Hitting the river ripped the air out of the young man's lungs. His eyes opened, but he saw nothing. The night and the storm had blanketed everything with an unrelenting darkness. His body convulsed violently. Desperate for air, his lungs screamed for help and his body complied as best it could. But there was no air to breath underneath the river's surface. His feet hit the bottom. His fingers grabbed at his chest. Water entered his throat.

But then, just as he begun to inhale the river, the current grabbed the young man and propelled him into the rapids. His back and a rock came together with a crunch, but the force of the collision expelled the intruding water from his body. The slanted rock and the current worked together, miraculously lifting the young man to the surface. Choking. Coughing.

Bleeding.

Breathing.

Alive.

He lived. And he felt the rain fall down upon him. But the fickle river, the savior and the assailant, was toying with the young man's life. The unrelenting current threatened to push him over. His hands clawed futilely for something to cling to. The skin on his fingers and hands ripped open as he dragged them across hard stone. He managed to gasp a lungful of air before he lost his pitiful grip and toppled into the water.

He slammed into a rock. Then another. Then a third. His head rose out of the water. There was a flash of lightening. He put up his forearm to protect his skull and he cried out as it met with stone.

He could see nothing without the flash of lightening.

So, he did his best to survive in the darkness. A rib cracked. The young man couldn't even scream as he was thrown uncontrollably threw the rapids. When you are drowning, your body doesn't allow for useless noise to waste precious air.

He slipped underneath the surface again. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to emerge after each time he went under. Ever rock he was slammed against hit him with a little bit more force. He hadn't been in the water long, but he was already covered in bruises and cut. His clothes were in tatters.

The young man went over another rock and disappeared. Again. And again. And again. Each time he fought to the surface, but he was losing strength quickly. He had become so tired. His legs were barely responding anymore. His left shoulder had become dislocated at some point and his left arm had been flapping uselessly since then.

He submerged.

His right arm reached for the surface.

There was bolt of lightening.

The young man saw that there were only a few inches of water between his fingertips and sweet, precious air. He forced himself up once more. But, as he gasped for breath, he felt himself sinking. Back. Back into the depths. Back to sure death. He was terrified to discover that his strength had completely slipped away. His legs outright refused to kick. His eyes widened with terror as the water quickly rose to his chin.

"This isn't right," he thought.

His mouth. His nose.

"This isn't right!" he screamed inside his head, "Its not my time yet! It isn't my time!"

His eyes.

"No!" he screamed, "Not yet! Not yet!"

The grandfather pulled the officer's sabre from its sheath with a flourish. The boys gasped, wide-eyed in wonderment.

The grandfather spoke softly, forcing the boys into absolute silence, "This is not a toy. It is an instrument of death. If I see either one of you trying to play with it again, both of you will be severely punished. Do you understand?"

They nodded.

"Do you understand?"

They nodded.

"Good."

He watched it. He could see everything as if it were day. He held up his hand to his face and was not surprised when he could see through it.

His body slowly bobbed along underneath him.

He wondered how long it would take before they discovered he was dead. A week? A month? Or would they just assume he had skipped town?

He thought of his family. His brother. He thought of the three bastards who had done this to him. He relived his entire life in a brief moment.

And, of course, he thought of her.

The young woman.

The young man didn't notice the sudden lack of rocks in the river. He failed to note the current's drastic change in speed. He missed the river regurgitating him onto its shore. He could only see his love's face. And he wept, "It wasn't my life to give. My life belonged to you."

Everything went black.

The young man woke up spitting blood and water. He opened one eye hesitantly. He had died. He was sure of it. And yet, there he was. Breathing. Bleeding. Alive and lying facedown on the river's shore. He felt the waters lapping against his toes and he quickly pulled them away. As he lifted his head, he could feel that half of his face was covered in mud. He tried to stand but when used his arms to lift himself up, the left one gave out and he crashed back into the slosh. Now, his whole face was covered.

He couldn't help but laughing. Which made him wince. The young man figured himself lucky if he had broken just one rib.

He rolled to the side that hurt the least and sat up. It was a long walk back into town and he was severely injured. But, there was a fire in his heart. And that fueled his steps something fierce. He limped seven miles home and barged through the front door. The young man stumbled to the mantle, ripped the sword from the wall, and threw its sheath onto the floor. The commotion woke up the boy.

"Brother!" the boy cried, "Brother, you're hurt!"

The young man mumbled a response before sinking to his knees. Weariness had finally overcome him and he closed his eyes. The boy leapt from his bed and caught the young man as he started to fall forward into the fire.

The boy shook the young man desperately, "Brother? Brother, what happened? Brother?!"

The young man's head rolled back and he grumbled, "Don't call the police... or... or the doctor..."

The young man passed out.

The boy did his best to drag him into bed and to treat his injuries. He worked alone. After all, the rest of their family had either died or left years before.

After passing out earlier that morning, the young man had proceeded to sleep the day away. When he came to, he picked himself up out of bed, changed clothes, torn an old jacket to make a sling for his arm, ate a bowl of soup, and picked up the sabre. Never once did he make eye contact with his brother. The small house remained void of words until the young man was halfway out the door.

"I don't think I'll be coming home," the young man said quietly, "I'm sorry that I'm leave you, too."

The boy simply nodded. He waited until the door closed to start crying.

The cover of darkness masked the young man's approach on the mansion. Not that he was attempting to be stealthy. Not that anyone was keeping watch.

The eldest brother parked in the auxiliary garage. He locked the car, closed the garage, walked to the front door of the house, and almost made it inside. While he turned the doorknob, he thought he caught something out of the corner of his eye. That something was vengeance.

The eldest brother fell through the doorway, bleeding profusely from a deep slash across his back. He crawled for the stairs, gasping for air as he drowned in his own blood. He left a red, sloppy trail up three stairs and, perhaps, would have continued further had he not been pinned in place. The two other brothers appeared at the top of the stairs just in time to witness the young man deliver the coup de grace. The middle brother, the largest brother, a true giant of a man, became enraged. His eyes bulged out of his head. He howled with fury. He tore a piece of the railing off with a single hand, brandished it like a club, and hurtled himself down the stairs.

The young man watched calmly. He had already experienced death once. He knew what its approach felt like. There was a flash before his eyes and he saw how he could die. And how to avoid it.

For the youngest brother, who remained frozen at the top of the stairs, it all occurred in a blur. The young man saw it in slow motion: the middle brother flying in the air, swinging the makeshift club in a fearsome downward strike that could surely crush a skull should it connect. The young man drew his sword from the dead man's back, dashed up three more stairs, and cut open the middle brother's belly as he flew past.

The middle brother was confused, his target having suddenly disappeared like that. He slammed into the tile floor shoulder first. His club was sent flying. Spittle burst from his mouth. He had meant land with a roll, but his body wasn't responding right. He skidded along the floor until his back collided with the front door. Shaking the pain from his head, he had already begun to stand when he looked down and saw that his entrails were spilling out. Panic set in quickly. He screamed and began grabbing his guts, frantically trying to shove them back inside his stomach. His hands quickly became slippery and wet. He slumped to his knees. Blood pooled around him. He lost the ability to grasp with his fingers.

The young man walked down the stairs, kicking the dead body out of his way. He coolly raised his the sabre.

The last face the middle brother made before he went into the afterlife was one not of pain, but of utter surprise that such a thing was occurring.

The young man watched the middle brother collapse. He watched the decapitated head roll to a stop. And then he turned around to finish off the last of the trio, but the youngest brother had already panicked and run. The young man bound up the stairs in pursuit. However, when the he turned the first corner, he was confronted with a long hallway and a myriad of identical doors. He was perplexed. Then he heard a woman's scream and all color drained from the young man's face. But he knew where to go.

Before he could kill again, though, he was then confronted first by a rather strange problem: a closed door. His left arm was in a sling and his right was busy wielding the sword. He sighed, and kicked the door. It was surprisingly sturdy. He kicked it again. Nothing. He took several steps back, got a running start, and burst through.

On the other side of the room, the youngest brother had a knife at the young woman's throat and a revolver pointed at the young man. The two men made eye contact. Nobody moved.

The youngest brother's lips twitched into a smirk. The revolver went off. The young woman screamed.

The two men made eye contact again. Both surprised. The young man because he had seen the bullet coming and the youngest brother because the young man had dodged it. A bullet hole smoked quietly in the door. Two more landed beside it. A fourth in the wall. A fifth on the bed post.

And then it was over. The youngest brother's back pressed against the wall. The young woman pressed against his chest. The young man pressed against the young woman. The tip of the sword had inserted itself below the youngest brother's ribcage. It made its way upwards through organs, muscle, blood. It pierced the heart and lungs. And then it was over.

The head of the middle brother stared up at the young man; still wearing that same look of surprise it had held upon its separation from the rest of the body. It sat in a pool of blood. Beside it, the keys to the oldest brother's car.

The young man skirted his love around the mess and propped his sword against the wall so that he could open the front door. As soon as she was out, he bade her 'let go and walk to the car'. Grabbing the sabre once more, he hooked the keys with the tip of it, shook the blood off best he could, and tossed it into the sling.

As he turned to exit, he foresaw his demise and he ducked. Buckshot splattered the door. He barely stopped himself from gutting the mansion's matriarch. Old, frail, and nearly blind, she nonetheless held a double-barreled shotgun between two shaky hands. She struggled to fire it again. She cursed the young man lewdly. He grabbed the shotgun from her and threw it aside.

"Enough have died tonight," he said, "I'm sorry."

The couple drove off.

But a few days later and a few towns over, the young woman discovered that it wasn't over yet. She handed the young man a poster. It had his face on it. It was from her mother.

It read:

WANTED

Fifteen Million Dollars

A Reward For The HEAD