Julie Copper

Julie Copper stumbled through the woods blood marking her long path a bright red commentrail against the blank white snow. Her hand shook vilently, she could barley make a fist out her talen like fingers, nearly numb, wet from the big clumps of snow that fell melting almost as soon as they tuched her skin, could she pull the trigger on Louise's old revolver a sering path brought her thoughts back to the mission, a divine mission something was wrong. Well it was all wrong and it had been from the first moment she started scratching at her stomache and elbow. But something was even more wrong something inside it wasn't supposed to be like this some how she knew that. She looked behind her along the bloody path of snow every searching for pursuit, she saw nothing. She spent years in fight of the IRS but it was different now, they didn't want to deport her, now that wanted her dead, Her arms and legs oozed to blood from the scratching branches, she left foot bled thanks to the shoe she lost some time ago. The snow thing jaeged crust made every step a cutting crunch, she didn't know why her nose bled, is just did, But all those things were trivial compared to the blood she vomited every few minuets, she had to go on, had to go on, and fint the place where it would all begin. Julie saw two massive oak trees reaching out to eachother like century old lovers a freeze frame a prepeturarly long belonging, she thought of her husband Lousie Sagganan and thought of the baby. Then she pushed those thought aside. She could not think of that any longer, then she could think of that nasty thing on her stomache. She'd done what she had to do three bullets for Louise, one for the baby and one for the man with the car, that left one bullet. She stumbled then tripped she reached out to try and stop her fall. But her bloody hands punched through the knee deep snow. Her frigged hand hit an unseen rock bringing more flaring cold numb pain and she dropped head first through the white crust. She came up, wet snow and ice sticking to her exhausted face, then she threw up again blood gushing from her mouth and splashed bright red against the white, white snow, red and a few chunks of something black. Inside her it hurt, it hurt so bad she started to get up then stopped and stared at the twin oak trees the dominated a natural clearing. Bare branches sprawling a sketetal canapy atleast fifteen meters across, a few stubburn leaves clung to the branches fluttering slightly in the winter wind. She hadn't known what she had been looking for just that she had to waking into the woods, deep into the woods where people didn't go, This was it, this was the place such a long journey to end up here. She'd taken the man's car back in Jackson. The man had said that he wasn't an immigration police officer. But those people had chased her all her life and she knew better. He had stared at the gun, said he wasn't an immigration officer, and said he was looking for a movie store. Julie knew he was lying, she had seen it in his eyes she had left him there taken his car and driven through the night. And abandoned the car in Saganaw, there she hoped a freight train and just started watching for big woods as long as she kept moving mostly North it didn't matter. Moving North really was the story of her like, the farther North you went the fewer questions people asked. Childhood in Monklook Mexico, teenage years in Pagerious, then nine-teen she snook across the border and started moving thorugh Texas and beyond. Seven years of working, hiding and lying, always moving North. She's met Louise in Chicklisaw Oklehoma. Then together they'd work their way moving through North America, Saint Louise, Chicago, joining her mother in Grand Rapids, Mishigan, a breif change heading East. When Louise found a regular job in construction in Jackson, then the itching started. And not long after the urge to move North again. No, not just an urge as it had been before, the itching made it a mission. But finally, after twenty seven years of life she could stop moving, she started at the oak trees it wad the way they reached out to eachother like lovers, like husband and wife. She couldn't stop thinking of him anymore, couldn't stop thinking of her beloved Louise, but it was okay now. Because she could joim the path turing the red into a fuzzy pink, soon to be all white again Lemegra was looking for her again.