The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

Eddie March was rolled off of her, and she was looking into the worried face of Officer Lee.  When she awoke again, in the unfamiliar room of the hospital, he was still with her, smiling down at her.

Alone in the Woods in the Deep Dark Night

Edward R. Rosick

With one last burst of desperate energy, Gary Irwin Chandler II shut the heavy back door against the howling winds. His breath came in frantic gulps and he shook with fear and cold, slumped on the hardwood floors of the cabin situated on the edge of the 50,000 acre Ojibwa National Forest in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The late November storm blew with a malevolent ferocity outside, lashing his abode with continuing blasts of wind and thick, wet sleet and snow that minutes before had almost cost Gary his life.

He curled his arms tight around his chest, his shivering body wracked with pain emanating from his cut right hand but even more so from his left leg. Gary glanced down, and his first crazy thought was that he was looking at the limb of a store mannequin that somehow had magically replaced his own.

But it wasn’t plaster or plastic; the bloody, managed limb was his leg. From the knee down his jeans had been torn away, revealing torn flesh looking like meat from a badly carved steak.

This can’t be real. This crap can’t be real. Just hours ago, I was talking with Donna, and now…

With one shaking finger, he lightly touched it. Nothing. No pain, no sensation. Encouraged, Gary pushed harder, then screamed. The pain was nothing like he had ever experienced. It was deep, sharp, exploding like a bomb and expanding into his guts.

That was fucking brilliant! A tiny malevolent voice chirped deep inside his head. Just like all the other fucking brilliant things you’ve done today!

Tears streaked his face and thick snot ran out of his nose; Gary felt his mind shutting down, knew that he was seconds away from passing out, and if that happened—sitting there wearing clothes soaking wet and in a freezing house with no heat—he wasn’t going to wake up.

“No,” he said out loud, using his voice to stay conscious. “I’m not dying today.”

But you are dying, you loser, the malevolent voice countered, and the sooner you realize it, the sooner the pain of your pathetic life can be over!

“No!” Gary said yet again. He forced himself to take deep breaths and slow his pounding heart over the demands of his shivering body that screamed for more oxygen and some form of warmth.

“I gotta get…dry clothes.” But where? There was no way he had the energy to crawl down the long hallway of the cabin to the master bedroom, but if he didn’t, he was going to—

“The laundry room,” Gary said. There was always a huge pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room, and that was just a few feet away.

See? the little voice sneered. Donna’s disdain for all things domestic like doing laundry might finally pay off for you yet!

Gary grabbed the kerosene lantern with his left hand and put it on the floor. The light feebly cut through the darkness of the hallway, but it was enough. With pain throbbing like a monstrous toothache in his left leg, Gary crawled the ten feet until the laundry room appeared to his left. Hardly any light from the lantern illuminated the room, but Gary didn’t need it; he knew that there would be a huge mound of clothes in there that Donna refused to wash (“I’m not your fucking maid, Gary!” was one of her favorite retorts to him asking her to at least do something around the house).

Gary entered the laundry room and reached the pile. It smelled of sweat, dirt, mildew, but it didn’t matter—the clothes were dry. With the last vestiges of his strength, he pulled the soaked garments off his portly (fat, Gary: you’re a fucking fat slob just like Donna used to say) body. As quickly as his shaking hands allowed, he put on dry underwear, long johns, five sweatshirts from his college days and two pairs of corduroy pants, then wrapped a t-shirt around his hand and a down comforter around his shoulders.

His heart pounded like he had drunk six cups of cappuccino and his leg ached horribly, but he was dry but still miserably cold.  The storm was getting worse, the entire cabin now trembling under the hurricane-like blasts of freezing wind.

“I gotta get a fire going,” he croaked, his throat dry and parched. Gary grabbed the side of the washing machine and stood. Hobbling down the hallway, he grabbed the lantern and slowly made his way toward the living room and the vast, stone-faced fireplace that promised him salvation and life.

But he stopped halfway there as light from the lantern shown into the kitchen to his right.

“I’ll get some water,” Gary said, “then get a fire going, then—” (Then what, fat boy? You have no power, you have no ride, you got absolutely nothing!) “I’ll wait out the storm and…someone will come by. Someone has to come by.”

He didn’t allow himself to linger on how illogical that last line of reasoning was, but instead limped over to the sink before yet another realization came to him: the cabin had a well for water, which required a pump to pull it out of the frozen ground, a pump that required electricity to work.

If there’s no water pressure I’ll…Gary turned on the faucet. Water flowed out and he scooped it with a hand to his mouth like a Paleolithic caveman. See? There’s pressure left in the system, you’re able to drink and then you’ll be able to start a fire and everything will be just fine!

His thirst was sated, but his stomach growled at the thought of food; he glanced over at the refrigerator, sitting silent and mute next to the electric stove.

I need to eat as much as I needed to drink. Just a quick snack