An Emotional Find

AN EMOTIONAL FIND

Well, upon that chosen early Wednesday morning, it was a crisp cold winter morning where the temperature was cold enough that it was brought on by the swift wind-chill factor. We had decided to meet each other at a far end of the forest around seven am. I was waiting for Craig in the embracing cold with my Thompson rifle and some rope which were lying on my old rebuilt racer sled. From the distance, I could see Craig sporting a Browning automatic rifle hanging on his left shoulder and dragging his trapper sled behind him. I did notice that he had also brought some rope for harnessing his catch.

Our friendship was certifiably comfortable with each other’s current situation and points of reference. Around 2:30pm, there was still bright sunlight, yet the daylight was going to be quite limited. Craig was able to spot a great target to take a shot at. Quietly and carefully, he had clearly taken out a vigorous elk. The slain animal had never seen the bullet coming; it had keeled right over to its’ opposite side, very hard. We were able to hear a heavy thud to the cold ground. I ran ahead of Craig to assess the dead remains before anyone else would dare to attempt to make this claim, while he was bringing over his rope and his sled. Once we were both struggling to mount the hefty cadaver onto his sled; Craig had strewn his rope over it for both of us to tightly harness it on his toboggan.

Next Craig had wanted to help me bag my own, this time; he had offered to be a close look out by using his binoculars. It wasn’t until around 4pm when darkness began to loom and have light flurries. Knowingly, my chances were getting slim as the day progressed and I had to make due to whatever was left in sight. Fortunately, at that same moment, I had noticed a young robust male moose, grazing in the freshly covered meadow. View his oblivious posture; I would say that he wasn’t a full grown adult, yet just young enough for me to comfortably lug back to the house.

While Craig was keeping a close eye upon my prey; I began to anxiously reload my Thompson rifle. I was so tense about accidentally losing my opportunity; I had dropped and lost a few fresh bullets in the immersing snow. Calmly, I had crouched down in a military-style one-knee bending stance and vigilantly aimed at my target. Patiently, I had slowly pulled the trigger and fired. With my first shot, I was able to quickly cripple this wilderness creature, but not killing it right away. Then, I had to hastily take a second shot to put it out of its’squirming misery. I had dropped my firearm, grabbed my rope and ran towards the corpse where fortunately no one else, but us, was around to witness or hear of the capture of the slain animal.

We had each been able to bag a deer carcass to bleed out and to be stripped down for cooking meat. A forecasted winter snowstorm was beginning to hit hard; we had decided to head back with our hunted possessions before it would be too dark & late to see our way home. We each were dragging our slaughter game was firmly binded by thick rope on large wooden primitive hunting sleds. These cumbersome cadavers were getting harder to pull while treading through the accumulating sunken fallen snow. It made each of our convoys a lot heavier than before the blinding blizzard. No matter how obstructing this going to be for me, I was simply determined to arrive home with my proud accomplishment.

While the blinding snowdrift was getting worse, it was further obscuring our frontal view and began burying our initial trails into the woods and then we had apprehensively to make new ones to return home. It became quite a very difficult journey with the embracing glacial wind in our faces and each of us trying to drag our captured game. There’s no way that I was going to permit my dead cadaver to be left behind and feed to the wandering crows and parasitic vermin.

The visibility walking had become increasingly very poor and quite dangerous. From a blurry distance, we had spotted the old desolate house; it became the closest shelter that we could find to temporarily wait in to keep warm and for the strong wind to die down. There located was the surrounding oddity in a dead end corner where the county forestry line begins. It’s an abandoned dwelling where most superstitious airheads would either immediately consider it be reputedly haunted or a fire trap. It’s unknown to many of us in the residing vicinity why it was boarded up and left for decay when the last inconspicuous owners had passed away; no else had ever dared to either claim it or have it destroyed for any further constructive progress. Once, we both had arrived inside the opened, sheltered area; at least the wind wasn’t coming in, but we did use some loose panel boards to shovel out the accumulated snow to arrange for more room to carefully camouflage and compactly protect each our game. I was able to cover both of them with a folded tarp that I had always taken along for shielding purposes.

It was part of my hunting kit that consisted of some wooden matches, a flashlight, a small pocket knife and two bottles of water. I would never risk in bringing any kind of electronic communicating devices along with me because they are always quickly rendered utterly useless in every kind of atmospheric outburst. Mother had always entrusted me to be out on my own at least for a 24-hour grace-period after I had left the house. Then, I would eventually tell her what I was doing & where I had been through within the last day’s encounters. Somehow through my youthful identity, I had always been fortunately permitted to be behave upon my own principals.

After we had both laid heavy stones upon the ends of the extended tarp, it was to keep it from blowing away and wrongfully exposing our fresh catch to the threatening elements. As we entered the side door, we could see upon our immediate left was the entrance of the kitchen boarded up, tightly. My immediate thoughts about this unusual site were someone was trying to hide something on the other side of these nailed panels, right before deserting the premises. The only available passage way to us was towards the basement. Without any hesitations, we both wanted to stay safely warm until the storm would subside before we could each head home.

While going carefully down the stairs and peering safely through the banister rungs, we had noticed that the entire floor area was a former recreation room that was furnished with an old wood stove with a small bar area, a damaged dartboard and a snooker table with two legs which broken off. By closely studying this ravaged site, somehow there had been a brawl that had last taken place and left in a hurry. I did also notice that the heavy thickness of dust particles which existed in this reclusive chamber had been very thin. It was like the last time that someone was here had been a while ago. There were several unrecognizable dried up boot prints which had stained the plastic-tiled floor.

Whence time goes by as one’s intrigue is caught in broad fascination and curiosity of scouring and investigating some new surroundings; I had decided to look out one the basements windows, we had noticed the fast night-time snowfall was coming down harder than usually. From my watch, it had shown roughly ten minutes after 4pm and peering out the basement window, the eerie sound of the howling wind had become a ghastly phantasmal foreboding. It was completely dark with the heavy snowdrifts were resembling a heavy downpour of impenetrable frosty barricading stakes which we were both being secluded from the full view of the star-lit skies’ eternal vastness.

In a disparagingly pausing instant, we were looking at each with confusion, this temporary imprisonment in a broken down dwelling had become utterly unexpected. We were both apprehensive about the current state of each our capture game in the embracing cold. Our common priority was stemming to look forward to safely storing them to an extent of a possible freshness.

Stranded in an abandoned house with very little provisions to last for the both us through the entire night; we were hoping to ride out the storm for the next few hours until it died down.

While Craig had decided to wander around amid this limited area, I was crouching down to open the stove door and I was fortunate enough to find some old charred remains in the firebox. In another part of this abandoned musty room; Craig was able to scrounge some old left over yellowed newspapers scattered around on this dusty-ridden floor. They were all going back over thirty years about a syndicate crime that happened at one of the reputed banks located outside of town. Counterfeit money had been circulating for several months before anyone had caught on. It was certainly too late for any definite apprehensions and no actual arrests were made under suspicious circumstances. Whoever committed this fraudulent act had needed to create their instant bank account and clandestinely left the area.

With the wooden matches which I was usually been carrying with me; I was able to start a small blaze. Now, I had to somehow recover further more wood somewhere in order to keep the flames burning for the next few hours. I thought about breaking up some of the worn out and discarded furniture in the room and the bar stand to continue the combustion. We would need to obtain as much light & heat to stay sane and alert in our present surroundings. Also, I couldn’t help noticing some dark broken brick-like stones which were strewn all over the floor.

Both of us huddled near a heated, yet a forsaken fireplace; we had to be very careful of any possible incendiary complications. I could tell from Craig’s composure had possessed some real apprehensions about our current situation, being temporarily fortified, together. We simply had no means of communications nor had we any choice to remain sheltered. Knowingly in a winter crisis like this one, the entire neighbourhood was living in a power loss. Everyone had been compelled to wait out the blizzard.

So in order to subsequently entertain ourselves to keep our minds off the howling winds and the banging snow thrusts against these thinning worn out walls; I had taken the initiative to spark up a discussion about the phony money that we found in the house. The first queries going through my mind had been: Where did it all come from and who was responsible for smuggling it, here.

In a moment’s surprise, I was being revealed to Craig’s sensitive, yet hidden side. He had begun to nervously whimper while his tears of trepidation were slowly beginning to noticeably emerging. With my arm subtly cast around his shoulder, I began to console him and calmly inquired what was wrong. By asking what was troubling him; he had mentioned to me that was claustrophobic that he felt trapped in an abandoned abode with very little escape from the merciless blizzard. While being close vicinity with him, I had hugged him for reassurance.

During this brief tender moment; I had voluntarily kissed him, in comfort. Even aware of his prominent homosexuality; it was startlingly seeming that I had instinctively came onto him without any consternations. I just couldn’t explain this indiscriminate and most passionate moment that we shared. Both of us had been profusely perspiring in a cold damp drafty basement. It was quite obvious that we both felt something electrifying happened between us. Otherwise, beforehand, I had never thought of him in this manner.

Craig had been stunned from what the randomly found; there were two scattered currency bills which he retrieved from the dusty floor. Craig had quickly assumed that he was fortunate enough to amass himself a small fortune. There were both each a unit of one thousand dollars. I had swiftly thought this is too good to be true as an instant find. Then, I had courteously asked him to hand me of them to for me to closer examine it in the glowing light of the shimmering fire. My doubts were being ignited; my weary curiosity was getting the best of me by cropping up some definite suspicions. I may not possess the expertise of either a currency or a document expert, but I had once previously seen and held a $1000 dollar-bill before in my hands once before and something it seems to be quite different about his one than it what usually suppose to look like.

Bringing it in front of the incendiary light; I had found something really peculiar about the obvious transparent watermark. The glowing penetration was illuminating a stamped profile that was some kind of sect-shaped emblem that I wasn’t able to recognize. Was it a form of strange Masonic symbolism? Was it an underground cultist profile that I had never heard of? Or was it some kind of ‘ funny money ‘ prank that someone wanted to promptly pass it off as the real thing?

I had hastily concluded that it wasn’t legitimate legal piece of tender because it didn’t possess any recognizable features and besides I had inadvertently got some pasty congealed ink that rubbed off onto my thumb. Craig had also though that this was unusual. In increasing my inquisitiveness to a higher level, I was compelled to throw into the flames and the results had confirmed my initials suspicions.

As this monetary circulation was beginning to burn; its’ incineration was allowing to turn it into a glowing red flare. Evidently, these were the chemical agents which had been enlightening the peculiar reasons used to create this criminal prevalence. Anyhow, that would clearly explain the intricate engravings upon these strange coloured broken bricks which were found secreted under a weak and loose wooden floor panel. Here was found an unusual concealed compartment where most people would never think about ever looking.

Then many other questions came up in my mind; are any of these people going to one day return to claim them? Since, it had been over thirty years since this caper had occurred; the remaining possibilities in my mind were seemingly remote. Are they still alive, imprisoned or dead? Would they make another attempt to retrieve them? Who else would know about this?

The moment that a myriad of queries had been quickly emerging in the back of my mind; I wanted to find out where did this monetary imitation really originated from. Fortunately, on the dirty scattered charred soot on the floor, there were old yellow-faded newspapers from over two decades ago. The reputed headlines of that era were mentioning an attempted bank heist from a big town located about two hours away from here. The descriptive articles were stressing that very little financial loot was gone, but several cash deposit boxes had been brutally ransacked for specific valuables which bank management had refused to release any of the specific details of their contents to the press for reasons of client discretions.

Yet they did mention that the insurance agents were to immediately make up their losses without any hesitations. The police investigations for these heinous crimes had been somewhat subdued from the public knowledge by high-ranking financial officials. At that time, very little news readers had ever bothered to be further inquisitive why this particular was quickly wrapped up and recoil from the public eye.

Frankly, these ambiguous headlines had certainly now aroused my own intrigue. Who had dared to commit this crime and why was it immediately covered up? Yet, I did hear a rumour about someone making instantly big out east dealing with real estate investments that the government had once held legislatively illegal to build upon these certain sacred properties. I really couldn’t wrap my mind around on this issue or take it seriously; because it was very hard to believe anything anyone said or heard about through the grapevine by the numerous unsubstantiated passing reports and conflicting outtakes surrounding this fleeting transgression.

Within the close assessment of the present situation; the chances of the rightful owners to return to recuperated then are extremely remote. They would be either too old & decrepit or simply deceased in order to retrieved these items. Frankly as we looked at each other with great haste; there was definitely a wide temptation that did exist in our minds to have them professionally refurbished in our favour would be a very risky scheme. Once, we further pondered and discussed the consequences of these actions; we had retrospectively decided to throw them into the meager flames of our temporary heat source. The odds of getting caught with these illegal contrabands would be extensive and dangerous. We would be better off to destroy this damaging evidence, instead of holding on to haunting reminders.

Craig had just happen to gaze up at the basement window and noticed that the colour of the evening sky was bright white. Around 1:30 am, we had noticed that the snowdrifts had lifted and we were both facing a tranquil neon pallid atmosphere where one could see in the distance without any shinning lights. Being mesmerized by nature’s rare winter nocturnal scene; it was decided for each of us to go home while traversing underneath a well-lit covered sky. Even though, we had seen other again from that very moment; we’d always remember this exceptional brief moment in our lives where our Friendship had surprisingly blossomed under the most unusual circumstances.