Storymania - The Pursuit by J L Watts

The Pursuit
J L Watts

Lace Peterson’s legs strained as he leapt further into the blizzard. Snow constantly pelted his face as if cheekily thrown by school children. Each print on the white canvas was a more than gentle reminder that he was being steadily pursued. The man pursuing him was known only as the ‘piano man’, apparently a reference to his penchant for black and white clothes. He was a highly trained assassin capable of crimes that knew no bounds. A family legacy was to kill and Lace had heard the trigger happy style and blood cravings had become something of an annual tradition for the ‘piano mans’ birthday, an event and spectacle lost on him now.
Irony drew Lace’s face into a slight sneer as he realised his thumb was bleeding. The ground resembled a cake in the midst of preparation as it dribbled down to the snow around his feet. Lace licked it clean as if he was an injured tiger attempting to improve the state of his wounds. The ‘piano man’ wanted a lot more than the blood off of Lace’s thumb. His victims weren’t chosen randomly just for some egotistical advantage over his business competitors to show that he was a man not to be messed with. They were selectively chosen as the ‘lucky one’s’ by an arduous process that involved blood type, personality, and psychological leverage. In short he loved the chase of people with select character traits, and somehow Lace had fit the bill perfectly. Lace was lucky to know all this. Most didn’t. But his father had been killed in mysterious circumstances and Lace through contacts had found the ‘piano man’ to be highly likely as the answer to his father’s death. Lace’s father had died three years ago and Lace had tried to wipe all trace of it out of his mind, ploughing himself into his work as a barrier for his hurt. He wouldn’t entertain thoughts of his past and as quickly as his father had entered his head he departed, a heavy door remaining closed.

As an undercover operative Lace was used to using blending in with the foliage and circumstance had found him using the bushes and various conditions of the winter wilderness to become one with the scenery, attempting to create the difficult impression he hadn’t gone a particular way by leaving tracks.
Increasingly though he began no to care. This was the third night of the pursuit. Out in the open, he wondered why he was still running and so slowed his progressive lunches into more manageable steps. His brow furrowed and an involuntarily shiver was provoked by the flakes of snow he melted as result on his forehead. He wanted to face his enemy head on. He wanted revenge for the death of his father, for the death of countless others. Although he had killed people before as a preresiquite for the nature of his work, he had always remained unattached from his actions. The need for it had always been there. But the urge he got to destroy this monster now was un nerving. Lace thought about what he would do to him if given half a chance.

He knew that the ‘piano man’ never worked alone, that his team of contacts would be in close formation to their leader. Otherwise Lace figured he wouldn’t be using the trees and dark as protection and cover in a manner he found slightly pathetic. He would be facing his adversary head on, fearless and impendent on destroying him rather than facing destruction himself. He saw himself as a fighter, not as someone that cowered in the face of danger or need for physical battle.
His body hunched over as he began to hate his compromising position more and more.

Lace’s pale skin basked in the night as through the darkness he hoped to be frustrating and wearing down his opponent. He looked forward the day he would stop running and could conduct a little chase of his own. He longed to look this lunatic in the eye, hoping to register fear on his face before he killed him as justice for this embarrassing witch hunt. Lace’s dark thoughts were interrupted by his long black coat beginning to slip from his belt where he had tied it. It was now sweeping the snow behind him, a phantom broom tidying up behind him. He had felt foolish tucking it in his trousers anyway, and so let it flow at his ankles. The chase had gone beyond the stage of tucked in battle prepared coats combined with subtle hiding places and patience, lurking in the shadows before he could hear them move away into a different direction. It now mattered less, as although he realised it improbably practical that he would survive, began to instinctively relish an encounter with the ‘piano man’ killer.
Lace now began to move slower, the landscape that had before been seemingly trying to keep up in a star lit blur now grinding to a halt. He passed the odd tree and more commonly, clearings. He still felt exposed in the opening, bare and naked to the world yet found solace in the fact that after he had successfully thwarted his pursuer, he could continue with his work, and be of service to the world again.
Leaves sprinkled with melting ice dripped on to his boots as the area became more wooded and dark with the moon blocked heavily by the high rising claws of tree branches. Lace slowed his pace further, remembering that anyone or anything could hide and use the objects of their surroundings to their potential if they knew how to do so. He glided through the trees like a well researched animal. Although now he thoroughly expected and even anticipated confrontation he hoped to drag it out longer, as to increase his annoyance and frustration further to the point where it could help him overcome the odds when the time came.

He began to picture his next meal, realising it had been a while since he had last fed. He licked his lips and tried not to think of how his thirst was getting a lot stronger. He hadn’t eaten and drunk for a while and the lack of both gnawed away at him. Berries and other wood type fruits just didn’t really satisfy his hunger or quench his thirst like the last good meal he had had.

Food was still on his mind when he suddenly felt his body fall to the ground and the weight of his body rise. He howled in fear and desperation as the realisation his ankle had suddenly became snagged in something dawned. Quickly a body tight net wrapped itself all around him. He hadn’t envisaged they would use such primitive methods to capture him and he almost took it as a personal insult. Lace used his hands to thrash wildly out of the compromising position he now found himself in and began to hear faint footfalls getting closer in the snow. He saw a puff of breath mist as he desperately crawled around attempting to use his teeth to bite through the material which restricted him, holding him in preparation for certain doom. He kicked and groaned, punched and pulled - an amplification of a thousand child fights, in a desperate attempt to escape. The footfalls now landed a lot closer to him, and a broad shouldered figure now stood before him brandishing an oddly shaped gun. Lace knew what that would do, and began to cover his body as if certain areas of his skin could not be impenetrable.

As the steps of the man grew closer into view Lace looked up and straight into the eyes of the man he would have once called his father. He looked madly, circling his father’s eyes for a sign of emotion, of compassion, remembrance or even love. Instead the face that looked like his own reflected the gun he now pointed at his son. Cold, distant, purposeful. Lace remembered his father. The door to his past came crashing open. Images more than anything flicked through his brain like the seconds of a clock, changing, progressing. He remembered how his father ruffled his hair; how he hit his mother once but reassured Lace profusely they were acting out a play. Now this same man that had the fierce reputation of a ruthless businessman with bizarre and half hidden extra curricular needs was parting his lips in apparent pity at his one and only son. Lace let his knees drop to the surface. They sunk into the snow like countless other victims of his father. He always brought them out here. Out into the snow, a white carpet of nothingness that symbolised in a sick and twisted mind purity and calm. Lace drew his eyes to the surface of the snow, his face contorting suddenly. Won’t give up with out a fight he thought, letting his thirst take over. He pulled back his head and pounced, jagged teeth nestling on either side of his open mouth curling toward the older man’s chin. He craved blood and lurched at his father, arms outstretched manically grasping at the throat that gulped and bobbed as it fired two, three, four rounds into his chest. Lace gasped and eyes froze in a picture capture moment,and he knew what was coming. His hollow heart had been penetrated. The gun hadn’t fire bullets, it wasn’t shaped like that. Four automatically triggered wooden stakes protracted from the chest of the creature that used to be Adrian Peterson’s son. Lace thumped onto his back and reflecting the sky above, his wild eyes slowly began to cover over like veiled clouds.

Adrian had known for a long time his son saw his father something he wasn’t, an illusion of his son’s beat up mind,as a tortured soul of the underworld. He knew that Lace had blamed his father for his dark and pained existence of the last three years and had seen him self as some sort of martyr, sending a swathe of people to their graves as a release, that what he did was helping humanity somehow. He wondered if his son had registered him as being his father in the last desperate and frenzied moments of his existence. It had taken three days, and he began to feel awash with relief that it was over with. He knew he hadn’t killed his son, not really, his core was already dead. What he had become was something else, his son’s body and mind minus his compassion and soul. Adrian lent down next to his son, pressing a single palm to his chest. He knew the heart had stopped beating a long time ago but the contact was comforting as he remembered his son before he had turned. he moved his hand away as the body shrivelled up and became dust, eventually disintegrating. The pale glow of the moon lit his tears as he whispered a message to be preserved in the trees. ‘Now you are free’ he whispered as he placed a small gold plated cross next to his dead son's ashes, and wiping away countless free flowing memories, began to walk away into the lonely night.