The Untimely Death of..

i'll kill you motherfucker. you're really pissing me off this time.

Oh, today is no different than any normal day. The wind blows through the trees, rustling up winter scents from the brush. Birds flutter around in the cold air, or at least those who have not flown south to better places. A gaze across a field reveals a moderately sized piece of land, about three hundred acres, surrounded by trees and a rusted barbed wire fence. Assorted animals can be seen grazing on the short grass, or a squirrel here or there gathering nuts or berries under a tree. It's a cold day, with temperatures dipping into single digits, and it's expected to get much colder. Yes, this is normal. Where would such dreadful conditions be considered normal you ask? Oh, I will tell you...

Our story begins in a rural town, away from the city lights and noise from constant traffic. Every so often a car might speed down a dirt road kicking up dust, disappearing as quickly as it came on, leaving nothing but pitch black and silence in its wake. No trace of it was there except the image of 2 bright headlights burned into your retinas. Brock has lived here on this bit of land for his entire life doing chores in the fields, tending animals and just generally keeping the land in good shape. His whole life, spent here on this farm, nothing ever straying from the ordinary. So routine has his life become, it almost plays out like clockwork, from the time he wakes up in the morning, to when he takes his boots off at the end of the day, done almost exactly to the second, day in and day out. Without even realizing it, this has become his life. What would a man steadfast in routine do if he were to be presented with a situation so completely out of his grasp of reality?

For the last week or so, Brock has been digging a small lagoon a ways back from the house. He has made some major progress thus far, excavating quite a few truckloads of dirt. The lagoon is getting quite big, already 5 or 6 feet deep and almost 10 feet in diameter. Emerging from the side of this hole about 3 feet down is a small metal pipe, used as drainage from the house. Brock works tirelessly every day, not giving a second thought to how unforgiving the weather has been lately. Temperatures such as this would render a normal man helpless. But Brock pushes on like a machine, shovel in hand, with a task to be completed. His work ethic is comparable to no other man.

Friday comes, and Brock is quite ready for the weekend. The radio weather forecast expects a cold snap to come through tomorrow, possibly bringing through a snowstorm. Brock has big plans to warm his lounge chair up, and enjoy a few cold beers watching the snow through the window.

Saturday, snow is coming down hard, already 8 inches and it is barely noon. "It's going to be a nightmare digging all this snow out of my lagoon when the storm has passed", Brock says aloud. His dog Bruiser picks his head up, and raises and ear at Brock almost as if he knows something that Brock does not, then he lays back down at the foot of the lounge chair. The rest of the day is mostly the same, quiet and slow. The only real activity coming from inside this small house comes from Bruiser who is acting very strange today. Usually a very sublime dog, Bruiser is, but he seems quite restless this afternoon. "Why do you keep walkin to the backdoor ol' boy?" Brock asks his companion, almost expecting Bruiser to answer back to him. Bruiser simply looks at Brock, walks toward the kitchen and laps a few mouthfulls of water from his dish, and goes back to lounging on the carpet in the living room at Brocks side.

Brock awakens in the middle of the night startled by a sound. "Bruiser?" he says loudly, shaken by what he thought he heard, "is that you rustling around out there?" Bruiser picks his head up at the foot of the bed, and Brock hears the chain around his neck jingle a bit. "Maybe I was imagining things. Lets try and get some rest ol' boy, we have a long day tomorrow when that snow quits." And Brock drifts back into his slumber, only to be awoken again not 15 minutes later by the most blood curdling scream he has ever had the displeasure of hearing, ripping through his ear drums like a chisel put right up to his head, and tearing down his spine as though someone has just poured searing hot oil the length of his back. Bruiser jumps off the bed and howls at the window endlessly.

The scream ends. Brock is shaking in his bed, almost afraid to get up and look out the window at what Bruiser is still howling at. But he fights his intuition to stay in bed, slowly peels the sheets away, and walks toward the window. Petrified at what he see's in his minds eye, expecting to see something much worse outside once he brings about the courage to pull aside the shade. In one swift motion he pulls the curtain open, almost ripping it off the wall entirely, and he gazes out the window at a beautiful scene of soft snow falling into the yard, lit by a full moon and a full sky of bright stars. "What the hell?" he says, as Bruiser looks up at him, and then hops back onto the bed and lays down. "What the hell???" he reiterates. "Did I imagine that? Maybe I was dreaming. Why did Bruiser get so excited!? Maybe.. No." Brock rambles on with a million questions in his mind, none of them answered.

Brock is roused at sun up by Bruiser licking his face furiously, but he is not in the mood for games. He hops out of bed in blinding speed, getting dressed even faster, ready to run out the door to get started on the days work. "Idleness is bad for the soul" he utters to himself, "I gotta keep myself busy." Brocks mind is in a thousand places at once, illustrated by his lack of remembering to put boots on before he swings open the back door and steps right into about 3 feet of snow. "Damnit!" he shouts, looking up to see even more snow falling from the sky. "Just my luck, this snow is never going to stop." He trots back into the house, changing his socks and putting some boots on. "No snow is gonna stop me" he grumbles, as he jogs over to the shed, to grab some stakes and a tarp to cover up the lagoon while he shovels the snow out.

With everything set up, the tarp covers the entire lagoon and brock stands under it near the edge. He starts to extract the snow very slowly at first, soon falling into a rhythmn, he works faster and harder. Before long, around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, the lagoon is almost entirely empty once again. He looks out from under the tarp and the snow has almost trapped him inside beneath the tarp. He laughs and pokes the snow with his shovel, and climbs out of his hole. "The snow is starting to calm down." Brock says to himself, more of a desire than observation, hoping his will is enough to bring an end to the unrelenting precipitation. Brock decides to take a few minutes to warm up inside, so he clears the snow off the top of the tarp, then treks back to his home. Bruiser awaits him at the door with his tail wagging exceptionally fast, as if Brock had been gone for days. Brock changes into warm, dry clothes and takes a seat in his favorite lounge chair with some hot coffee to relax for a bit.

"What? Who's there?" Brock says sternly. Seemingly unaware of his surroundings. "I must have drifted off for a moment, wow, its almost dark out. But the snow seems to have stopped. I better go clear that snow off the tarp once more in case the snow picks up again tonight." And so he bends down to give Bruiser a quick pet, grabs a coat, and makes his way toward the back door. A shadow rushes by the window in the back door at amazingly fast speed, Bruiser, close at heel lets out a bellow of a howl that startles Brock. "You saw that too ol' boy?" Brock says timidly. He opens the back door and peers out. "Nothing unusual here, c'mon boy." Brock barks like a command. He makes his way through the snow to the lagoon tarp, and starts pushing the snow from the top of the tarp and he feels something brush past his back. "Bruiser?" But Bruiser is about 20 feet away sniffing around the base of a tree. Brock looks around cautiously, and see's foot prints in the snow that were not there a few minutes ago. "That's odd." he utters, finishing his work at a bit of a brisker pace than before. "C'mon Bruiser!" he shouts, almost jogging towards the house ready to get back inside.

"Bruiser, this is too much for me, I don't know whats going on, and I can't take it anymore." "I know someone is playing a trick on me boy, but I don't know who. They aren't gonna be very happy when I find out ol' boy."

It doesn't take a shrink to realize it, Brock seems to be going crazy. A man so set in routine should not have tricks played on him like this. He has no idea what is happening, his mind darts from one thought to the next without any reason. Brock is turning into a dangerous man.

"I need some rest Bruiser. Maybe in the morning I'll get back into the lagoon and finish it up." But as soon as he lays his head on the pillow, there is tapping on the window. Brock opens his eyes startled and looks at the window but nothing is there. He lays awake for 20 minutes looking out the window from bed, but nothing happens, so he starts to drift off once again. This time he falls into a slumber for about 10 minutes, then is awoken by a banging on the back door. Loud banging, very repititious. Bruiser barks uncontrollably, but the banging persists. Brock runs to the back door wearing nothing but an undershirt, a pair of sweatpants, and some socks. He throws the door open, only too see a shadow disappear under the tarp into the lagoon. "NOW I HAVE YOU!" He starts to shout, but is interupted by the fact that the temperature is hovering around the teens. A brisk wind brushes through the yard and sends a shiver down Brocks spine, although he is not sure if it was the temperature that gave him the shiver, or anticipation of what is about to happen.

The temperature is of little concern to Brock though. He is FURIOUS at this point, keeping him restless for the past 2 days, not able to concentrate on even the simplest of tasks. Now is the time for revenge on this nuisance, whatever it is. Brock grabs the shovel resting on the side of the house next to his back door and trudges through the snow toward his tarp covered lagoon. The night is very dark, the mostly full moon shadowed by cloud cover leaves little light for Brock to see where he is going. Still he keeps his eyes securely fastened onto the tarp above the lagoon, nothing will be able to escape from the cover without him noticing. He stubs his foot on a tree stump and cries out, but keeps going. Finally he arrives at the lagoon, still covered by tarp. Brock walks around the lagoon once, then again, but stops halfway the second time and starts to crouch onto his knees. He is about to peer underneath the tarp, but he stops himself and stands up. "Why have I gotten myself into such a fit of anger? It's damn cold out here." But he is interupted by a shrieking coming from under the tarp! Brock cries out enraged, and he rips the tarp off the ground and flings it into the sky. Still too dark for him to see well, a dark figure leaps from the bottom of the lagoon toward Brock and latches securely onto brocks neck. He stumbles back a step, then steps forward and trips over a rock in the snow. Brock falls forward into the lagoon, impaling himself perfectly through the heart on the drainage pipe jutting from the side of the lagoon. He lay there motionless, as a racoon slowly walks out of the lagoon and glances back at the hole in the ground, slowly filling up with red liquid before turning again and wandering off toward the woods.

This is the untimely death of Brock.

This is where you die, sucker.