The field around me was tall grass, with several varieties of wildflowers. I hesitated once or twice to check them for smell, but none seemed perfumed. Insects fluttered around but none landed on me. The air smelled clean and healthy and when I did a mental comparison to home after the pandemic settled in, the difference was stunning.

Finally after about and hour, I stopped and sat on a boulder ate an MRE, a Rubin without bread, I’d packed when assembling my go pack. It was salty, but nourishing and filling. A long drink from my canteen and I felt better than I thought I would before stopping.

I climbed onto the rock and looked around. Not far off I saw a small boat with oars that had been dragged onto the shore and had a rope tied to a sawn tree trunk.

So someone lives here, I thought and smiled. Jerk. It wasn’t long before I reached where the blue painted boat sat in the sandy soil. I climbed in and sat, wondering if I dared borrow it to cross the lake. I didn’t hear anyone approaching until a male voice said not unkindly, “I do hope you’re not planning on taking my boat today.”

I jerked back and stood, which caused the boat to rock and me to lose my balance. I tripped and stumbled, grabbed for the side of the boat, and then felt strong hands on my arms.

“Steady as you go, lad.”

I looked up half-smiling with an image in my mind of how ridiculous I must’ve looked and said, “No sir, although truthfully I did wonder on it.”

“Would make my life a bit difficult if you did.”

I finally stood on the earth next to him. “No, I would never take it without asking first and then not if you told me so.”

My companion stood a good four, or five inches taller then me, had thick red hair caught in a long braid. His eyes were pale blue, he needed a shave, had what could only be termed a barrel chest of taut muscles, wide shoulders and word faded jeans, a red and white checked shirt and bare feet.

“I’m Stanton,” I said as calmly as possible.

“William,” he replied and held out his massive hand.

“I’m trying to get to the mountains on the other side of the lake.”

He nodded thoughtfully and looked back the way I’d come into his land. “Used to be more like you, but something happened back there I suppose and now, well you’re the first in several weeks.”

I leaned my head to the side and, filled with a deep curiosity, asked, “Back there?”

He chuckled, deep in his chest. “The gateway.” His thumb jammed at the forest where I entered. “That’s my job here. I’m the greeter or the bouncer.”

“You’re confusing me.”

“Perhaps you may want me to think such, but there is nothing about you that would fit in here.” He waved at the valley that included the lake and forests beyond.”

“Where do they go from here?”

His bushy red eyebrows rose as his eyes widened. “Not my place to know only to keep those who would cause harm from passing beyond here.” He pointed to a white two-story house set back from the lake. “Come, we will have a beer and talk.”

The idea of a cold beer made my mouth water. So I followed, sat in a white wood rocker on the porch and accepted the bottle from him. It went down smooth and felt like life was renewed.

“Now lad, do tell me what brought you though my gateway.”

I was suddenly wary of explaining about the pandemic, so said, “I met a woman Attrea, she helped me find a portal to escape people who wanted me dead.”

He frowned. “You’re a criminal then?”

“No I did nothing wrong.” Except refuse to die to save dozens, I lectured myself. “Surely you’ve met others who tired of the life they lived there and desired, or badly needed a new start.”

“Some, about half I turned back. But I know of this woman Attrea. She still has her brown owl?”

“White with golden eyes,” I corrected.

He nodded and smiled. “Come.” He stood and walked around the house, entered a small outbuilding and held the door for me. Inside I saw a device like those used to detect metal weapons. “Pass though.” He pointed.

Boldly now, I walked into the green forest. The air was stifling hot and humid. Sweat soaked me before I’d walked fifty paces. I stopped and looked around, hoping to find any signs of life other than the moss.

The first red laser sliced through my backpack so my possessions dropped out into a pile behind me. I dove to the ground, heard a hissing, smelled burnt vegetation, rolled to fit myself behind a large downed tree.

I grabbed and stuffed my gear into the damage backpack and hugged it tightly to my chest.

Another hissing red laser strike, sliced off a piece of heel off my right boot. I ran for the portal opening. Behind me following like feasting starving creatures, red laser beams swept up and down.

My second dive and I was through back to where the owl now seemed to be impatiently waiting.

“Thanks for that,” I said as I sat and examined my boot. The entire heel was not gone, but walking would prove interesting.

I sat there for about thirty minutes, repaired and carefully repacked my gear, and then stood and waved for the owl to lead. It did and we went even farther into the forest, far enough that I began to wonder where I was thinking the forest I entered to escape could not be that large.

The owl was gone suddenly. I felt a sigh build in my chest and was ready to give up and return to my attempted escape to the ocean when it appeared out of the woods a hundred feet ahead.

A third portal, I walked to where the owl sat, then looked where it had appeared. Another arch but this one hewn from a large boulder and beyond it was paradise. I decided I’d need a half-day to reach the lake in the distance. Trees lined two side of the water and beyond was a mountain range, not jagged and miles high, but certainly too high for easy climbing.

Again I glanced at the owl. This time it did a slow blink as if it encouraged me to enter.

“Okay,” I said, although a bit scared after the last portal. “Tell Attrea that I will search for her until I find her or die in the attempt.” I knew I sounded dramatic, but really had no way of knowing if the owl understood, or if that was what Attrea desired from me. Maybe it was the owl’s way to get me out of her life. I didn’t know and didn’t really care, but saying it felt right. Occasionally that is all we have to press us forward. Leave everything behind, add recent events to the strings of beads that memories form, and bury them where you either find them if needed, or forget them to live the future without their burden.

Beyond the fifty feet of safety where I could return and exit, I saw nothing to alert me to a threat. No lasers, no projectile weapons, just peaceful serenity. When I looked behind me, the owl was gone. This then, I thought and headed for the lake.

I turned from the window and found her standing so close I brushed against her as I turned. Carefully I placed my hands on her shoulders and drew her to me. As I bent to kiss her, I heard wings fluttering, feathers spreading. The kiss was brief, her lips softer and warmer then I imagined. The contact exploded in my chest, made me feel weak with the hunger of desire.

Then I felt pressure on my uninjured shoulder and looked to see the owl, its talons draped causally so their tips touched the muscles below.

“I would not harm her,” I told the amazing creature. “Not ever.”

It leaned and tilted its head so our eyes were on the same level mesmerizing. I felt invaded and also invited.

“Not ever,” I repeated in a near silent whisper.

The owl blinked. In its eyes I saw a mountainous terrain with deep valleys, blue cloudless skies lush tree filled landscape dotted with meadows and lakes throughout the floor of the valleys. At the top of view I had, I saw a single pointed ledge of flat stone, which extended far into open space from the horizontal peak of a mountain like a finger pointing out something impossible to see clearly.

Then the owl left with the same fluttering of feathers after it imprinted in my mind the vision it gave me in a microsecond. I had not moved my hands from her shoulders and she had not pulled away. Her eyes locked with mine drawing me emotionally closer, so close I thought I could feel her heartbeat through the distance between us.

I knew I was beginning a journey of the heart, and struggling against it felt more like I plundered a priceless treasure. This time when our lips met, the contact was immersion, me into her, her into me, and I was lost to her.

An hour later, sweat drying on us both, her head on my chest, eyes closed, I cried for what I’d lost, for what I’d done and not. My hand sought the warmth of her flesh, strengthening me, stabilizing my confusion and I knew something else then. I would need to find her somewhere else, perhaps even some when else. The green cabin’s purpose brought me to her, yet she was correct when she said I sought her.

On the third night while the moon was still dominate, I carefully slid out of bed, dressed, ignoring the pain, took my boots and pack and left the cabin through the rear door.

This time the path was dirt edges lined with white stones that captured the moon’s illumination and lit the path as it wound into the forest. I pulled on my boots and followed its invitation and after several minutes saw that the white owl waited ahead. As I reached it, the owl spread it wings and lead me deeper into the dense woods.

We passed the portal with the arch and went beyond until we reached what I knew must be a second portal. The owl flew into it and returned letting me know it was safe for me to do the same if needed.

Stopping to look, I surveyed a forest where every living thing was covered with a thick dense green moss. Nothing but the moss seemed alive. I glanced back at the owl. It stared impassively.

Darkness is often not the comfort we seek. When children it can be a refuge, a time that wraps around us and greets us when we drift into sleep. As adults darkness can be a double-edged sword comfort danger, separate or melded into one. Closing your eyes greeting sleep that feels almost greedy, like it will absorb the pain life uses to slice you open revealing places inside never meant for exposure. Or lets you slip into it as you recall happiness from recent events you never understand as succinctly until that moment.

For me grief is a brick by brick wall that instead of protecting me hollows me out with waves of sorrow coming unexpectedly. And it is always while I sleep that the worst of the anguish I hold is a knife throwers paradise with me as the target. I wake abruptly, the horror of memory demanding action. Then I recall that there is nothing that can be done to undo the past, words, deeds, and even things left undone unsaid.

I awoke then with a sensation of death standing directly over me looking down into my terrified eyes revealing the emptiness that only death can fill. Its breath smelled not of things dead and rotting, but sweet like I was standing in the center of a huge rose, garden.

“Sh,” death said. “It is not your time, but I visit to press my thumb against your beating heart so you always remember me.”

The pain was sharp and severe. Heart attack, I thought, but it faded almost instantly. I was standing face pressed against the glass of a window, didn’t recognize anything outside in the dancing sparkling moonlight.

Then I felt a touch of tenderness and heard a quiet warm feminine voice. “You are safe here. Sometimes the worst of our memories declare us unfit to continue and scream in voices too frightening to be heard while we sleep. You will heal physically, but few of us heal on the inside where we need healing the most. When you are fit, I will show you more places that can lead you to lands unlike any in you best dreams and memories.”

Well it won’t be a long pause, but I need to write what should’ve been included in the introduction. This story is a first draft, rough in places but to me the important step in writing any fiction story is to write until it is finished. Then and only then go back and do edits and rewrite everything.

Today I stopped and did some editing and rewriting. I shouldn’t have but did. The story is a bit tighter and neater, but when I finish all of it, it will be tighter still.

It’s a dilemma for me in the way temptation can be, and I stumble over temptation. So for now I will be writing and posting as I go, errors be damned, which was my intention when I started.

Luckily no one followed, or not soon enough to catch me. The electro plowed down the highway at over a hundred miles per hour. When I reached the dirt road, I jammed on the brakes, but let off enough to avoid skidding. Turning to look behind me reminded me of the chunk shot out of my shoulder, but let me see no one followed.

Quickly, I went along the dirt roadway I used previously, stopping several times to get out and use down tree limbs to sweep away my tracks, and then to block passage. After the third time of that, exhaustion began to affect me. I drove deeper into the forest, and parked, disabled the vehicle, grabbed my pack and dragging it behind me, limped my way back to the green cabin.

I felt a massive sense or relief when I saw Attrea and her owl sitting on the small front porch. I released my pack in the dirt ten feet from her and slowly sank to the ground. Weak from blood loss, I had no control over my movements.

She was next to me, holding my head with one hand, examining my wounds with the fingers of the other. “These must be cleaned and bandaged immediately.”

I nodded waiting for her condemnation, a lecture about what I’d done, but she, said nothing about either.

Inside the cabin she had me remove my shirt, which nearly caused me to scream in agony, then she applied an unguent that numbed the pain.

“I did not feel a bullet inside you. From the way it looks it went through. But we do not know if it damaged anything internal. I have no way to treat an injury of the nature.” She pinched the entrance wound closed. I winced but did not cry out. “I will sew these closed and we must wait and see how you are in a day or two.”

I didn’t pass out, but it was close. She poked around inside, as if examining me there and finally washed both wounds and sewed them closed. Finally, she tended my hand and fingers, bandaging every wound separately.

When she was finished, she took my shirt and put it into a washbasin, which filled with hot water without her touching anything.

“Where are you from?” I asked not expecting an answer, thinking after what I did perhaps I didn’t deserve one.

“When I believe you are ready, I will tell you everything. For now you only need to know that my purpose is to assist your escape. After your return, I suspect you now know that escape is mandatory or death will arrive with blunt certainty.”

I could only nod. “I had to know after what I saw from the light on your hand. I had to know if that was real and if I was to blame.”

She placed a hand on my uninjured shoulder. “You should not blame yourself. They made their choices and you made yours. If I’d been where you were I know I’d have fled too.”

I drew in a deep sigh like breath and said, “They wouldn’t use my antibodies to cure Blythe. She was my companion, we were bound and planned a life together.” I glanced at her and saw a question in her eyes. So I continued. “At first they said she wasn’t a compatible match. I believed them until I overheard the woman running the treatment project. She told whoever she spoke to that if they treated and cured Blythe I might leave with her and not return to help others.”

The weakness I felt earlier from blood loss stung me. I leaned my head back and finished. “I left them in part to punish them for killing her, but now I know I was driven by rage more than self-preservation.”

“Come,” she said and helped me stand. She guided me to a small bedroom that I knew was hers. It looked feminine, neatly organized and smelled like her too. She led me to the bed, helped me sit, removed my boots and nodded to indicate I should lay back and rest. I did and fell asleep with her holding my hand in hers.

I waited until after midnight, and as quietly as possible left her cabin, sat on the front porch and pulled on my boots. Moonlight helped the first hours I navigated the forest. By the time I reached my dark blue electro, the sun began to rise. After reinstalling the chips and fuses I removed and took with me when I left, the electro started and I drove cautiously to the highway.

The first thing I discovered was that the police roadblock was gone. I went as far as the bridge, and stopped abruptly. Two patrol cars were in the river, nose down windows under the fast running water. I didn’t investigate but reversed, turned around and drove into the town where I’d lived for more than fifteen years.

The streets appeared deserted. Windows in stores and houses like unblinking eyes of creatures haunted by disaster. I drove as far as the hospital and there discover the rotting stacks of bodies. I parked across the parking lot and climbed out, stood on the hot pavement.

There was little smell, but the sight fired bile up to fill my mouth. I couldn’t begin to describe the horror. I swallowed hard, and leaned over slightly fighting the urge to vomit, which was when I heard a whistling sound burrow past my left ear. Then the boom of a fired weapon before a second round clipped my left shoulder. Blood sprayed in front of me, my blood. The pain was delayed by the shock of being shot.

“Shit,” I said quietly as if afraid the shooter might hear I survived. The third shot blew out the windshield and I knew I had seconds to live. I dropped to the ground and crawled toward the electro. A bullet bit into my side. Now lying face up on the ground, I heard my own gasping as I fought the fear and pain.

There wasn’t a fifth shot. Yet, I thought and rolled over, again gasping as quietly as possible. The electro was close enough to touch, but I could not stand. After what felt like an hour, I had one hand on the doorjamb, pulled my way up and into the vehicle. When I was in the seat behind the control wheel, I used both hands to get my legs where I needed them, got my right foot on the pedal and jammed the accelerator to the floor. As I did a fifth round pinged the control wheel, sending shards of metal and plastic into my hand, nearly severing a finger.

Then the electro actually lifted as the four wheels dug in and threw me against the seatback. As I flew past the sign at the entrance to town, that normally thanked visitors for visiting, I saw it had been replaced with a bounty sign: fifty thousands credit for the death of Stanton Wilson. Proof is required.