Three Word Wednesday: fallow, limit, vocal
Blue jean clad legs, coated with mud at the bottom. Clods clung to shoes that were never meant to plod across fallow farmland. His hair was plastered to his skull and his soggy coat clung to him, making movement difficult. His chest hurt as he panted, stumbling occasionally, wanting to rest, needing to rest, but knowing he couldn’t stop.
The welcoming cover of the trees just ahead, relief in sight. He would have to keep going but he would feel better when he wasn’t out in the open. He wished he hadn’t been so vocal, wouldn’t have been if he could have seen where it would lead. It lead here, to this stupid farm, in this Godforsaken backwater hole. He knew no one and no one knew he was here. No one that could help.
If he could just make it through the night he could head for the city limits in the morning. It would be a long walk but if he didn’t die from pneumonia from sleeping in the rain tonight, he would chance it. He had no choice. They knew what he had done and they couldn’t let him get away with it. He had the key hidden in Shari’s apartment. If the stupid cow didn’t find it and throw it away he might actually survive this debacle.
He never heard the bullet. One minute he was slogging through the mud. The next he was wondering if he had tripped. Maybe Shari could get them plane tickets to Florida. He wanted to go somewhere warm.
I like these realized, anonymous folks who people your fictive worlds, Ms Dee. Nameless, anonymous, but somehow very familiar. The lovely details “coat” them, cling to them, fill them inside our heads: we walk with them through the fields. This lone world, and then “Shari…the stupid cow” brings the rest of the world into our trance. This cousins Cormac’s Border Trilogy: you know that world, too: you’ve done your own night walking.
You do an awesome job of enticing us with just a paragraph, Dee! I could feel the cold dampness of this man walking, and his need to get away. And I loved the ending!! Now, of course, I’d like to know the rest of the story. 🙂
I really dig this one, too. I like the details doled out in setting it up. I tripped up on stupid cow, though. I had farmland in my head and I finally put cow with Shari. Haha, now you know how slow-mo some of your readers are! Anyway, I loved the long wind-up to the pow! and quick slide to lights out.