Bugging My Way Through Life

I couldn't believe I was doing this...

I stepped out of the shaded alley, my eyes glued to my target as my hands craddled my Taurus 941. The metal revolver felt cold against my skin, if I didn't know better I would think it was trying to deter me from my actions. I could feel my own stomach schrunch up as I raised the barrel, keeping my hand off the trigger.

It was a beautiful night, the normally active city lay in a dark, yet tranquil, silence as nearly nobody was out during theese hours. The alabaster half-moon hung clearly in the sky, not a single cloud there to take away the slight light that reflected in the metal of the gun that was in my tremoring grip.

I pulled up the hood over my head and pulled up the handkerchief over my nose, making a half mask that completed my 'disguise'. I would have used a pair of sunglasses or something as well if I had remembered to bring them. Now I could only hope that nobody would recognise my upper face or hair.

I approached the figure in front of me, gun raised and ready. This was my last chance to pull out. I knew that if I didn't stop myself now, I'd most likely have to be cautious no matter where I went after this. I should stop myself, and I knew it... But I did not.

I let out a sigh.

"Hey!"

The sharpness of my voice startled me. I felt so scared... So afraid that something would go wrong, but it didn't show in my shout at all... I noticed that even my hands had stopped quivering somehow.

The person in front of me froze temporarily before turning around to face me, the light from one of the lampposts falling on her face. I felt my breath get struck in my throat and a sense of wrongness enveloping my mind.

She was only an old woman... She was obviously asian and her wrinkles were so large she appeared to be in her early eighties. She looked so

weak, I hated myself immediately for choosing her as my prey.

When her eyes fell on my own, her gaze turned into one of horror as she realized I was holding her at gunpoint.

"Drop your purse, and do it now!" I again surprised myself with the amount of coldness in my voice, for it truly didn't reflect how I was feeling internally.

She stared in terror, not moving.

"Please, sir... I have children."

My mind melted at her words, the emotional charge in those words were alot heavier than I thought possible. My grip held firm however, my mind pushing her words away. She was just saying it to save her own skin. Not that I was going to shoot her... My gun still had the safety on.

"I don't care. Drop them." I responded gruffly as I pointed with my gun to the black leather purse she was clutching as indication. "Put it on the ground and walk backwards."

She appeared so innocent... She moved with reluctance as she did what I had asked, placing the bag on the pavement and walking back three frightened steps, all the while keeping her eyes glued to me with that frightened, judging gaze.

Her eyes suddenly focused on a point behind me...

I turned around towards the point of interest and my blood went cold as a sense of dread filled my veins when I realized what had caught her attention enough to turn it away from the gun being pointed at her.

A car rolled around the closest corner to us. ... And if that wasn't bad enough, I could make out the words 'POLICE' in bold letters being illuminated by the street lights, proudly signaling my impending failure.

For a brief moment, I felt hopeful that they hadn't spotted me, but that hope was torn apart as the spotlight in the front of the vehicle turned on and focused on us two like they had known we were there even before arriving.

Why the hell did I have to always be so unlucky? Had it been two minutes more I would have been out of here already. I could have been halfway home with the loot in my arms and been safe and sound inside my own room as I enjoyed my findings.

But...

Instead I froze like a deer caught in the headlights, gun still held up towards the woman in front of me.

A thousand thoughts raised through my mind. The picture of my mother flying through my mind, her eyes filled with disappointment. She didn't know about my plans for today. I couldn't let the thoughts become reality. I couldn't end up in jail! Mother would bail me out without doubt... With money we didn't own.

I had to get out of there.

My body acted on it's own as fight or flight kicked in, launching itself forward and grabbing the bag with my free hand as I turned on my heels, returning into the alley I had came from. I had already been seen, I was not going to end up empty handed if I did manage to escape.

I could hear the engine of the car rev slightly behind me as the chase began.

I ran towards the end of the alley, which ended in a dead end, a brick wall stopping any further momentum in that direction. This didn't deterr me however since I knew what I was doing. After all, this was my intended escape route.

I turned to the left building where there was a large metallic door. There had been an open garage on the other side of the building and this door connected with it. I just hoped I could run through the garage and into the nearby park before the cops realized where I had gone.

I pulled the door harshly...

Nothing.

It's locked?... It's locked! How the hell is it locked?!

I had checked it not even an hour prior to this stupid plan and it had been anything but locked! I knew my escape was on the other side of this wall, but something had caused my escape route to fail.

Lights illuminated the alley as the car turned into it, rubbing out any hopes that I could escape without being seen. The intense light allowed me to see the door and I could tell by the three mechanisms between the wall and the door that it was locked.

I pulled again, using all muscles I had.

I could hear the hinges creak slightly, their rusty condition straining the strenght of the door, but it held true and it refused to budge.

The doors of the car opened and two figures left it, looking like nothing but siluettes due to the bright light in my face. They did a movement that I could barely see with their arms, I assumed they had just pulled their firearm. I was armed after all, so it made sense.

I dropped the bag and raised my one hand to block the garish light that was intruding into my eyes, but the action did little to nothing to help me see what was going on.

The siluettes crouched behind the now open doors, no doubt taking cover in case I were to open fire on them. I wouldn't do that though, not that they would know, if I was going into custody armed robbery was much easier to pledge in court than murdering police.

"Drop the gun and put your hands into the air!"

The command came out quickly, the same harshness to it like seen so many times in your average action movie, although this time the threat felt very much real as I was sure I had atleast two guns pointed at me, ready to shoot.

I raised my hands, the gun still dangling on one of my fingers as I held my arms up in their elevated position, my mind not clever enough to take the gun off my appendage before I did so. My mind was focused on raising my hands so I wouldn't get shot.

How the hell was I supposed to get out of this situation? My brain raced to try to figure something out, but it soon became clear...

I was fucked.

I heard a click from the car.

"I said drop. The. GUN!" The voice commanded, a strong feeling of superiority coming from the direction of the vehicle. It was only now that I finally realized that the weapon of my misfortune was still very much on my hand rather than dropped onto the ground.

"Alright-alright, Fuck!" I yelled, my voice having a mixed tint of both fear, frustration, shock and regret as I let the gun fall from my hand, finally securing that I atleast wouldn't be shot and killed like this.

What happened next was nothing but the act of Murphy himself...

The gun hit the ground with a loud bang as it disfired, the bullet lodging itself safely in the concrete wall, making me recoil from the deafening explosion. The closed area of the alley only helped make the noise more intense as the soundwaves bounced around on the walls.

The response was immediate.

My blood froze for the second time that day as I saw an explosion come from the cops, followed by a sizzle of a bullet passing next to my head, leaving me in that short snapshot in time trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

They must have thought I fired on them.

I dropped out of instinct as the bullets began flying, trying to minimize the area where a shot would be lethal.  The second bang was shortly followed by another as the hail of bullets began flying, another gunshot rocking the air around me, followed by one more...

And another.

And another.

And yet another...

...

I dared not to look up as the gunfire seized, leaving an eerily calm silence hanging in the air. Was I dead? I didn't feel dead... In fact I felt the opposite of dead, the adrenaline still rushing full force through my body.

I cracked an eye open as the absolute silence filled my ears. I only had to glance at the scene in front of me before my jaw hung open in disbelief at the pure absurdety of what was transpiring.

The cops were silent and not moving... In fact, the wind itself seemed to be still. I stared with wide eyes at the small dots hovering in front of me. I recognized the dots as being bullets.

... The bullets which had been intended for me.

They just hung there, only inches away from my face and body, promising death to anything they hit. I didn't even dare move as I just sat there, a single thought running through my mind over and over.

How?...

"Oh... Oh wow... You're lucky that first one missed! If that had hit your brain it would be Game Over, not even I would be able to salvage that..."

I gasped and recoiled as a giggling, female voice filled the very air around me, sounding like it spoke from three angles at once. I jerked my head around in shock, trying to see who was speaking to me, but there was nothing but empty air.

"I barely stopped the others in time, but I completely forgot about that one, hah... Oops." A nervous laugh sounded from above me, and I looked up only to see nothing but the night sky.

I blinked harshly as if that would somehow wake me up from this nightmare, but absolutely nothing changed. The scene remained frozen in time as I saw a soft ripple in the air around the objects that had been halted.

"Hmmph... How rude. You could atleast say 'thank you' or something?"  Said the voice with a hint of a chuckle. "After all, I did just stop your incoming death." The female voice huffed lightly as if insulted.

I rolled around into a sitting position, my eyes darting around the alley around me that was still lit up by the headlights of the car. It was empty, save from a trashcan, way too small for anyone to hide in.

I couldn't stop my voice from shaking as I finally found my voice. "Wha-... Who are you?!" I asked as my heart pumped harshly in my chest, drowning out any thoughts that may have been swirling around in my head at that moment of time.

A sigh resonated through the air.

"Out of anything you could ask me... That's what you go with?" The voice questioned, the deadpan hanging audible in the words.

I simply stared down into the ground, noticing a light smear of blood on the ground.

A sudden pain in my chin made itself apparant and I tapped the spot with a finger, leaving a small spot of blood on it. Apparantly I had dropped a little too fast and hit the ground face first, leaving a small spot of blood as evidence of my faceplant.

"You know what? Just for that lack of interesting conversation, I shall not dignify your question with an answer." The voice said with a hurt sniffle, sounding like a highborn snobb from a 1980's James Bond movie.

My brain raised to find my voice again. I wanted to- ... No. I needed to know what the hell was going on.

"A-Alright, sorry!" I shouted quickly trying to stop myself from agitating the disembodied voice even more. "Eh... Why did you..." I swallowed as I finally realized how close I had just gotten to dying. "Why did you save me?" I finished my question finally, still shaking like a leaf.

There was a moment of silence... I wondered if I had angered her even more and made her leave me in my predicament. I felt a surge of panic as I wondered if I had been abandoned, frozen in time and left to fend for myself.

My eyes suddenly were blinded by an intense flash of light, making my grab my face in agony as I struggled to regain my vision. It took a short while, but eventually the pain subsided and I could finally begin to see again.

When my vision finally adjusted from the previous light, my eyes widened.

In front of me was a woman. She had a white dress that seemed to glow with light, the soft radience smoother to the eyes than the garish lights in coming from the cop car. She appeared to be around her mid-thirties, her skinny form still appeared powerful as her gaze locked onto my own, her blue eyes practically shining with a mystical gleam in contrast to her pale skin. She was beautiful...

Her eyes rolled.

"Yeah yeah, I know. Wow, I'm soooo pretty! And ooh, glowy eyes." Her deadpan was anything but fitting on the otherwise regal shape of her face. "Get over it, boy."

I gulped and averted my gaze, not wishing to inflict her anger towards myself by challenging her stare. I could tell even without looking at her that my action only caused her to be furtherly unamused.

"Ugh, stop being so awestruck..." She groaned with a wave of her hand.

I muttered an apology as I tried straightening my back slightly, finally daring to raise my own eyes to meet hers. When she noticed me looking at her again, she smiled broadly.

"Ah, not so hard was it?" She exclaimed happily. "As for your question; I saved you because you... Are you!" She chirped, clapping her hands together, causing a small fanfare to go off from nowhere, startling me.

"How did you do that?!?" I yelled, franticly spinning around in my spot trying to spot where the sound came from. Spotting nothing, I turned back to her. "And what do you mean with 'because you're you'?"

"Don't you see? You're special! A unique little snowflake!" She said, not bothering to answer my first question.

I turned to her with a bewildered gaze, my brain struggling to take in everything that was happening around me. First I had almost died... Then I heard her... Followed by her appearance. I wondered momentarily if this is what it felt like to be high.

"Unique?" I asked carefully, trying to force myself to calm down. Oddly enough, it seemed to work.

"Yes! Unique! One of a kind!" She said, waving her arm nonchalantly. "You get the drill... You are different, therefore I saved you. That answer your question, hmm?" She asked taking a step over and rubbing my hair.

I felt myself shiver at her presence, the power radiating off of her despite the friendly action.

"Hmm, what's that? Never been in the presence of a diety before?" She asked with a grin at my reaction. She patted my cheek lightly as she stepped away, her hand warm to the touch.

"No... Can't say I have." I replied uncomfortably, but atleast somewhat calmed by now. I do believe she had something to do with my sudden calmness, but I didn't disagree with what she did.

"Hah! This is priceless! You should see yourself, oh how I wish I brought my camera!" She laughed as she slowly began to circle me as she spoke.

"You know what? I kinda like you! My name is Laien." She began as she carefully avoided a shard of glass on the ground. "I know I said I wouldn't tell you, but you're just too adorable to say no to!" She giggled.

I felt my cheeks heaten up from embarrasment, but I kept myself from showing my current state of confusion. I took a deep breath and let it out again before I turned my eyes down toward the ground, trying to understand the situation and to know what to ask... What will happen now? Can I just walk home now? How do I fix what I had messed up? ... Could she help Mother?

"Anyhow, skipping formalities..." She began with a light yawn, seizing her walking as she interrupted my thoughts. "I hope you enjoy your trip, I would love to follow you, but I sort of belong here! Where you are going belongs to my BELOVED brother. Make sure to say hi from me!" Laien chirped happily, making my brain hurt at her words.

Wait... What?

"Wait! What do you mean 'enjoy your trip'?" I asked, a gutwrenching feeling of worry clinging to my emotions. Was she going to take me out of here? Would she take me home somehow? Save me from this situation?!

A sense of relief mixed in with my negative emotions at the prospect. I swore silently that I would never do something stupid like this again!

"Tssk, now that would be telling , and ain't there no... Fun... in telling, eh?" Laien began before she snapped her fingers. The sound echoed throughout the alley. "Oh, and don't worry about a body, I shall suppliment it to you, free of charge!" She added, once again sounding like someone who had waaay too many shots of coffé.

"Wha...? What do you mean with a new body?" I asked fearfully, realizing that the chance of her returning me home was quickly disappearing.

She giggled at my expression of trying to ignore the feeling of discomfort. Laien turned away from me, slowly approached and curiously tapped one of the floating bullets with a finger, the bullet itself bobbing up and down in its place in response to her touch. She nodded happily as it went still again and turned to me, her body starting to fade.

"Well yes, of course you'll need a new body. The one you have now won't be any use when its all broken after all!" She began before her body started fading in a faster rate.

I took a step towards her as I felt fear tear at my senses.

"No! Please don't leave! Just help me home and I'll be in your debt forever!" I called out to her as I realized I could barely see her anymore. My mind panicked but I quickly felt her calming touch in my brain as she forced me to settle down.

"Oh, I'd love to stay for a coffe, but I'm afraid I have to go." She began happily before I saw her eyes turn into something darker. "... And you're already forever in my debt. I saved you after all." The dark tone disappeared so quickly that I wondered if I had seen it at all. She faded away completely, only her voice remaining. "Now I hope you enjoy the vacation of yours. Ta' Ta'!" She said finally, barely audible anymore.

"What do you mean 'broken'?" I asked a slight feeling of agitation entering my mind. I took was very much whole, and her departure left me more irritated rather than scared... I again summed it up to being her influance over my emotions.

"I'm no prince charming, but my body feels just fine, thank y-..." I didn't get to finish my sentence as the snapping of fingers was heard again.

The instant that the fingers snapped, I felt something hitting me in the chest... Harshly, before the sound of gunfire returned again. Another two impacts was felt in my shoulder and abdomen seperately as I felt myself fall to the ground, back first, as intense pain shot through my body, worse than I had ever felt before.

The bitch had just resumed time again... With me standing right in front of the previously still projectiles, leading me to take the bullets with full force to my front.

I fell to the ground for the second time in a few minutes, this time not having dodged a single one of the shots fired from the cops. I could feel each hole in my body sting with an intense heat as the sound of gunfire finally subsided.

The two police officers quickly approached me once the blaring of guns had stopped, and I felt my body being forcefully flipped over as I landed face first in the slowly spreading pool of crimson, something that was signifying that my injuries were worse than they felt.

I felt my arms being pulled up behind my back as I struggled to breathe, the air I expected instead being replaced with a lukewarm liquid that I breathed into my lungs, causing me to cough violently.

"You are under arrest for attempted robbery with the usage of a leth..." The rest of the officers words were drowned out by the sound of my heart franticly trying to pump out blood to my organs, instead resulting in my life liquid seeping out of the punctures in my flesh.

I could already feel the dark embrace of death seeping into the edge of my senses as I laid there bleeding out while they handcuffed me, not trying to struggle my way free as I tried my hardest to breathe with no result.

I found myself thinking two different things as I laid there, dying in a pool of my own blod...

I wondered if I would die by suffocation as I could so far not manage to take in any oxygen at all, instead drowning due to the liquid filling up my throat, or if I would die because of bloodloss... So far I was lying in a decently sized spot of red liquid after all.

Secondly I wondered one last thing as I felt darkness begin to flood my vision...

What the fuck was the point of anything that just transpired? Was I contacted by GOD just for hi-... Her to abandon me and leave me to fate? What was the point of everything that she said? A trip? Was I going to heaven?

I though about it again...

My recent actions would let me go anywhere but heaven. This meant I was going to the other place...

I realized in that moment; that god was one evil motherfucker.

I let out a bloodfilled chuckle as I felt my life end.