I recently was going through some old things of mine and came upon this story I wrote for an assignment in high school. After reading it I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. I did this drawing above after reading it. So sometimes you might find inspiration in places you don't expect. Oh and by the way I got an A on the paper. So enjoy the reading. Chase
by Rusty Mills
He was a dark skinned, medium built man. His face was rough; he walked like a half dead animal and hadn’t shaved in several days. The clothes which he wore were torn as if rats had eaten on them. Darkness had fallen down so his face could not be seen. The temperatures were high, despite the darkness. Sweat ran down his face like dew running down the leaves in the mourning. The forest which he was in was darkened from the moon at night and the sun at day.
Four days had gone by since they had shot his brother. What did they want with him? This he had been murmuring for the last eight days, since he had been running from them.
Their fire glowed in the darkness and popped as logs fell. The men were sitting around it eating. The food which they ate could not be identified by its looks nor its taste. The rough flowing river could be heard in the background. The men were dark-skinned and from the land across the boarder. They were mean and somewhat mad in things they did. Their clothes were uniforms from a national army. They carried large rifles with them.
Then came the final stretch of his journey, a mountain twelve hundred feet high. On the other side of the mountain was the free land he came from. There he couldn’t be pursued.
The men knew that if they waited til daybreak, he would be across the boarder. They started their rough journey after they finished eating. They crossed the river by jumping from stone to stone. On the other side was the steepest mountain ever to be seen. A narrow path wide enough for one man led up the mountain. After every man had crossed the river, they started up the path consecutively. The path wound in and out of the mountain.
The man by this time was half way up the mountain. On one side of the path was a cliff, on the other, a steep hill of trees. His legs were weak and shaky. He would fall, get back up, just to fall again.
The other men were overtaking him because they had eaten and were much healthier than him. The man was weakening fast and the men were coming up faster. The man was coming to his last hill when five consecutive shots rang out in the mountain air and echoed from hill to hill. The man fell backwards and off the cliff, hitting trees and the hill on his fall down. At the bottom he laid in a lake of blood with dirt mixed in it making it blacker. The men turned and started down the mountain and an uncounted number of shots rang our through the wilderness. The five men fill like buildings crumbling. Everyman had been shot several times. Blood ran down the mountain like a waterfall over a cliff.
The mountain was quiet with sounds of animals running through leaves. At the top of the mountain stood a row of men. These men were from the army of the free land. The man that was shot and now lying at the bottom of the mountain was their colonel.
The sun by this time was just beginning to rise over the mountains. This left a silhouette of the men at the top of the hill.
I have been watching John Huston's "The Maltese Falcon" on the new special restored edition DVD that Warner Bros. putout this year. First off it's a superb set which includes the two previous versions of the film along with many other extras. The quality of the print and transfer is worth it alone.
