Dangerous Days of Daniel X

Chapter 52

“YOU READ MY DREAM, did you? I’m truly impressed.”

Suddenly Seth had a smile on his face. An awful, pinched smile, matched with an even more heartless gleam in his dark, demonic eyes.

“Wait! Maybe you’ll be impressed with something I have in the back room,” he said, clapping a claw to his head as if he’d been forgetting something. “Hold on, I’ll be right back. Don’t you dare go anywhere. You’ll love this.”

I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. Even his disgusting followers looked worried when he shouldered his way past them and disappeared down a long, dingy hallway.

They actually dove out of the way when he returned a moment later. He was holding something above his head. My eyes locked on it. Oh boy! An Opus 24/24 assault rifle.

“Say hello to my little friend,” Seth said. “Nothing like the cool steel of an Opus 24/24. And what a coincidence. I could be wrong, but isn’t this the same sort of weapon that did in your dear departed mother and father? I believe it is.”

The door of my cage screeched like a banshee as Seth flung it open. A chill raced down the ridge of my spine. Everyone was deathly quiet-the kids, Seth’s thugs, even Seth.

Slowly he raised the deadly rifle to his shoulder.

“What are you going to do now? Shoot me?” I asked with a fake smile.

A bloom of fire burst from the gun’s barrel. What felt like dynamite exploded inside my stomach.

“Good guess,” Seth said with a smile as I flew backward about fifteen feet and landed spread-eagled on the floor.

What can I tell you about getting gut-shot? It’s bad. About as bad as it gets. Excruciating is the tip of the iceberg. I could actually feel the bullet deep in my stomach, feel its heat, feel it burning into the torn tissue that surrounded it.

I slapped my hand to the wound as blood-red blood, not green or anything-started pouring out from between my ring finger and pinkie.

The most sickening sadness laced the pain as my vision started to blur, then flicker. I wondered if this was how my mother and father felt just before they died.

Talk about having a sucky last day, I thought, as I fell away into darkness.

And I had kind of liked Terra Firma too.

I would miss night baseball, sno-cones, Spider-Man, the Winter Olympics…

White Castle sliders, Bart Simpson, did I mention sno-cones?…