Scott D. Halfacre

Copyright 2000

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to anyone living or dead… well… there’s a LOT of people in the world, hopefully I write "real" characters… but it’s all a mistake if it resembles someone.

Written while listening to the group PORTISHEAD: DUMMY

The ground is blanketed by snow, surrounding everything, burying everything.

Almost.

The air is cold and brittle like glass. And with a bite just like the cut of broken glass it whipped at Samantha’s face.

She sat staring at the steam rising from the body in front of her and the blood mixing with the snow, causing it to look almost black. The gunshots were all center mass and perfectly placed.

Her closest friend of the past ten years was executed by the best.

"What do ya say Sam?"

"Stop it!" Sam rolls further back into the couch with laughter.

"Aw, C'mon!" Tracy said while playfully tickling her best friend. "Give it up!"

Sam rolls into a ball trying to protect the one spot that always makes her have a fit, her stomach.

"You know you want to tell me," Tracy touched her forehead with the back of her hand wiping away the slightest bit of moisture on her brow. "I don't know why you see fit to make me go through this."

"If I just told you, it wouldn't be as much fun." Sam’s unconscious sweeping movement of her right hand, which she uses to tuck her long brown bangs behind her right ear, is on display.

"I suppose not." Tracy’s perfect white teeth glistened in the sunlight coming through the big picture window of her parent’s home.

They left Tracy the house in their last will and testament. Tracy knows that was three years, four months and sixteen days ago. The house was practically in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains in Colorado. But it was Tracy’s house now and she meant to use it for skiing whenever she could.

"You’ve had the job now for six months and you haven’t told me anything about it." Tracy pouted.

"Girl’s gotta keep some secrets." Sam did that crooked smirk that Tracy learned over the past ten years of friendship that meant she was thinking.

"I can see the wheels turning Gamble!"

"God, you know I hate my last name." Sam pulled herself to the sit on the edge of the plush couch.

"That's why I use it Gamble," Tracy sat opposite her friend in a chair that looked too big for her small frame, "ta bug the hell out of you."

Even though Sam weighs more than Tracy, she doesn't look it. Sam is a little less than six feet tall with shoulders square enough that she doesn’t need shoulder pads. Her straight and flat brown hair is all one length just below her shoulders, her nose just a hair too big for her face, and a slim athletic body that only gathers stares from people she’d rather it not.

Tracy is more the type of woman that makes heads turn, on both men and women equally. She’s a half a foot shorter than Sam is, with curly blond hair down to the middle of her back, a perfectly sculpted nose, and the best breasts she could afford. In all she’s strikingly beautiful in appearance.

"Trace?" Sam crossed her long legs. "You remember what my guidance counselor said I'd be good at?"

"Mrs. Blanchord?" Tracy tucked her legs underneath her rear while looking up at the ceiling to look for help.

"Yeah," Sam looked across the space between them, but her mind was more on her task, "she always called me a--"

"Whore!" Tracy exclaimed interrupting her friend while giggling at the memory.

Sam did her crooked smile.

"You’re kidding!" Tracy sat up in delight.

"Yes," Sam smiled in achievement, "I am."

"You bitch!" Tracy waved her left hand in a dismissal way at her friend.

"I never liked Blanchord." Sam did her unconscious sweeping movement with her hand again.

"Obviously!" Tracy giggled. "She always said I’d make a great therapist."

"See?" Sam did her crooked smile. "What the fuck did she know?"

Sam’s tears were drying in the cold hard wind faster than she could get them out. Her eyes felt like they would crack.

"…Sam?" Tracy gurgled just barely audible over the wind.

"Yeah Trace?" Sam wiped away some blood from Tracy’s mouth while leaning closer to hear her friend’s words.

"There was a time," Tracy reached for her friend’s stomach and touched the one spot that could always make her break down in laughter, "wasn’t there?"

Only this time no laughter escaped her lips.