Force of Nature - Prologue. Prologue

My Grandmother told me once that death is a force of nature -- like your shadow following close behind you. I didn’t understand her then. I didn’t understand it when she died either. But now that I’m lying here in the violence of my losing battle with life, I understand. She meant that death is a force of nature and that it follows close behind you as innocently as your own shadow -- easily forgotten. She probably meant for it to be romantic, that people are born, try to live a full life, and then die. My death is anything but romantic. It’s not raining, a cold and quiet night for New York, although I’ve not been here long enough to know for sure. There isn’t anyone running to get help or cradling my head in their lap. There isn’t anyone crying or screaming. I’m lying on a dirty sidewalk just outside the illumination of a street light, all for the money in my wallet -- money I wouldn’t have died for, but will. I hadn’t even noticed their approach; all I heard was the sound of a whisper before I was grabbed from behind. A hand covering my mouth kept me from screaming. Then my legs were kicked out from under me, splitting my head open on the cold cement. They didn’t stop beating me until I went limp.

Why isn't my death coming? The pain is intensifying, and I want death to finally take me. I don’t want to feel the pain the shock of the moment is barely allowing me to feel. Maybe I have to feel it before I die, but I hope the blood loss or something will take me first.

A scream found its way through my shock, a shrill and healthy scream that couldn’t have come from me. I open my eyes and tried to focus, but all I see is the dirty cement sidewalk covered by the blackness of my blood.

I hear the quick, but steady pounding of footsteps coming from behind me. Two sets, one more staccato and piercing than the other. Someone’s heels, the sound of her steps seem to echo through my head. I try to swallow and I tried to speak, but I can’t.

“Don’t touch him,” a man’s voice orders -- a deep, but youthful voice. I try to look behind me, but the movement of my eyes hurts.

“There’s so much blood,” the woman says as she finally came into view, her open-toed heels and legs anyway. She is careful to step around the puddle of blood and the last thought I have before I black out is that I might actually get the romantic death after all.