Emily's Strange Life Chapter 3

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It's a beautiful day, I have twenty-four hours before Michael gets back.and I plan to make the most of it, so I'm wandering the forest with a basket on one arm. As part of my quest to eat organic and stretch the housekeeping I go out and gather forest fruits every year. Michael laughs (in a nice way) and calls me a wood nymph but it doesn't stop him eating the blackberry crumbles or the rowan jelly or drinking the sloe gin (So far he won't touch the rose hip tea even though I assure him it's good for the blood, but hey, one step at a time). I've got stout boots but I indulged myself with my favourite skirt. I know jeans would be more practical but I just don't like them. Right now, I'm regretting that for two reasons. The first is that a trailing bramble has laddered my tights. The second, more important reason, is that I think the man a couple of hundred yards back is deliberately following me and if I'm right and it's for the wrong reasons my Hell Kitten layered miniskirt isn't even going to slow him down.

These woods are riddled with criss crossing paths, so I've changed direction seven or eight times in the last five minutes.. Every time I do, he does the same and speeds up a little. It could be coincidence, or he could be wanting to talk to me for some entirely innocent reason, or it could just be a desire to catch up with me so he can flirt with a pretty girl (I know I sound vain, but honestly, when Michael isn't with me this happens a lot).

That said, since the war, crime has gone up a lot and women are always the most vulnerable. I've never heard of anyone being attacked in these woods but I know quite a few women have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted in the area of the town near the base. Not all of them have survived the experience. No one in their right mind would try anything with Michael around and I rarely go off base after dark without him, and then not on my own, so I've never dwelt on that fact before. I'm definitely dwelling on it now.

The man is speeding up, he's less than a hundred yards away now. I abandon all pretence at calm and turn to run. As I do, he breaks into a sprint. I can see him clearly now and he's twice my size and burly with it, so much so that it seems unfair that he can also sprint that fast. His expression gloats, there's no pretence now that the situation is anything but what it is. Then he is on me and it's too late for anything but a hopeless scream.

Michael was right. There are bad hombres out there and one of them has me trapped now.

I cry out in fear and pull away as the man grabs me, one hand holding my arm and the other squeezing my right breast hard enough to bruise. I manage to pull out of his grip, stepping backwards and opening my mouth to scream again.

My attacker doesn't like that; suddenly a haymaker is swinging at me to shut me up. That's when it happens. My left arm comes up hard and fast, blocking his arm with a bone bruising collision and then using the momentum to chop at the side of his neck. The Jew's stop a part of me knows after the heavyweight champion Mendoza. It slows him down and my fists bang hard against both his ears simultaneously before my forearms come down on his collarbones with a sickening snap. He starts to crumple and the top of my lowered head crunches into his nose. My attacker, if I can still call him that, rears up in pain and my stiff fingers jab into his windpipe, then his solar plexus. Lastly my knee connects with his crotch. He can't even scream, only writhe in agony at my feet. A six foot, two hundred pound man seriously injured by a five foot five woman, most whose hundred and thirty-odd pounds, I have to admit, is curves. The whole thing has taken maybe twenty seconds, tops.

What have I done?

How have I done what I've done?

Who am I?

An hour later I'm sitting in Kelly Gunderson's kitchen wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot, sweet tea. (Staff Sergeant Gunderson did a tour of duty attached as liason to the British, years ago. They swear by this stuff.) The man is under guard in the base hospital and the MPs have just left. A message came through from the city police while they were taking my statement that he matches the photofits and descriptions given by a score of witnesses over the years. He hasn't even got the excuse of being a traumatised veteran, he's just a creep taking advantage of troubled times and the fact that half the men who'd otherwise be police or security are out on the front lines. It looks pretty certain I'm not going to get into trouble. I can clam self-defence and no judge is going to be sympathetic to this guy. If I hadn't done what I did I'd have been raped and beaten, maybe killed.

I don't feel good. I hate violence. It just isn't who I am or who I want to be. One of the reasons I can't forgive the damned Canoeheads is that they attacked first. I mean, whatever the problem was couldn't they have just talked to us, instead of inflicting all this misery?

And now I know I'm a trained killer. My life Before Michael, once a lost Garden of Eden, is starting to look as if it might be a cesspool filled with barbed wire.

So how did I learn to do what I did? I half crippled a man, in a way they don't teach you in evening class karate. To do what I did suggests I was in the armed forces, or at least an elite police unit. But if I was in any such group in the United States then when I was found wandering and lost I could easily have been identified by fingerprints or dental work. The authorities keep track of people who can do what I did, especially during a war. Which means...

Oh my God!

Oh my God!

I'm Canadian!

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Comments

An Evil -- Canadian ??

Oh my God!

Oh my God!

I'm Canadian!

I know this is supposed to be a dramatic moment, but somehow this just cracked me up. Kind of a "killer bunny" moment.

Sorry, Polly, I don't mean to dis your story, which is pretty good. Just the contrast between the Canadians I know and this ....

Good!

That's good, That's what it was meant to do. The contrast between how seriously Emily takes it and the actual reality is what makes it funny. It's a deliberate killer bunny moment

Polly

"I'm Canadian!"

oh boy ...

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