InsaneJournal

Mail "Matt" Jeevas

credit to SilentReaper @ Deviantart

One.

A soft breeze seemed to come literally out of no where. There had been nothing—not a sight, not a sound, not a feeling, not a smell, not a taste—and suddenly there was everything. It started in his toes and moved up his legs, stomach, chest, neck, and finally brushed across his face gently. All his feeling had returned.

Two.

First, there was a feeling of pain. A sharp pain that seared his chest making it hard to—breathe; then, he could breathe. He could taste a strange hint of cooper in his mouth, the taste so strong he could smell it, which linger across his lips and seemed to settle in the back of his throat making him cough. Then it was fresh air. Large, deep breaths of the air. Next it was light. Behind his eyelids there was bright light, a red tint that swirled with yellow and orange as they rapidly moved past his closed eyes. The darkness had faded.

Three.

Life. He was alive! He was breathing, he was feeling, he was tasting, and even hearing a soft ringing in his ear. He was alive! Slowly he opened an eye and cautiously peered blurrily out from underneath his eyelid at his surroundings. He had sight—but there was nothing too see. Nothing overhead except a large blue sky and a bright sun that pained him to look at—which, he admitted, was a dumb thing to do. But the darkness had faded. He was alive.

Four.

Immediately, without even a thought of hesitation, Matt pushed himself to sit up, and, even more quickly, regretted it as he went crashing back to the ground onto his back. The pain in his chest intensified as a new pain rose in the small of his back and seemed to travel up his spine. For a moment, he thought to attempt sitting up again, but quickly dismissed the idea and instead opted to lift his arms to check if they were still working. His examined them lamely, turning them from side to side checking for holes and bruises. When he saw none, he let them drop across his stomach, ignoring the pain.

Takada's bodyguards had been trained with those guns after all.

Dread washed over him as the image of Mello filled his head. Had he suffered the same—fate? Could he even call it that? He had survived after all. Or at least he thought he was alive. But Mello—did their plan work?

Five.

Determination was the only thing that gave Matt the strength to attempt to sit up again. He was determined to find out where he was and what had happened. There was no possible way he could have survived having over twelve—at least he thought he counted twelve bodyguards; he was sure there could have been many more—clips emptied into his chest at point blank range.

Matt drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms weakly around them in order to keep himself balanced and sitting up. His auburn hair fell messily around his eyes making it hard for him to scan the surrounding area, but what he did see confirmed his beliefs that he was no longer in urban Japan. In fact, it looked like he was in the middle of a—desert.

Six.

He barely had time to ponder such an oddity when he felt an uncomfortable pressure against his abdomen and suddenly remembered the gun tucked in the side of his pants. He slowly removed it and dropped it on the heap of sand to his left, sighing deeply as he did so. Mello had given him that gun as a means of protection in case his plan had gone wrong. Matt had protested, but taken the gun anyway to ease Mello’s mind. He knew he wouldn’t need it, but he never predicted that he would have been so badly outnumbered and trapped the way he was. The plan had gone horribly wrong—he just hoped Mello had more luck.

Seven.

With another depressed sigh, grabbed the gun and tucked it into the back of his pants to keep it out of his sight. Then he combed his hair out of his face and shook it free of sand to his best ability. He was trying to avoid looking at the bullet wounds on his chest as he slowly began cleaning himself off and climbed frailly to his feet, stumbling a bit as he attempted to regain his balance. Looking down at his feet, he pushed himself to take a few steps forward and then a few steps backward until he was sure he wasn’t going to fall over.

His free hand dipped eagerly into a pocket in the front of his trousers, digging around for a second before pulling out a smashed packet of cigarettes. A few of the remaining sticks were broken, but one was all he needed for the moment—anything to take his mind off of what was going on. After finding a lighter and taking a long drag on the small stick, Matt tossed the box over his shoulder and began to walk aimlessly.

Eight.

He didn’t know where he was going, but that didn’t stop his legs from moving. There were kilometers of nothing but sand ahead of him, and he wasn't sure if he’d ever find anything. Was this purgatory? He was never religious, but he’d heard Mello talk about it in his solemn moments when he felt the world around him was perishing into darkness. Was this the place? A void of nothing but regrets and repents from the life that he had lived? Except there was nothing for Matt to regret except his own death.

He had lived a life of righteousness and was raised to believe in the absolute good even if it meant doing things that seemed wrong, but never was he against society or the law. He had been raised to be the law, and at times to transcend the law and shape the law into becoming the absolute good. That was L’s way.

Nine.

It felt like hours had past and the unguarded sun was beating down on Matt's neck and back mercilessly, but he couldn’t stop moving. He had reflected on every aspect of his life, from the smallest memory of his estranged mother to the feeling of the first bullet piercing his chest as he attempted to reason with Takada's twelve—or more—surrounding bodyguards. No epiphany was had and no relief had come from it all. He was lost.

As soon as the thought crossed his mind, a small image seemed to peek over the horizon of seemingly endless sand. It looked like a building or some development, although he couldn’t make it out completely from his distance. Without another breath of hesitation, Matt took off as fast as he could toward the image. His feet hit the sand hard, causing them to ache and his bones to feel as though they were on fire, but he refused to stop.

He ran and ran, each breath hurting more than the other, but nothing was about to slow him down. Finally, the image stretched across the horizon, growing larger and closer with each step until it seemed to tower above him. It was wider than it was high—a compound or resort of some sort. What else would be out in the middle of the desert?

Matt finally slowed his steps to a stop and looked longingly at the large resort several metres ahead of him. If the stretch of desert behind him had been purgatory, this was Heaven.

Ten.