Emeralda: The Choice

What would you do?

It is a simple question, and it’s one that faces us each moment of the day.  The significance of the manner in how we navigate our lives, from one moment to the next, is contained within each decision we make as we go about our lives.

Your life is a course on a chart, mapped by you every moment.  Where will you end up?  It is not worth considering about free choice, if you are destined for a certain end.  The course is what this is all about.  We are all and each heading for a dirt nap.  How will you arrive to your own end? How will your journey have been? 

One extreme is to hide under the bed, avoiding engagement, and possibly missing true enjoyment as you age and wither and have no stories to tell after it’s all done.  Did you live well?

The other extreme is to crash and burn, but such a life is not long for the world, and there may be very few tales, glorious as they may be… 

However you go about navigating between the shoals and the storms in pursuit of living well on the map of your own life,

…at a certain point, in a very bad situation, you may be asked to choose between life and death.

In that place, you will find yourself to be all too human.

At the moment of TRVTH, you will flee.  That is in our DNA.  No fair calling coward on that. 

We are born to live, of course, and to seek pleasure and avoid pain.  At the final decision, we will opt to survive.

Hopefully, you will fight for your life with a chance to win, when there is nothing else left for you to do.

That is what Emeralda did.  Let’s see how she fared.

Reconsider, baby   by John Bonamassa  

Emeralda watched as the door slowly opened wider.  She should have fled.  Now it was too late for that.

Urine released from between her legs; an autonomic response to fear, perhaps to make the body less desirable to eat, and maybe to lessen the load for further action, so to speak.

She turned and ran down the steps for that was a weak location to stand and fight.  Her skin crawled and her knees trembled.  Adrenaline spurted into her arteries, causing her mind to flash images and her survival instincts to take over, to take command.

You will panic.

It is unavoidable.

Sometimes, it is necessary.

She tripped and fell, so she scrambled away on elbows and knees toward the side of the house.  Even in that moment, her instinct to protect her baby was with her.

She heard the footfalls down the steps and understood that there were two of them.

Oh.

No

She rolled onto her back and pulled her legs up to her chest, making herself a small target.

She heard the roar of delight from the first one and saw that he was covered in blood.  He was a large, powerful man, and he his hair dripped blood and chunks of flesh.  An odd thought occurred to her, which was this: He must not have very good table manners.

He dove down upon her and she slammed her feet up at his face.  She had tremendous strength now from adrenaline, for a very short time, and it worked.

His head snapped up and he bit his tongue and he went backwards, falling to the ground unconscious.

The second one was a blur.  He landed on her ribs with both feet and ruptured her diaphragm.  Her ribs pierced her lungs. Her stomach burst toward her throat and sprayed its contents out of her mouth.  She voided her bowels, along with prolapse.

She scratched at his face and dug into his eyes as he went for her face with his teeth.  She forced his eyeballs out and grabbed them, slippery as they were, and yanked with all of her might, ripping the connective muscles away from his skull.

She coughed and gagged, turning over on her stomach, attempting to swim up out of the depths, to find air at the surface.  She felt like she was drowning.  Her diaphragm would not intake air.

The world dimmed and became dark as she panicked.   

Emeralda left her mortal coil.

She had fought for her life and for the safety of her baby, until her last breath.

That is what any good mother would have done.

See you tomorrow.

---willies out.

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