Zach Brimstone- Afterlife pt 4
All the T's and C's apply
Damien's voice spoke, "Where's Zach?" No one around him spoke; they all just looked down at the ground. Damien did not believe it. "Come on guys, he must be fine. He saved my life and he would keep on fighting to live."
His dad took a seat on the bed and just hugged his son. He whispered in his ear," He did not make it. He killed Logan with one of his knives but Logan got one shot off as well. It went straight through his heart. He died instantly but he was holding your hand when Elliot and Jackie found the both of you. They called 911 and Elliot quickly noticed that you still had some life left in you. Your breathing was still very shallow at the time but Elliot knew some first aid skills and was able to stop the bleeding till the EMT's came. They saved you as well as Zach did by protecting you."
Damien tried to sit up but then he felt the wound in his chest. His breathing became sharp and wheezing. He lay back down and the Doctor finally showed up. He went through the normal questions of where are you, what year is it and who is the president. Then we went on telling me what happened and what was wrong with me. The bullet entered my chest and got stuck within the one of my ribs on the right side. The rib stopped the bullet from puncturing my lung. It did break and they did surgery to remove the bullet. My chest was wrapped in bandages from the surgery. He told me and my family that it would still be some time before I could do the things I use to. I agreed with the doctor and thanked him for everything that he did.
"Did you family tell you about your partner, Zach?" the doctor ended on.
"Yes, did you try to save him doctor?" Damien asked back.
"He was already gone before I could even try anything. The EMT's announced him dead at the scene," the doctor told me. "For what it is worth, he did love you. He fought back after he saw what Logan did you. That much I know from the police report. If there was a way for him to come back to you, I am sure that he is doing everything in his power to do that," the doctor replied.
"What is your name doctor? You're not the regular doctor we see," Damien asked as the doctor started walking out.
"My name is Ethan Rush. I am one of the on-call doctors here and your case seemed intriguing to me. I love young love and hate to see it torn apart. Especially, when this one seems to stretch beyond time," the doctor said. Then he leaned down and whispered just for my ears to hear. "He is coming back, do not forget that Damien Pratt."
Damien's eyes went wide. Ethan left the room and Danny wanted to know what he said. He went after the doctor and as he went out the door to talk to him, there was no sight of him down any of the hallways of the hospital. "That was weird," Danny thought. "I will go ask the nurse's station if that doctor can be paged."
He walked across the hallway to the nurse's station and asked the nurse, "Did you see which way the doctor went after leaving that room?"
"What doctor?" she asked.
"His name was Ethan Rush," Danny asked back.
"Sir, we do not have a doctor by that name," the nurse replied. "Is everything ok? Do you need the doctor to come in and check in on Damien, Mr. Pratt?"
"Ok, yes please send in the Doctor. Damien has awoken from his coma," Danny told the nurse.
Danny did not know what to say or even think about Dr. Rush's appearance in Damien's room. Danny entered the room and looked at his son. He then knew not to say anything that the doctor was not a real doctor after seeing the smile that was on his son's face. Whatever the doctor said to him put a smile back on Damien's face.
"Is everything ok Dad?" Damien asked.
"Yeah," Danny said to him. "Just happy that you are awake, we will deal with everything else once you get better."
Damien just smiled and the regular doctor appeared behind Danny in the doorway. "I am glad to see your awake now, let's see what we can do for you." the doctor said.
He went through the routine and told us, "It looks like he can go home in a few days. He needs to rest and make sure that the wound does not open again."
"We will make sure that does not happen," a voice behind the family said.
It was the whole gang. They walked in one by one. My parents and Zach's parents left the room to give us some privacy. They started asking Damien tons of questions about how he was about what happened. Then the room had a moment of silence. It was not awkward since Dr. Rush told Damien that Zach was coming back.
"I would like to go see his grave when I get out and also go back to the house," Damien told everyone.
"Are you sure, sweetie," Jackie asked.
"More than anything else," Damien told them.
"Then we should all go with you. We can do it the weekend you get out. We all have not been back there," Sean said to us.
"Sounds like a plan," Chase said. "We will all be there for each other, just like in the past."
"I am getting a little sleepy. I will see you guys later. Thanks for everything and coming to see me," Damien told them.
"Ok, we will see you later," they all said to Damien and exited one by one.
Just as the last one left, Damien looked up and whispered under his breath, "I will see you soon, love."
Back in the afterlife, I was faced with making a choice of which road to choose. "Ethan told me to follow my heart," I reminded myself. I closed my eyes and listened to what my heart was telling me. Then I heard his voice, "I will see you soon."
I knew whose voice it was and that was all I needed to start walking. I did not even open my eyes to see if there was a path underneath them. I was having some blind trust right now, to let my heart drive me back to where I needed to be.
A couple of steps further down the path I chose, I opened my eyes and noticed that there was only the path ahead of me. I turned around to see which one I chose but nothing was behind me. With each step I took, the road behind me vanished. "I guess there is no going back now," I thought to myself.
"Yep," a voice rang out from the void in front of me.
"Ethan, is that you?" I asked to emptiness in front of me.
"Nope, think of me as the little voice inside us all," it told me.
"Ok, do you have a name?" I asked back.
"Nope, just someone that will tell you what is going happen from this point on," the voice told me.
"Ok, so which path did I choose," I asked.
"The one path that your heart knew it needed to be," it said back to me.
"Well that did not help me much. Yet, I guess I trust myself enough to know, no matter which path I chose it will lead me back to Damien," I said out loud.
"That's the spirit. That is the truth and now since you realized that we can make this journey a little faster. Most people are afraid of making the wrong choice in life that they second guess everything they do. They miss the point and lose focus on the end goal," the voice told me and it rang out throughout the place I was in.
"That is very true, so what is the next step on my journey back to Damien," I asked.
"You just keep walking and I will take care of the rest," the voice said.
Then all of sudden the now once white walls on either side of me, went black. The path was the only thing that was visible. I kept walking like the voice told me but I start to get a little scared of what was going to happen or was happening at this moment.
Just as my eyes were getting use to the darkness around me, a flash of light beamed down the walls and then a movie started playing. The voice came back but it was different then the calm relaxed one that I just spoke to. "Zach Brimstone," this new louder voice echoed down the pathway.
"Yes," I answered back a little scared of what was to come.
"Are you ready to see which path you chose," the announcer like voice said.
"Sure," I said a little meekly. I thought this must be a joke that Ethan was about jump out and surprise me. Nothing happened.
The walls started scrolling with a movie. Then I noticed that is was me as a kid. Younger than what I was now. I must have been six or seven. I was dressed in little overalls and playing with my good friend Kyle. I remember this moment; it was one of my most embarrassing moments of my life. Well, we were both playing super heroes in the back yard of my parent's old place. I was Batman because he was my favorite and then he was being Spiderman.
We were playing and I pretended that he caught me in his web and the only way to get it off was to take my clothes off. So I started undoing my overalls. I got one undone and then the next. I let them fall to the ground. He started laughing because my little boy briefs which had Batman on them but that is why not what was he was laughing about. Somehow my little penis wiggled its way out of the fly out of my briefs that I had on. It was also hard because of all the horseplay that was going on between the two of us. I quickly covered up and tried to grab my overalls off the ground. I tried to get away but fell down on the ground with my butt stuck up in the air.
Kyle finally stopped laughing and then walked over to me. He spanked my boy butt and I yelped. Then he thought it would be funny to pull them down and show the world me little boy butt. He did and I turned so beet red. I tried covering up my ass but he held my hands down. He spanked it a couple more times and then it started to feel good. A little too good but I did not know what really was going on at the time. He finally let me go because he was laughing so hard. I quickly pulled my Batman briefs and overalls up. I walked over to him and just spanked his butt. My cheeks were beet red after that one.
I remember that. My cheeks were starting to turn red. "Why are you showing me this?" I asked.
"Just then was the first time you realized something. Yes, you were only six or seven but that was the first time you noticed that you were different," the announcer voice said to me. "Let's continue this walk down memory lane, shall we?" ?"Sure if that means me get back to Damien," I told him still a little embarrassed from the scene that was shown.
A couple of clips later it was the scene of how Jackie and I became friends. It was the time she stood up for me in middle school. The video clip showed me in eighth grade, one year before I meet Logan. I was in the boy's locker room changing and I was also looking at the other guys changing as well. I started noticing that my attention was grabbed by guys not girls like everyone else. Well, this one guy noticed and grabbed couple of his friends after that. They cornered me just in front of the locker room door. I think his name was Andrew. He threw the first punch and it hit me in the face, it sent me through the locker room door and out into the gym where a few people were.
I landed on the polished wood gym floor with a thud. I stood back up and threw a punch but it complete missed. Then I felt his knee connect with my stomach. I heaved and fell down to the floor. I heard her voice. "Hey, get away from him," she screamed from a few feet away. I was clutching my stomach from the pain.
"What are you going to do about it?" Andrew asked.
"This," she said and grabbed him by his shirt and raised her fist. He started shaking and peed himself. You could see the stream of piss running down his pants and a puddle of it started forming by his shoe. Then she just shoved him towards the group of his friends. He fell backwards and landed right next to where I was. "If you mess with him, you mess with me."
"Ok, ok, sorry," he said to me and then quickly got up. His friends were just laughing either at the fact that he peed himself and/or that he was beat up by a girl. The crowd dispersed and Jackie was now reaching down to help me up. I took her hand and said, "Thanks for the help, I'm Zach."
"Hi, my name is Jackie. I like you; you're different from all these other jerks. Want to hang out?" she asked while she helped dust me off.
"Sure," I told her. Then the walls on the path went black once more.
"That was one day that was bad but turn into something really awesome. I miss her," I said out loud.
"Good, that was the day that you created a bond with her that was unbreakable. She still thinks about you too. She has been crying her eyes out almost every night since you were gone," the voice said.
"Why are telling me this?" I asked starting to get pissed off.
"Just because that path was still chosen, without that moment in your life, you would not have been able to meet Damien. She played a very important role," the voice told. "If she did not stick up for you, you would have been bullied right out of that school, moved out of L.A. and never have met Damien."
"I understand that. I guess I will find out next if I meet Logan since next year I was when I met him," I said to the voice.
"Yep," the voice answered with just that and nothing else.
The walls lit up again and there I was, one year later and Logan was walking into the room. I saw myself looking over at him. We met once more in the middle of the room. "Do not do it," I yelled at my younger self.
"He cannot hear you," the Voice told me. "Remember this is the path you chose. We now know that you did not choose the path that you and Logan did not meet."
"I guess that makes it easier for me because I bet if I choose that path, I would have been dropped off here and started it all over again," I said out loud as the scene continued to play out.
"Something liked that," the voice replied.
The scene ended and I noticed something that Logan did that I did not notice before. His eyes were not on me when we left. He was staring at someone else in the room. That bastard was scoping someone else out while hitting on me for the first time. That two time cheating asshole, that boiled my blood. I was getting all pissed off about something that happened at least a good three years ago. If I would have know that I would have never dated him and none of this would have happened. I got over my anger because there was nothing I could do about it.
"Do not let go of that anger because you might need it to survive what is coming up," the voice announced.
"Let me guess one year later, the break up," I asked.
"How did you know," the voice ask rhetorically.
It started playing; he took me to my favorite place which was the beach down the street from where my house was. I was not expecting anything at the time; I was thinking that everything was going fine. We got there and I noticed his wandering eyes, not really giving me the time of day. Then his eyes lit up when he saw something a little further down the beach. He went running and I saw the two of them kiss on the lips. I knew what that meant. I just grabbed my stuff and walked away. Not even giving him the chance to explain. I did not even look back.
Then I got a text later that day, where did you go?
Z: I saw you kissing that other guy
L: Oh, I thought you did not see that
Z: Yeah. I understand now why you have been so distant
L: I am so sorry; I just fell out of love with you
Z: You could have just dumped me before you cheated on me
I did not give him a chance to respond. I just texted back telling him to lose my number and never talk to me again, it broke my heart. The walls went black once more and I could not even move down the path anymore. My legs were just frozen in place.
"I know it is tough but we have to keep moving forward. Time does not really stand still," the voice said to me.
"Why, why did you have to show me this? Why do I have to re-live that moment over and over again? The next scenes will be a quick one because I started to just fuck every guy to get rid of the pain deep within my heart. That pain did not go away till I met Damien. Can we just skip to that part? I know my story and I hate re-living it," I said to the voice and fell down to my knees. Tears started flowing down my face. "I just want to go back to Damien, back to my true happiness, where I felt alive and joyful."
"I hear you but without the pain and suffering you would not know what real happiness and joy was. We have all gone through it and it sucks but it does happen to get better in the end," the voice said. Then he played the scenes of all my fucks before I met Damien. You could hear all the times I was fucked hard, my moaning, my groaning and everything in between. It also went through all the times I fucked them. I just covered my ears to drown out my voice and sounds of every person I fucked that year before I met Damien. I just wanted to hear his voice; I closed my eyes not seeing the person I was. I have changed; I stopped all that and found what true love is.
"Make it stop. Please make it STOP!!!!," I yelled at the top of my voice.
"Make what stop, my love," Damien said to me.
Just like that I was back in my car, stopped at the crossroads of my life once again. I could turn right and head to our house or I can go straight and by pass the house where this all started with Logan and the horrific scene that was about to unfold once again.
It look like this is the final chapter of Afterlife, do not worry I will be continuing the series after this. I am always open to new directions for the story to take and ideas or just to chat, email me at joshmisses@yahoo.com or the website samuelstories.wordpress.com