Compositions

When you are crouching for too long your legs go all tingly because the blood gets trapped at the back of the kneecaps. Currently this was the state of Spencer Daniels’ legs. He had been successfully crouching undiscovered behind a rock for close to an hour. It was beginning to get painful but Spencer knew that if he moved the two guards on the other side of the rock would alert the rest of the camp and this mission would be undoubtedly over, not to mention Spencer’s career in do-gooding. So he sat and winced.

Spencer could hear the guards talking not more than four feet from him. He wished he had brought his recording device but it couldn’t be helped now. He simply would have to remember what they said.

“I hope that little spy is caught. He frustrates me!” one guard said.

“Yeah, every time we build a new secret base some random wanna-be-hero is popping up and infiltrating our defenses.” The other guard agreed.

“To be honest, I thought this time would be different because we built this base up here on top of Ice Mountain. I thought the cold would be too much for someone to be sneaking around and spying. I mean if this guard job didn’t have such great pay and benefits I wouldn’t want to stand out here!” The guard commented. “My hands and feet would turn blue and fall off.”

Spencer felt like that might be the case if he didn’t do something soon. The cold was creeping through his boots and into his toes. It began to numb his feet, which in a way was good because it slowly overpowered the tingling feeling. Still he listened.

“Well, once they find him I am sure the boss will be inclined to torture a little information out of him. I bet he won’t last ten minutes once the boss starts in on him.” The guard said.

Spencer hoped they would say the boss’s name. He knew most of the villains in the area and would know how best to deal with one or the other depending on whom it was. He suspected that it might be Aram Sebastian Hunter because of the elaborate base on top of Ice Mountain. It seemed a little bit out of any other villain’s league but you could never tell.

“I know I could think of a bunch of ways to get him to talk,” the other guard said, “I would freeze him and then thaw him and then freeze him again and then…um… then microwave him and then feed him to…uh, the abdominal snowman.”

“Don’t you mean the abominable snowman?” the guard laughed. Spencer almost did too.

“Yeah, that guy. Does he eat people?”

“I don’t think he even exists. Hey, speaking of eating lets do a little sneaking of our own and see if the vending machines have any candy bars.”

“Ok,” the second guard said enthusiastically. “All this guarding makes me hungry!”

Finally after far too long Spencer heard the two guards voices drift off towards the main building. He waited thirty more seconds just to be safe and then slowly poked his head up over the rock. There was no one around. The thirty or so yards from the rock to the main entrance were empty. With a moan and a gasp Spencer rolled onto his back and stretched his legs to their full length. Blood rushed to his half-frozen feet.

Suddenly Spencer’s eyes grew wide with pain. His legs felt like they would come apart in a million places. (If you have sat on your leg too long or slept cockeyed and then tried walking or moving you know the horrible sensation that is felt in a minute or so.) Spencer desperately wanted to jump up and shake off the feeling in his legs but knew he couldn’t without risking discovery. So for another ten minutes or so he wooed his legs back into fully functional appendages. Slowly he rubbed the pain and tingles out of them and the uncomfortable sensation faded. Ok, now on with the mission.

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To read the entire short story (16 pages) grab it from this link :

http://scottzeilenga.com/projects/SpDnIM.doc

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