A/N ... What can I say? Hmm, lemme think... What could sum up my absence from ff? What can I tell ya about my writersblock? How ashamed I am that it's been soo long? Or about how busy I've been up until the summer-vacation. Let me summarize it in one sentence...
I'm Bahaaaack!!
I'm not promising lots of updates, but I'm slowly getting things back together, which means updates on Bulletproof Dukes will be coming, but first... A story I'm working on to get back into the swing! It's angsty (Hellloooo, it's me we're talking about...), and probably a little dark, but most of all, it's Dukes!

So all I say is: Enjoy! (Ow, and please review if you liked, or didn't like...)

An unnerving scream tore through the hot summer-air, causing the few crows that had dared to come near to fly up, making themselves scarce.

The empty cornfield they had been eating from, was scorching in the sun, while an abandoned tractor stood silently, seemingly conveying the scene in front of him.

There were no other sounds after that last scream, except for the raspy breathing coming from somewhere behind the tractor. A breathing which was currently hitching, as the man tried to pull his leg free from the clutches of the large tractor.

After minutes of pulling with his uninjured arm, the young and shirtless man let himself fall down, as the sun beamed down on him with unrelentless heat.

"Damnit…" he breathed, knowing he was all alone now, and nobody was coming to look for him soon.

His uncle would be expecting him for dinner in a couple of hours. But he wouldn't worry if he was late, he would probably figure he was trying to finish his job before dark. So that left him with at least seven hours to kill…

He shivered at his own choice of words. Kill… Lying here in the hot midday-sun, with his leg trapped underneath the family's old tractor and a torn up arm which was bleeding a lot, he wasn't sure if he would make it that long.

Shaking his head, he forced those thoughts out of his head. There were other options… His cousins…

He knew Daisy was working at the Boars Nest, so she was out of the question, but his other cousin… He was supposed to be here with him, but thanks to the broken old fence, well with a little bit of General Lee thrown into the mix, he was in town to pick up new wood and nails to fix what they had broken this morning.

He almost grinned at that. The General was known for bustin' some fences around Hazzard. But why today? If they hadn't wrecked that fence, his cousin would have been working with him right now, he would have had somebody to help him.

Instead, he was alone. Even the crows had left, leaving behind silence, as well as a small, yet warm wind, blowing over his heated body, but not cooling him.

He felt the small droplets of sweat fall from his head. They fell just as steadily as the drops of blood that fell from his arm.

He silently cursed himself for his own stupidity. If he had just let the tractor stay in the shed, where it should have been. He knew it actually needed to be fixed, but in his haste to get his work done, he had ignored the fact and used the old barrel anyway.
So when the tractor had started to splutter, he had put it in neutral, jumped off and tried to take a look underneath it.

A rumble in the distance had made him jump up and hit his head on the thing, causing the domino-effect to take place. The tractor had started to move, but he was too dazed to notice. So while he was rubbing his head, the large vehicle had taken him by surprise as it toppled him, the huge wheel going over his leg once, miraculously missing his other leg, only stopping when the second wheel was almost over him. In his fight to get away, his arm had gotten caught by one of the sharp hooks of the antique tractor, tearing open the sensitive skin of his bare upper arm.

So here he was, lying underneath the rusty old vehicle, bleeding from god knows where, with nobody around. He knew he was screwed…

"Ninety-nine bottles a beer on the wall…"

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Duke farm

"Maudine, if ya keep movin around like that, I ain't gonna be able ta help ya," Jesse Duke mumbled to his old mule. The stubborn old thing had gotten a piece of barbwire around her leg, which Jesse was currently trying to get off.

After a few minutes of prying, he triumphantly held up the piece of wire, patting Maudine on the back while she wandered back to her food tray. Just as the older man got up to get started with dinner, a familiar roar entered his ears, as well as his lawn.

"Uncle Jesse!" the boy called, climbing out of the car with ease, "I forgot the hammer, have ya seen it lyin' around somewhere?"

"Well, if it ain't in the toolbox, check the barn, I've seen your cousin runnin' round with it yesterday," the old man answered.

A minute later, the young man came running from the barn, carrying the hammer in his hand.

"Gotta go, I'll be back before dinner," he shouted as he climbed into the car again.

"Pick up yur cousin on yur way back, I ain't sure that tractor's gonna hold out till he's back at the farm."

He got a wave in return, as well as the notes of Dixie and he smiled. Things were going well. The farm was doing good, the boys weren't in jail, or being chased by the law and Daisy had been seeing Enos for a while now. And even though Jesse was sure it was purely friendship, he was still happy for the two young ones, cause they seemed to have found a level of comfort together, they didn't have for a long time.

So with a light step and a whistle, Jesse Duke started the preparations for dinner. It felt like it was time for his famous crawdad soup…

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Hot…

He felt unbearably hot.

Somehow, the sun had turned in such a great position that it was now straight above him, its rays hitting him with such force, he had tried to crawl underneath the rusty tractor.

It didn't work though, since his leg was numb and even the rest of his body had refused to cooperate. Pain was no longer an issue. His arm was now numb, and only the warmth of his body was letting itself know.

Images were starting to form in front of his eyes. Things appearing before him that weren't really there.

At first he had dared to hope, as the orange form of a car seemed to come towards him. He had yelled until his voice became hoarse and his throat tightened.

The blurry shape didn't come nearer though, it only seemed to get farther away, and finally he had realized that it wasn't real. He had just seen his first mirage…

Well, if he had to be honest with himself, it was more like a hallucination, but in the scorching sun, with his hair plastered to his face and his skin slick with sweat, he felt like mirage was a more appropriate word.

A groan escaped his mouth as he moved a bit to see another shape coming towards him. The blue dot got bigger, and bigger, as well as the red cap that seemed to top the image.

"Uncle… J- Jesse?"

A few feet away from him, his 'uncle' stopped. A scowl on his normally kind face. His mouth started to move, but the sounds came a second later. It made the image even more surrealistic to the man lying in agony underneath the tractor.

"What have ya gotten yurself into now, boy?"

The boy on the ground shook his head, how could his uncle say something like that?

"It was an a- accident…" he whispered.

"Accident, my ass!" the voice of his uncle thundered, "Ya acted without thinkin', an' now ya expect me ta come and save ya… Well, guess what, I ain't gonna. Ya can lay there an' rot, ya hear me?"

Tears of pain and hurt formed themselves in the boy's eyes. His uncle was right, he got himself into this mess… But why wouldn't he help him?

"N- no… Uncle Jesse, p- please…"

"Please? An' I ain't yur uncle Jesse. Just cause yur parents didn't love ya enough ta stay, don't mean I gotta take care of every mess ya create… I didn't even want ya in the first place. I only took ya in cause Martha wanted a cause to care for…"

Denial fought for sadness in the boy's eyes as he tried to turn away from the hurtful words as well as the man delivering them.

When silence followed those words, the boy carefully turned to the spot where his uncle had previously stood, only to see nothing… Empty farmland as far as he could see, with a single crow hopping away from him as he flew up to sit on the scare-crow overlooking the fields.

Tired eyes followed the crow with fascination. If only he could be free to move right now, if only he could fly away from here… Those thoughts overwhelmed him, causing him to pull his leg, just once more.

"Pull it off…"

Whipping his head around, the worn man couldn't see where the scratchy voice had come from. It sounded like…

Looking up at the scarecrow, two beady eyes bore into his. The crow seamed to blink as his beak started to open and close.

"Pull it off!"

"W- what?" The man blurted out.

"Rip it! Tear it off!" the crow belted in a high pitched voice.

"Gimme some blood…" it whispered violently.

Turning his head around, disgusted by the scene in front of him, the man tightly closed his eyes, trying to ignore the bullying voice, still harassing him from above. It's just a hallucination, he told himself. Just a hallucination…

"Just do it!"

"It don't matter if you bleed out,"

"They won't even miss you…"

"Pull it!"

The annoyingly high pitched voice got higher and higher, eventually nothing more than a scratchy sound remained. But the words could still be heard.

"It don't matter anymore…"

"Do it!"

And finally the Duke boy couldn't take it anymore, turned his head and with a throat raw from exhaustion yelled at the being,

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

Tears mixed with sweat as his pleas got softer, "Please… Shut up…"

And just like that, the crow squeaked once more and flew away, leaving a Duke boy lying there with tears streaming on his face, while blood streamed down his arm, still pleading softly with an animal that wasn't even there anymore.

Minutes passed before silence returned to the land, only pain filled gasps filling the emptiness of the unbearably hot afternoon. Only if you listened hard enough, the flapping of wings could be heard, far, far away…