Cancerous Mortality

"Life, it's what we got. We only get one. Depending on what you believe in your religion that is. So, knowing the facts above, and not being of the religion that believed in reincarnation. I guess I really just had a death wish."

It was a Friday night in the great state of Colorado and Rufina, named by her insane parents while they were high, drunk, or just hated that they had a child young so they decided to name her badly, was headed towards a party that a friend of a friend of a friend was throwing.

It wasn't odd that she was going to a random party. Random parties were what she lived on and kept herself alive with every weekend. The rest of the week she just skirted along the sidelines keeping herself hidden from the view of society. But when it was the weekend, well the weekend was when she came alive and gave the world a big 'Fuck You'.

The house was small, the noise was big. It was like an earthquake had started in Ru's chest and rumbled her innards around making them squish together in a gut soup. But that's what she loved about parties. They made your mortality show through the cracks and seams. Maybe that's what she craved, the test of mortality.

Ru, which you should call her if you don't want to be sucker punched in the jugular, slipped through the masses of people and headed for the kitchen. That's where they kept everything she wanted, that's usually where you could find her most of the night. And tonight was no different then any other night, well that's what she thought anyway.

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Four and a half red cups later and Ru was starting to feel the buzz. It drifted around her brain and made her want to laugh but she didn't, that was far too unprofessional for a party guest. So she just turned and made a grab for the bottle of Jack Daniels again before a voice interrupted her.

"Hey Ru." She looked up and spotted a guy she went to school with last year before he graduated. Looks like someone still hung around high school parties.

"What'ya want?" she asked, filling her cup to the brim.

"We're playing a little game in the basement and we need another person. You're always saying you're testing your mortality. Wanna test it differently tonight?"

"Sounds fun. Try anything on me though. I'll gouge your eyes out with the leg of a table." she threatened, walking towards the basement door with the guy, who she thought was named Brad or something.

The basement was unfinished, beams and vents were showing on the ceiling and the walls and floor were made of cracking concrete. There were no windows in the room and just a gloomy light bulb hanging from a wire lit the place up. It was the perfect setting for some wild and stupid thing to go down and Ru was going to be a part of it.

There was a card table set up in the middle of the room, four chairs around it. And people were lounging around the room drinking and smoking various things.

"Got our last player boys!" Brad yelled, causing Ru to roll her eyes and look around the room at the other 'players' as he was calling them.

Most of them looked like the random high school students that were wandering around the party upstairs. But a few of the people that were sitting on the other side of the room looked like young murderers. A few looked like 'gangsters' but there was a guy in the back that looked like he wasn't one of them, yet he still had that 'bad ass serial killer' look going down.

"You got a girl?" A guy asked, disgust swimming in his voice.

"She's cool man. Go ice your damn nuts or something." Brad said, earning a laugh from the guy in the back.

Ru wandered over to a couch and sat down near the mysterious guy that was guzzling down a bottle of something.

"Know what we're playing?" the guy asked suddenly, looking over at her. She shrugged and downed a bit more of her drink.

"Something that has the potential to kill me. Went to school with Brad so I wasn't really expecting a REAL answer as to what we're playing until I sit down at that table and it's too late." She paused and looked over at the guy who was leaning over with his legs propped up on a red milk crate that served as a coffee table, "What is it that we're 'testing our mortality' with?"

"Russian roulette."

The light above the table swung slightly as a guy screamed and pulled the trigger, making a click echo through the otherwise silent room. He yelled out in achievement and Ru stared at the layer of sweat forming on his forehead. The gun moved on to the guy on the left of Ru, the guy she had talked to. She had learned his name was Tucker and he was the owner of the gun.

"Someone's gotta die sometime." a guy said from across the room with a tone that just screamed 'i'm bored somebody spill some blood'

"Twenty bucks it's Mr. hotshot here." Another guy said, motioning towards Tucker.

Ru looked over at Brad as he leaned against the wall across the room with a bottle in his hand. Everyone seemed to need liquid courage or some sort of drugs to even be down here.

"Hold this for me princess." Tucker said, handing the cigarette he had been holding to Ru.

She took it and proceeded to take a drag off it as Tucker spun the chamber and locked it back in place.

"You can have that if the worst happens." he said, winking at the girl before placing the barrel against his temple and pulling the trigger.

Another blank and Ru was handing the cigarette back before Tucker handed the gun to her.

"Try not to get any blood on it honey, that's my best one." Ru smirked and took the gun from him, noting the weight of it. It was a pretty heavy gun, or maybe she just hadn't held enough guns in her life.

"Will you hurry the fuck up?" A guy asked, Ru thought he was the same guy that wanted Tucker dead, but she hadn't been paying much attention the whole time.

The alcohol was getting to her head and she was thinking about what could happen in just a few seconds. She could be dead, and that made her heart race and adrenaline pump through her veins like the blood flowed. It was pretty insane that she was excited to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger to see if it'd go off or not, but she was excited.

"Maybe i'll just point it at your head and see if it goes off? Sound fun?" Ru asked the guy. He went a little green around the gills and shook his head.

"Then shut the fuck up and maybe I won't kick your ass after this." She stated, placing the barrel against her temple in the same fashion everyone else was.

Ru winced slightly, one eye closing, as she pulled the trigger and heard the same click as everyone else had. She sighed and shrugged before setting it on the table in the middle. Now that everyone had gone they would switch players and so on. Once everyone in the room went they would rotate the players around. And if someone died.....well hell, someone was going to be dead by the end of the night, Ru could feel it.

She stood across the room with Tucker as they watched the next round of players, who included Brad and the other guy who kept wanting someone to spill blood. Tucker leaned against the wall next to her, watching the new group intently as he sipped from a bottle of whiskey.

"It's going to be the blabber mouth." Tucker muttered to her.

She looked over at Tucker and raised an eyebrow.

"Why do you say that?"

"It's my gun. I know my gun like it's the back of my hand. He's going to be the one spilling blood, trust me."

"I'll believe it when I see it." Ru said, lowering herself down to sit on the floor.

She could still see all the people at the table, since the table was positioned just right in the room. She watched the guy before Brad pull the trigger and nothing happened. She then watched as he fell to the floor and began thanking God in Spanish while he crossed himself.

There was something with watching them pull the trigger that made her wince. Well she knew what it was, it was the fact that one of them could get sent into the depths of death with just the twitch of their finger if the odds weren't in their favor. And that, was a pretty shitty situation to put yourself in if you weren't all in with the cause.

Another blank and the gun was being passed to the guy Tucker dubbed as the dead one. It was like a huge glowing target was on him now and Ru bounced her foot rapidly in anticipation as he cocked the gun and held it to his head.

"Definitely him." Tucker murmured from above her just as he pulled the trigger.

A huge bang filled the room and time stood still for a moment. But the second the guy started to fall out of the chair, a red river cascading down his head, the room went crazy. People were yelling and looking down at the guy. One guy was on the floor and shaking the dead guy, like he would just miraculously wake up and say 'hey guys it's just kool-aid not blood!'

"Time to split Mort." Tucker said, grabbing Ru's arm and pulling her up off the floor.

He weaved through the people quickly, dipping down to grab his gun from the dead mans hand, and then shot through them to the stairs.

"Mort?" she asked as she followed him closely up the stairs and into the main house that was still in full party mode.

"For Mortality. Thought it'd fit, besides its a funny name for you." Ru rolled her eyes and slipped through the lingering people that were talking and laughing. All because they didn't know that a dead body was downstairs that very moment.

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When they hit the sidewalk Ru decided it was time to part ways. It would be harder to find two people going in opposite directions then it would be if they stuck together.

"Well, that was a rush and I can't say I regret playing, but this is where we part Tuck."

“Guess it is. Don’t go doing anything stupid.” he said.

“Oh, I probably will, it’s what I do. So that little piece of advice, will go unheard.” Ru said, smirking at Tucker before she turned and started down the sidewalk towards anywhere but there.

She left him standing there as she turned the corner and took off running, wanting to get away from what she had left and seen back in that basement. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She had no problem testing her own mortality. It was other people she had a problem with, maybe they didn’t want to die. Maybe they didn’t want to test their mortality the same way she did. They were probably just roped in with booze and the promise of fun.

And that’s why she didn’t like being with others when she was being reckless. She didn’t want another person with her when she jumped off a bridge into the lake below, she didn’t want someone with her when she ran across streets in traffic. She didn’t want them there because she didn’t want them to see her blood splattered on the cold hard ground. It was her own fate for doing something stupid, they didn’t need to see it.

So that was why she ran, she ran faster then ever and careened around corners, almost falling over into a patch of rose bushes that someone in the neighborhood had out in front of their house.

She just wanted to get somewhere, do something, anything to get the dead guy out of her mind. Her running faltered at a bridge that lead out of town. It was a bridge she had come to as a child, one she had spit off numerous times with her, then, best friend.

She ran across it, stopping at the end and hopping over the guardrail. She slid down the dirt embankment and landed at the bottom, having her feet get wet from the river she had nearly been engulfed in. She carefully picked her way next to the river, walking slowly so she didn’t fall in. She didn’t feel like getting soaked tonight since the temperature was dropping pretty fast, and there's an uncanny fact that being wet just made you colder.

She hummed a light melody under her breath and held her arms out to the side to keep her balance as she walked quickly and quietly under the bridge where some slabs of concrete lined the river. She climbed up, finding a huge space that went back a few hundred feet and the back wasn't visible due to the darkness.

"Hey Hannah." Ru murmured as she sat on the edge of the landing and swung her feet down off the ledge.

"Been awhile no? Someone died tonight. I didn't really care for the blood but i've seen dead people before so it wasn't too bad. But I still hate the way their eyes look, so cold and vacant, their souls gone to wherever it is you go after death. I'm still trying to figure that out I guess. Haven't seen my life flash before my eyes or anything so I guess i'm not getting close enough to death for it."

Ru paused and listened to the frogs croaking downstream, the crickets chirping along with them, and the hoot of an owl somewhere far off.

"You did though Hannah. It was really stupid what we did.....and i'm sorry." she sighed and lay down on her back.

Staring up at the ceiling that was the underside of the bridge. It had been here that Hannah, Ru's best friend, had failed the test of mortality. She had jumped from the bridge, thinking the water was deeper. Or maybe she knew, they always went down there and waded through the water so she could have, she did know that it would never work. The water would never engulf her and caress her body from harm, from death.

She had done it right in front of Ru, saying that it was stupid to test their mortality with little things that didn't really mean anything. If they really wanted to test their mortality they would do bigger things, things that got other people killed before. And that's why she jumped off the bridge. If God was really on her side, she had said, if she was really meant for something. She would live.

So she slipped from Ru's sight and hurtled towards the ground. Ru didn't look until she had heard the deafening sound of her friend hitting water. And when she looked, all she saw was the river running red, and her blonde haired friend being swept under the bridge by the current. The police found her a quarter of a mile downstream, a branch holding her in place.

They questioned Ru for ages, and she told them she wasn't there at the time. That she hadn't looked over the bridge and seen her best friend splayed out on the ground dead as can be. Because she hadn't, she had run the moment she saw Hannah slip out of sight under the bridge. She had run until her chest hurt and then she had run some more. She finally collapsed in a field and sobbed her eyes out until one in the morning.

And from that moment on she made it her mission to get as close to death as she could. So she could maybe, just maybe, get a glimpse of her best friend once more. And sometimes she did, but only for half a second, and then the smiling blonde was gone again.

"I didn't see you tonight. Have you seen that kid yet? Or did he go to hell, or heaven. Which one are you in I wonder. Anyway, tell him i'm sorry none the less. He didn't want to die, no one really wanted to die....." Ru whispered.

She stared at the ceiling and she swore she saw Hannah smiling down at her the way she always did when Ru did something ridiculous.

"Neither did you.......did you Hannah? What a stupid game we play." Ru let out a bitter laugh and sat up, "Sometimes though....."

A car sped over the bridge, sending loud echoes through the underpass that faded after a few minutes.

"Sometimes I envy you. You were done with playing around, but i'm not I suppose." She tilted her face upwards and looked at the spot where she had seen Hannah, "I'll keep playing until i'm ready for the big leagues. And until then, i'll do it one false bullet at a time."