on the upper and lower jaws with each of his hands, he began to pull in separate directions, widening the predatory gap so close to him. He paid no attention to the razors digging deeper into his flesh and began a mantra in his head to calm himself from the pain and to steel himself with the resolve to do what he had to.




One of us is not walking away from this fight. I have already accepted my own inevitable death. I am at peace with dying, but will not go without a fight. This kill will not be easy, and you will lose much in claiming me, and if you fail, I will kill you.




Repeating that over and over in his mind, he was able to summon a strength that he didn't know existed. He was able to finally pull the beasts jaws open past their natural point. He heard the sickening crack of snapping bone, the tearing of ligament, muscle, and other connective tissues, and at long last the howl of the beast in surprise while his lower jaw flopped loosely from his head. The creature leapt off his prey in shock, trying to fix his jaw, but only succeeding in causing himself more pain and distraction. He never saw his prey, bleeding and shredded, hoisting the stick that had signaled his arrival in the kill zone. He never saw his prey focus all of his life, for that's what was at stake if he failed, into the rush he was commencing. All he felt was the piercing pain of that sharp implement as it penetrated the roof of his mouth. Pushing past soft flesh, blood running freely, cracking the base of his skull and finding home in the core of his brain stem. The world of the beast went as black as its fur had been.




Standing over his fallen predator, he finally processed just how close to death he had come. Tears flowed from his eyes, adrenaline coursed through his veins, and an uncontrollable shaking seized him as he came down from the high. It was only in the moment that he gave himself fully over to the fight, ignoring his own survival instinct, that he was able to succeed.




He closed his eyes, gathered his breath, and when he awoke was genuinely in shock. He was back in his home. In his own bed, in fact. He remembered how he had come to that fight, he was in bed, listening to his wife tell him from across the country on the phone, that their marriage was over and she had been cheating on him the whole time.




He had been battling rage the whole time.

[Telgar]

Very interesting concept. One sugestion, include the dialog in with the description and not so many spaces between your parpagraphs, It will help the pacing of the story flow a little better and make it easyer for the reader. Unless you did it on purpose to make the flow of the story be sharp, then great job.

[Stormrazor]

A very gripping tale!

Lots of questions that make the reader fill in the gaps, but that takes side saddle to the action and emotion you describe so well! It feels like it is part of something bigger. Which I'd love to see if you have already written it or plan to. I think your use of language and pacing was fine, though I did get a lost momentarily in which character the focus was on at one point. Nothing major though.

Thanks for posting, and I hope you share more of your work!

[rr_double_rr]

Yeah, that's the problem with my style, I use pronouns and very rarely name the characters. That way there is the option for the reader to envision themselves in the role. As far as the spacing goes, I had typed it in a word processor and copied in. I use double spacing between paragraphs, and the whole thing got exaggerated by the forum format. Thanks for the suggestions, I was at the end of a 13 hour shift at work on a help desk and too lazy to make sure that the format copied over properly.

Re- reading it tonight I noticed that there are a lot of spelling errors that I should have caught, and grammar was never my strong point in school. Both on the list of things that I need to improve on.

There are more stories, but nothing that really ties them together. I'm better at focusing my emotions on short things like this than drawing them out for longer tales.

I'll try to put some more of them together and see what shakes out. There is one in particular that I have always loved, I'll copy that in once I get back to the states.