The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 46the Villista horses as they charged the lonely caravan. The Villistas had followed the American convoyfor several hours, and then laid in wait until the early hours of the morning. Now they were charging,intent on raising quick hell with the Americans and then slipping back into the desert. They beganfiring towards the trucks, and were quickly answered by the American rifles.Jose was by this point rather unimpressed with the Villistas. This was the third time he had seenthem in action, and both of the previous times they had performed more like the turkey half of the shootthan anything else, from what he had witnessed of events. Thus it was with a mixture more of boredomand resignation than anything else that Jose started to climb down from his perch on top of the truck.He went down the side of the truck that faced away from the Villistas, with the intention of crawlinginto the ditch under the vehicle so that he could join the firefight.The bullet arrived at the same time Jose did, a stray Villista shot that passed under the truck andthen just through the top of Jose's left knee. His first sensation was the impact of the bullet hitting hisleg, the hardest blow that he had ever felt in his life. This was followed immediately by the surprisingsensation of his point of view turning sideways and dropping towards the ground, his left leg knockedout from under him by the force of the bullet. Jose had the presence of mind to try and crawl into theditch under the truck, where he would be out of the line of fire. There was another soldier already inthe ditch, and he assisted Jose by pulling him in and turning him onto his back.The pain was unbearable, burning and throbbing, angry and evil, carving its name with awicked blade across Jose's soul. The soldier that had pulled Jose to safety was applying a compress totry and stop the bleeding, which only made the burning worse. Jose's vision started sliding backwards,the light from the world getting slowly smaller and smaller as he slid further and further back.Eventually, when all that he could see seemed very far away, his body jerked once and it felt to Joselike he had just bounced against some sort of surface and was now ascending back up.Strangeness awaited him as his consciousness slowly slid back into place, but it was a
The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya 47strangeness that Jose was immediately familiar with. Just as it had during the battle outside of AguaPrieta, time had wound itself down to a fraction of the speed it normally moved, leaving Jose to watchevents unfold around him in slow motion. Even the waves of pain that continued to break over himfrom his shattered leg were moving in slow motion, and he could feel each one build and swell before itwashed over him and slowly retreated away with a few small grains of his consciousness.Lying on his back, Jose was able to see only a small rectangle of daylight between the bottom ofthe truck and the lip of the ditch. The stars that he could see through this tiny window pulsed like tinyglowing hearts and swirled like a Van Gogh painting. He tried to sit up and failed. He tried to turn hishead and failed. The most that he could do was to turn his eyes back and forth, so that he could swinghis vision from the rectangle of sky on the one extreme to the soldier who was stuck in timecompressing his wound on the other. The soldier giving aid to Jose was frozen with a combination offear and intense concentration etched into his face. Jose decided he would rather watch the stars swirl,and turned his eyes back to the lip of the trench and the rectangle of sky above it. The stars continuedto dance and swirl, making their own kaleidoscopic patterns in a show that only Jose could see. Hewatched this dance of the stars, and realized that as long as he kept his attention there the waves of painwere not quite so intense.With time slowed down to an imperceptible crawl, Jose had no way to judge for how long helay there before the dark shape passed in front of the stars. At first he thought that perhaps a cloud haddrifted across the sky, but then concluded that any clouds that were in sky were probably just as stuckin time as everything else. As Jose watched, the darkness moved back and forth across the small areaof sky that he could see. It was definitely not a cloud, then. Without thinking overly much, Joseremembered that as he witnessed the battle outside of Agua Prieta he had been able to adjust his visionto focus on what he wanted to see. He looked directly at the darkness and focused, and his mindreeled.
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The Long and Storied Life of Jose Montoya

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