EDIT: Ok, I have a question related to something that's been pissing me off recently. The last two stories I posted were written in Times New Roman font, and when I posted them it appeared with all this " [BLAHBLAHfont/] [/font]" crap that I had to go back and delete. So, posting this, I switched over to the pre-placed Veranda, and I still get the font text which I went back and edited out. If you do not read this story, then that is fine, but if you could please inform me as to how I can avoid this tedious task then I'd be very grateful. PM works just as well as a thread post. Anyhow, if you are here for the story, then I apologize for the ramble. I hope you enjoy the read.
The gold chain on the door rattles as someone hammers it from the outside. The strength and rapidity of the pounding makes you freeze. You know that whatever is happening should not be happening. You also know that you asked for it, moving in with a drug dealer, settling for less to save what little you had. Part of you wants to run, but that part grows small and faint as the gold chain holding the bulk of the door tremors and shakes. You stand there, transfixed.
“Open the door mother fucker!” a woman’s voice, hysteric. You recognize it. “I know you’re in there you son of a bitch! You fucking son of a bitch!”
The door shakes as a large kick plants itself center. You hear footsteps on the pavement outside, drawing distance. You hear them again, now fast, a sprint. The door bursts forward, slams into the closet opposite, and flops sideways onto the small lift where your shoes are. You barely hear yourself scream over the thunder crack it makes.
The woman sees you. You see the gun in her hand. You look up and see the craze in her eye, and you recognize her then, your room mates ex girlfriend, the chick he’d been giving the stuff to for free, no charge, no compensation except for the loud squeaks you sometimes heard in the room over.
He’d cut her off a month ago, told her she was too fucked up. You remember. You were there. Then the calls started happening, and you knew then you should have gotten up and left, but you didn’t, because you wanted to save what you had left. At least, that’s what you told yourself. In truth, you had nothing left, and you’d fallen to the bottom, yes sir, all the way down, under to plunder.
She’d kept saying she’d make him pay, she’d make him pay, and he kept laughing it off, said the bitch would go away soon enough, and you laughed it off with him, and you’d both laugh it off over a beer, and for the fuck’s sake of it he’d let you shoot some of the shit, free of charge and no compensation. But those days, you see in those few seconds, are gone.
You don’t know how she’s gotten a gun, and before you can wonder you see a man much larger than either you or your bud step in next to her, a gun just like hers held between his palms. You don’t scream. You simply stare.
She lifts the gun and fires it. Pain like lightning breaks your skin and jettisons whips of heat through your thigh to your calf all the way up to your chest, and you thrust your head back and scream. She is about to finish when Sean—Sean, your bud, the guy you laughed about the bitch with over a beer and a shoot-up—comes around the corner of the living room with a pistol you’ve never seen before, a gleaming silver grin juxtaposed to the gray paintjob of the walls.
He fires, misses, and the black screen of the television you guys would sometimes watch Jerry Springer on shatters and sparks shards of steel blue. The girl stumbles back and hits her elbow on the door, causing her to slip the trigger and let off another bullet, which cracks the wall behind you. Crumbs pelt your shoulder, and you turn onto your stomach, then go into a crazed crawl.
You don’t think of where you went wrong or what other choices you could have made. You don’t think of past friends or lovers or any of the incomprehensible scenery one is supposed to when those last moments are clicking away and the big brother in black is sitting there with his legs crossed as he watches from the sofa. You are human, and in those few seconds your needs are human. Get away, survive, live another day to eat, drink, piss, shit, and if you’re lucky, fuck and shoot-up. You crawl, but your thigh has already become a blood red thumping drum. Your eyes are watery, and you note without humor that you have a headache and could use some Tylenol.
Sean fires off another round, misses. You don’t see the man lift his gun, take his time, and scrape Sean in the stomach. Instead you see the spurt of blood from both front and back as the bullet zips through, the dark circle that splatters onto the wall behind him, a dead maroon that darkens as you look closer towards its center. Sean drops his gun and falls with a thud. You keep crawling, elbow after elbow, your leg already a memory.
The girl walks over to him, gun in hand, a smile of lunatic triumph on her pale, acne-ridden face. The man she is with leans back against the wall and lights a cigarette as he scans the streets for any would-be heroes. He watches as a little boy run into his house, and watches as the little boy’s mother scoops him in and slams the screen door shut. All the windows in the house become hidden by closed shades.
“Where is it, Sean? Huh?” She has to breathe as she speaks, and the effect it produces unnerves you and stops your crawl. “Where is it you mother fucker? Huh? Huh?” She waves the gun with each Huh.
Sean is struggling to speak, his teeth bared in a grimace and his eyes near shut in a squint. “Fuck you, you little bi”--
The light from the gun blinds you for just a second, and the bang rings in your ears. Sean’s heads thud into the floor and droops to the right, facing you. His eyes are open, and his forehead is a red portrait with a black leaking hole its center. His mouth is hung open with the last word he wanted to say still trapped in that cave of wonders and lost treasures. You look up.
The girl sees you. You remember you shook her hand once and watched an episode of Seinfeld with her, while you were both doped up on Sean’s income. She lifts the gun, and you suppose she doesn’t remember you. The light momentarily blinds you, and the bang rings in your ears. But these two sensations last for no more than even the tenth of a second, because then there is only black, and beyond that, something words do not know.
The End
