Playing The Game

Playing The Game - Chapter 23

Chapter 23

I gasped loudly as I slowly became conscious and pain rushed through my body. I was in agony, and at first I couldn’t even remember why.

But then I remembered Joel… him beating me unconscious… the gun!

He shot me!

Oh God, I’m dead!

Is this what death feels like? If so, it’s terrible.

I opened my eyes and scanned my surroundings, finding that I was still in my room.

What the hell? He shot me, I’m dead. So why am I still here?

I sat up very slowly, pain still shooting through my body; my stomach, my legs, everywhere. Touching my head carefully, looking for spot where the bullet had hit, I looked around for any sign of Joel. He wasn’t there.

My head was covered in blood, making it impossible for me to find any bullet holes. As I continued to look around, I caught sight of something in the wall next to me.

A bullet hole.

Joel hadn’t shot me. The bullet hadn’t hit me. I was alive.

Then I remembered that someone had come into my room just before Joel had pulled the trigger. The person must’ve moved the gun so that Joel didn’t shoot me. But I didn’t see the person. Had I imagined it? But I know Joel wouldn’t have just missed me. I thought back to the day that Joel had told me about how he liked hunting, and that he was really good at it. There’s no way he would have missed me unless someone had interfered.

But then who was the person? I hadn’t looked at them at all; I was too busy staring at the gun that Joel had like a deer caught in headlights. And where was Joel?

Hold on.

If Joel was planning to shoot me, and someone had stopped him, he’d be really pissed off. Who knows what he did to them.

And I’m just sitting here! I have to go downstairs and find out what happened while I was passed out.

I very carefully stood up, being careful of my leg. I made my way out of the room, slowly, so slowly, and went downstairs. Turning the corner at the bottom of the stairs, into the lounge room, I almost fainted at what I saw.

There, lying on the lounge room floor was Branden, bruised and broken in a puddle of blood. Joel stood a few feet away from him, covered in blood and looking pretty bruised himself, with the gun pointed at Branden.

“No!” I tried to shout, but it was barely audible, and I was too late.

Joel pulled the trigger on the little black handgun, and there was a (probably just to me) deafening explosion as the bullet seemed to shoot out of the gun and into Branden’s body in slow motion. I screamed loudly and Joel turned to me, an evil grin on his face, and shot carelessly towards me. It missed, and I quickly dropped to the ground. I started crawling towards Branden as fast as my broken body would let me, with Joel still firing shots at me. I screamed again as I felt a bullet hit my leg (the unbroken one, thank God), but I didn’t stop moving towards Branden. I could see his chest rising slightly in shallow breaths, and I breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t dead. I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it if Joel had killed him.

I heard Joel laugh bitterly as he stopped shooting at me. Suddenly there was one more shot, and everything went quiet. I looked around, wondering what had happened. Standing at the door, holding a gun similar to Joel’s, was Allie. She was breathing heavily, and had the gun still pointed towards where Joel used to be standing; he was now lying on the ground, blood beginning to pool around him.