Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • Free Essays • My Term Papers • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Creative Writing How to Cheat the Reaper How to Cheat the Reaper George Brams shivered, despite the warmth of his new car. But George never felt completely warm these days - eighty years had taken their toll on his body, and his tissue-thin flesh provided no barrier against the malevolence of a chilly December night. While locked into familiar routine of driving country lanes, George's mind drifted back to the events of the previous day, and even of the past year. Just when he thought he could safely assume that his old body held no more unpleasant surprises for him, such as his cancer scare a few years ago, strange things had begun to happen. First, there were the voices. They had started about two years ago. At first, he had assumed that an insect had become trapped in his ear, yet he quickly realized that there was not an insect in existence that made this kind of unearthly noise. They seemed to whisper to him from a great distance, yet they sounded remarkably close to his ear. He couldn't quite make out what the voices said, although he had strained his weak ears in the hope of recognizing a stray word. But the voices seemed to slither through the air, continually changing, yet always present. George even thought he recognized some of the voices - of late, they had seemed to increase in volume and urgency, which let the voices spark a fleeting recognition from him - but his memory was old and tired, and the recollection of a familiar voice was swamped in grey and disappeared from his mind. George's heart skipped a beat as he was pulled from his memories by a cat jumping into his car's path, its life saved only by George's still impressively quick reaction. After a few minutes the adrenaline began to leak from George's blood and his breathing slowed. Again the hypnotic nature of the cat's eyes studded along the black road drew George into his memories. He remembered what had happened after he had seen the doctor about the voices - the nightmares. Terrible things that waited until his mind was asleep and open to suggestion, and then dived in, filling the old man's head with such terror that he often awoke himself with his pitiful screams. Before, his wife would wake him before the nightmare reached its surreal and horrifying conclusion, but now Rose was… gone. And the nightmares were able to exercise their full terror upon his mind. For months he fought to remember what it was in the dream that caused him such terror - but, as is often the case, the relief of a sunny morning and the shortcomings of an eighty-year old mind served to wipe them from his memories. Tonight, however, he had remembered the final, terrifying image that awakened him so often, screaming as though God Himself had cursed George - the image of a decaying old building, rotting slowly into the filthy mud on which it stood. It was to this building that George drove on this cold, black night, fearful, yet curious, and determined to find out exactly why this old house made him scream like a stuck pig. George caught his breath as the narrow country lane gave way to a dirty wasteland, punctuated by the discarded rubbish of its unseen daytime inhabitants. George tutted involuntarily, forgetting his fear, for he was on the local council. Must make a note of that, he thought. It's those hooligans in the area again. Across the muddy wasteland, the headlights of George's car gradually began to pick out the image of something in the distance - an old, decaying building, standing on the filthy stinking mud that constituted the banks of the Thames. George pulled his vehicle into the adjacent car park, turned off the engine, and leaned back in his seat, breathing heavily. He had always prided himself on his fitness despite his years, but now George could suddenly feel his age, which sapped his strength and thinned his bones. It was as though time had suddenly caught up with George. Ahead, the crumbling building creaked gently as the chill December wind blew through its Edwardian once-splendor. George breathed out quickly. He did not know what he now expected to happen. The voices had not gone - in fact, they rose to new levels of intensity and anger, almost as if an unseen crowd milled around his head. With a sudden and obstinate fury that surprised even him, George got out of the car, slammed the door, and began striding toward the building across the deserted wasteland. Pausing briefly as the building loomed above him, he stepped inside through the doorless frame and looked around. And old kiosk stood forlornly in the corner, its glass long since smashed and vandalized. The rest of the dingy room was in a similar state of disrepair, covered in graffiti and littered with empty beer cans and tin foil-covered plastic bottles that were the signs of recently vacated teenagers. On one such expletive-strewn wall, an ancient peeling poster declared the departure times of long mothballed ferries. Deep in the recesses of his ancient mind, a memory surfaced and gradually faded into vision. This same room, cleared of its rubbish, freshly painted, and filled with the faces of smiling soldiers, laughing and joking, ready to join the fight. A vision of a happy, optimistic time, of young men in search of their own slice of glory. The Eye before the Storm. And then a second memory surfaced, buried even deeper than the first. Darkness, broken only by the occasional ghostly twilight of a flare, which lit the decimated lunar landscape of the battlefield. Broken, shattered buildings, trees lying at obscene angles, and the sound of a machine gun barking its deadly warning. The distant boom of the guns that shook the hastily constructed trench with their very roar. And, most vivid of all, the thick, cloying, stinking mud that clutched at his boots with every step, as though the countless corpses contained in it clamored for the living above to join them. A little way down the trench, his friends, the same who had accompanied him on the ferry trip from England, laughed and joked as they shared a pot of stewed beef. George was on lookout this night, his keen young eyes scanning the devastation of no-man's land. And then, suddenly, the distant glint of metal caught his eye, and George saw the familiar shape of grey coalscuttle helmets that framed stark Germanic faces. George opened his mouth to sound the alarm, but instead a small squeak came out, and he was suddenly overcome by a fear of death so strong that he immediately lost all of the will to fight and instead began to scrabble for refuge like a drowning rat. Quickly, George dived into the rancid mud and lay still. George winced as the cries of his dying friends were carried on the breath of the freezing fields. But, as he knew full well, his friends had no chance. And sure enough, the screams stopped, to be replaced by a series of harsh cheers and laughs from the Germans, who made their way back to their own trenches with the spoils of the raid: three loaves of bread. Presently, George dared to lift his head and open one eye when the last sounds of the enemy faded into the distance. Just down the trenches lay his friends, grotesquely contorted in the throes of death. His very best friend, Peter Lamington, lay with dead eyes staring. Then the filthy stinking mud claimed its welcome new prey. George found himself standing back in the decaying waiting room of the ferry terminal where he had been taken to hell all those years ago. Tears running down his cheeks, he stumbled blindly in the dark, the voices in his head menacing now, mocking, sneering at George. He recognized the voices now, the voices of each of his friends that the mud of England had claimed over half a century ago. In a panic, George stumbled onward, sixty years of guilt and shame streaming down his wrinkled face. In his confusion, he began to run down the decaying departure corridor. Suddenly, with a crack, the ancient floorboards gave way and he fell into the stinking yellow mud beneath the decrepit building. In complete darkness, George whimpered as the mud seeped through his clothes. He was going to die here; he knew that for sure. But still George was determined to cheat Death, overdue as he was by sixty years. George slithered on top of the slimy mass and moved slowly, spread-eagled so as to distribute his weight evenly. With a grunt, he slowly crawled across the mud, toward the dimly lit shore and the safety of his car. The voices were louder than ever now, buzzing, cackling, and mocking - he screamed with the pain, as though his head would explode. George raised his head in disbelief. The sound of silence was as alien to him now as the voices had been when they first started, but quickly the familiarity of normalcy crept back into his mind. He stood and tried to walk through the mud, but his foot seemed to be caught. He reached down to pull it free, but his hands became stuck and his ancient body collapsed into a ludicrous position. Fighting back the rising terror, George desperately thrashed, trying to free himself from his captor. He yelled in terror as something rose from the mud. A hand was rising out of the filth. George's screams were eventually muffled as the hand wrapped around his face, pulling the feebly protesting old man into the mud. As George took his last breath before his face disappeared forever, he felt a strange tranquility descend upon him. Bibliography: Word Count: 1650
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