September Short Story Collection

Double?

September 4, 2019

We stood in silence, waiting for Jens to start the meeting. He always tended to be late, he believed it gave whatever he was going to say more edge and seem more urgent. I just thought it was a waste of time.

Jens rushed into the room, followed by his ever-present shadow Nathan, my brother.

"Thank you all for coming tonight. Let's begin shall we." Jens sat down at the table at the front of the room while the rest of us sat in chairs facing him.

"What's this all about Jens? I thought we were safe." I asked.

Less than a week ago we had our final battle against the Naheshians. It had been a long and hard fight that had ended in many casualties on both sides until we alone stood victorious.

"Yes, that's what I thought too. But we were wrong."

The Naheshians were vicious people, small in number but still powerful. They had come onto our lands and tried to take them from us, but we fought back.

"There's more of them. We didn't kill them all."

Angry words filled the room, people couldn't believe it. How were there still Naheshians?

"How do you know this?" Shelia, one of the teachers, asked.

"Our scouts saw them come into their camp just south of the city limits," Nathan says.

"Are you sure they're Naheshians?" Frank, one of our best fighters, asked.

"Positive. There's no way it wasn't them."

People continued to talk over each other. People were scared and understandably. The fight against the Naheshains had almost wiped us out. They were smart and they were strong, they hadn't made it easy.

"What are we going to do!" I shout over the commotion getting Jens attention.

"Well, there's still much we need to discuss. If they have the same intentions as the others then we in grave danger. We should try and see what they want before we do anything. We don't want any more deaths."

"But we don't want any Naheshains on our land!" Someone yelled in the back, I wasn't sure who.

"I'm not going to let that happen, but we still don't know what they want."

"They want what the others wanted! They vipers! They simply take what they want and we can't let them do that!" The same man yelled in the back and many in the room cheered in agreement.

Whatever was going to happen wasn't going to be good. People were going to die. I could feel it. I always could. The minute the original Naheshians had gotten into town I had felt deep down in my bones what was going to happen. It had been like a chill that never went away. And I could feel it again.

"How many are there this time?" I asked.

"Double," Jens says.

"Double?" I couldn't believe it.

There was no way we would survive this. What were we going to do? We needed help, that's all I knew. But there was no one left to turn to but ourselves.

Word count: 507