Friction (A to Z Challenge Day 6)

“Stop fighting me.”

“Stop following me.”

“Stop running.”

Despite what his mind was telling him and what his body wanted he did as he was told.  “Leave me alone.”

“I know what you’re feeling right now.”  She said.

“Then you would know to leave me alone.”

“And any normal person would.  But we both know that we’re far from normal.”

That brought the heat in him, the anger, that he was trying to keep at bay.  It finally boiled over.  Fire licked his palm and he shook his hands as if he could put it out.  The only thing that it did was create a fire ball the size of a globe.  It shot out in front of him and landed in the leaves a few feet in front of the woman who, in turn, made fire of her own and burned the area around his.

“Well, adding a forest fire to this just wouldn’t do.”  She stomped out a few stray embers but let the majority of it burn itself out.  She looked back up to find him still staring, frozen.  “You see?  I told you we had a lot to talk about.”

And now it's on, we're fighting
Fire with fire
The flames are burning, burning
Higher and higher

            Fire with Fire by The Letter Black

It's the flame in all of us
That makes the change in all of us
That takes the blame in all of us
And still keeps it alive

          Flame in All of Us by Thousand Foot Krutch

Entrapment (A to Z Challenge Day 5)

“You can stop pretending to be sleep now.”

My pulse quickened.  That voice, I knew that voice.  We all did even though we never saw his face.  I opened my eyes and slowly raised my head.  The only light in the room was a dim bulb above me.  I couldn't see anything else.

The disembodied voice laughed.  “I taught her well.”

He wasn't talking to me.  That meant that there was at least one other person in this room with us, maybe more.

“Why am I here?” My voice was hoarse.  How long has it been?  When I tried to move I could feel the tug of rope around my wrist.  I was sitting on a concrete floor with my hands behind my back.  This is not the usual situation that I would hear this voice.

“All in due time.”

“The last job, that was your fault wasn't it?”

I was only met with silence.  It was coming back.  The last job we pulled was rigged.  We didn't see it until it was too late.  No one else could have known that we were there or that we were coming.  Except the man whose voice this was.

“Why?  We work for you.  We take our orders from you.  Why would you sabotage us and yourself like this?”

“Well, who better to protect myself from than the people that I trained myself?  Anything you find comes straight to me and I learn how to better protect myself from those that I don’t have such a close hold on.  You have, however, gotten a bit too good.  Some of the things that you find could lead straight to me and 

ruin things.  Your work has been appreciated but you are now being dismissed.”

His casual tone and the intended message would have caused me to panic if I wasn't trained not to do so.  If he hadn't trained me.

“I've spent my life making myself invisible to everyone for a cause that I thought was admirable and it’s all some wild goose chase.  A waste of my time.”

A laser point of light appeared in the distance, somewhere on top of a distant wall blinking out a pattern that I recognized.  I laughed.

“Tell me,” he said.  “I’m curious as to what about this you are finding humorous so that I can join in on your last moments of joy.”

“You've underestimated us.”

I leapt up just a silenced bullet met the light bulb above my head.

When we move we camouflage ourselves

We stand in the shadows waiting
We live for this and nothing more
We are what You created

I can feel the storm, the winds have changed
Ooh, 'cause we're worlds apart but just the same
But we won't leave the way that we came

I know there's so much more ahead
I can barely believe that we're here
We won't surrender quietly, step up and watch it

--E for Extinction by TFK