Life and Death

This is a short story I wrote from an English project if you find any errors I'll be happy to hear from you and I'll be happy if you could send your feedback

Part 1: Life

Darkness. Jayne awoke to find herself, looking up toward the heavens, with someone inflating her lungs with warm air. She sat up violently, making her forehead collide with the upper jaw of the very person who had saved her life. Her mind was spinning and she collapsed back on to the cold snow and fell back into darkness.
Several hours before Jayne had been showing off for a man, who she thought was very handsome. She had been following him all day trying to get up the courage to go and speak to him, but she had only managed to walk by and flick her striking blonde hair behind her head. She had decided that she would follow him down a steep hill covered in thick, heavy, snow and try and beat him to the bottom. This however, ended up with her tumbling down the hill, pasting out, the handsome man having to resuscitate her, and taking her to the ski resort’s hospital.

Lucas and Jayne were barely even friends, but their love seemed to be destined. Jayne lived in London and so did Lucas. Within a year Lucas and Jayne, were married, despite the anger that Jayne’s family had expressed upon Jayne’s return to London. Jayne belonged to a wealthy family and they had suspected that Lucas had just been after the family’s money and estate. During that winter, Lucas and Jayne moved into their new home, which could have easily been mistaken for a medium sized hotel. Over the next week, Lucas found it incredibly difficult to spend the days in the house, because he had no job to go to. When Jayne went off to work in the mornings, he would be left to unpack all the knick-knacks and other things Jayne owned. All of his possessions would have, with out a doubt, fitted into just one of the rooms in the house.

Lucas spent the following week unpacking, when the weekend finally arrived, he went skiing with Lucas and her friends. Jayne and Lucas joked about their meeting when Jayne fell on her back-side after trying to copy a sliding stop from Lucas. When the weekend of snow and fun was drawing to a close, Jayne would soon be sitting back in her comfortable office chair surveying all the people under her. Lucas on the other hand didn’t fancy going back to London just yet. So he chose to stay behind for a couple of days, despise Jayne nagging about Lucas needing to find a job soon. Lucas was not swayed in his decision by Jayne’s tears of separation. He was staying.

After confiding with his wife, Lucas was released from her arms. Jayne said that she would be back at 2’oclock on Wednesday evening and that Lucas better be packed and ready to leave. The cabin where Lucas would be staying was an hour and thirty minutes from the bottom of Mt Gretchen, and from the bottom of the mountain it was then another three hours to London. Jayne was taking Wednesday off to come and pick Lucas up. Then they planned to spend that night at a romantic hotel in the town at the bottom of the mountain, which was named Hairsfern. Hairsfern was a small town which was buried in snow for half of the ski season. Hairsfern was named after the man who first climbed Mt. Gretchen, Lord Sherlock Hairsfern. He set up base camp at Hairsfern and named it after himself. The town was surrounded by history and that is what drew Lucas to stay there in the first place.

Once Jayne had left, Lucas felt like a great weight had been lifted off him. He picked up his belongings, which consisted of a backpack, which contained his food, his cross-country skis and a suitcase, which was filled with all his cloths and toiletries. He clumsily picked up his things and headed to the cabin’s sturdy front door. The cabin was old and made of pine logs. As he walked, the snow compacted under his heavy hiking boots. On his first night at the cabin, he dreamed of tree branches, stretching up into the sky, like dead fingers grasping at life. He spent the next day cross-country skiing on one of the many trials that led away from his cabin. His only thoughts dwelled on nothing but his strange dream and if it had any significant meaning.

As the arrive time of Jayne drew closer… 1:45pm… 1:46pm… Lucas thought of the pervious days experiences. While he had been watching the Tuesday morning news report, he had heard a suggestive noise outside, like someone trying to sneak their way around to the back of the cabin. Lucas stood up and traced the noise around the walls of the cabin, with his sharp hazel eyes. His ears listened for more snowy foot steps. He heard a foot step and his ears flinched at the sound, after having been listening so hard. They were moving toward the rear of the building, possibility to the back door. Lucas made a grab for a knife at the kitchen table and wheeled around, starring at the back door. He stood their for several tense minutes, just staring. Until, he finally musted up the courage to open the door. The door swang outwards and hit the side of the wooden exterior. An icy wind swirled through the door frame. No one, no foot prints, no more sound, nothing. He was sure some one or something had been there, but the facts didn’t add up. He was sure he had heard something. As 2’oclock ticked by, Lucas went back into the warm cabin. He sat by the heart-warming fire and took a book out of his suit case and read, read on into sleep.

He was awoken by a women’s scream. He sat bolt upright and looked in the direction of the scream. It had come from the cabin’s front door; a dark couple had opened the door and were standing in its arch, and a key dangling from the women’s finger. It turned out that they’d rented the cabin for Thursday and not expected any one to be there. Lucas had slept through the night and Jayne had never shown up to collect him. He explained this to the couple and they offered to give him a ride back to Hairsfern, so he could catch a taxi back home, or get enough mobile phone reception to call some one.

Lucas was dropped outside the taxi terminal in Hairsfern. He thanked the couple and walked into the reception area of the taxi terminal. He took out his phone and used the speed dial to call home. Wear could Jayne have gotten too he wondered. It was not like her to be so... so… Lucas didn’t know. It just occurred to him that maybe he had rushed into the marriage. There was no comforting voice on the other end of the phone, not Jayne’s at any rate. His own voice sounded in his ear playing the pre-recorded message saying that no one was home. Lucas hung up the phone and looked up at the clear white ceiling. The only thing to do now was to catch a taxi home.



Part 2: Death

Every heart beat became more of a struggle as the seconds pasted. Her blood pumped rapidly around her body, because it was the last function her body could preform to keep itself alive. The blood became thick as it pasted out of the deep slashes in her skin. Her veins slowly emptied and the blood tricked onto the snow covered ground, staining it a dark eerie red. The blood was melting the snow with the heat that it still possessed. Mind and soul were been called to the underworld where they would not rest peacefully until their killer was discovered and dealt with accordingly.

The delicate crisp snow flake fell from the grey sky and floated down to earth. It floated on the light breeze that drifted through the trees. The flake landed on the cheek of a beautiful woman with rosy red cheeks. But there was no life left in those cheeks, only the make-up still shone bright. More snow flakes fell silently onto the women and covered her with an icy blanket, as a taxi pulled into a drive way many miles away…

Lucas stepped out of the taxi and thanked and paid the driver, before making his way across the lawn, to the house. His feet sunk into the heavy snow cover, leaving deep indentations. He casually climbed the front stairs and walked between the two white columns that framed the door. Lucas retrieved his keys from his coat pocket and trusted them into the doorknob and turned. The door swung open on its hinges and Lucas entered the entrance room. Lucas yelled at the top of his voice, “Jayne, are you home? Jayne please answer me. Are you here?” There was no reply; the only sound was the roar of cars, which could be heard thundering along the distance road. Lucas looked to his right and spotted the stairs that led to the second floor, he consider that Jayne might be asleep in their bedroom.

He moved toward the bottom stair and placed one foot on it, a long creak rang out through the room. Lucas ignored the noise and continued to climb. He ran his hand along the cold rail and moved onto the second floor landing. A long hall lay before him, at the end was the master bedroom. Two other doors led off the hallway. Lucas creped past the first door, behind it was the study. He paused and looked at the door. The study contained the office where Lucas did all her work while at home. Lucas pressed on, walking straight past the red door of the bathroom. The rest of the length of hallway to the bedroom was lined with family photos. Lucas pushed on the bedroom door and strode into the dimly lit room.

Lucas walked over to the window and hastily drew back the curtains. Sunlight flooded the room, but it didn’t fall on a human figure, as Lucas had hoped. No one else was in the room. Suddenly a thought occurred to Lucas and it was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air, because Lucas was now short of breath and it felt like no more oxygen was entering his lungs. He spun around and tripped over himself as he rushed from the room. He headed down the hallway and stopped at the bedroom door. For a though had came to his head, the bathroom door had never been red.

He stretched out his hand toward the surface of the door. His finger tips came into contact with blood. Lucas violently tore back his hand from the door and wiped it on his shirt. He nudged the door open with the tip of his shoe. Terrible thoughts raced through his head, he couldn’t control them. He was starting to panic and couldn’t focus. He peered round the side of the doorframe. The room was no long what humans could describe as a normal room, for evil had changed the room, it was only what can be described as a saluter house.

When the police arrived on the day Lucas had returned to his home in London, they found his dead body on the kitchen floor with a knife stabbed into the chest. It was ruled a suicide. Many police man and women didn’t dare enter the bathroom after seeing the faces of their work colleges who had entered before them. Jayne’s body was never found. Her parents bulldozed the house, one year after the couple’s deaths and never spoke of it again.

The site Lucas saw on that day would be forever burned into his memory and he knew it. He would have had nightmares about the scenes he had witnessed and those images would follow him till his dieing days. He would never rid himself of the feelings, the smells, the tastes and the sounds of that room. His mind could no longer continue to live whilst it could still remember that place. Rather then face it, he ran, he ran to the only place where he knew he could hide, death. The Authorises packed away the case file and left it in a dusty old warehouse, where it still sits waiting for a brave soul to solve its mysteries.

Written by Adele Lucas