Shattered

Lightning shattered the sky, sending fractures of my past and present tumbling around me in the same manner as flying bits of the opulent glass window we’d destroyed. 

I never thought it would come down to this.

My hands quivered, holding the gun.

“Wuss...a real man would shoot me.”

I closed my eyes, rain crashing through the broken window, my finger trembling on the trigger.

Fifteen Minutes Earlier

The silver clouds hung with rain, like a weary man walking laboriously to the eminent gallows before him. The world seemed to slow to a halt, unlike the crimson blood that poured over my fingers.

“Jane! Matthias!” I knew they were dead and yet I continued to cry out as if their deaf ears could hear me.

“Too bad, they were a nice couple.” 

I looked up to where Edmond stood. I ran straight for him and he bolted. 

Sirens wailed as the rain began to pound down harmonizing with the caterwauling sound. 

The pounding of my feet on the cement.

The pounding in my head.

The pounding of my thoughts. 

Why did you stand up for him?

Why did you befriend him?

Why did you give him a second chance?

Why…

Why…

WHY?!

Edmond vaulted himself over the fence in the alley and I watched as an ashen object fell to the ground. I snatched it up wondering why anyone would be so careless with their gun. Then I followed Edmond, vaulting myself over the fence in pursuit.

The gun was probably stolen, or perhaps there was no ammo left in it. I didn’t care. If it was stolen, then I would return it. If it had little ammo, it wouldn’t matter. I only needed one bullet to bring repentance for my sin. I hoped each alley would lead to the last one that I would have to go down, but the mazes of concrete buildings wound tighter around me. My clothes hung off my body like a weighted blanket, and I squinted trying to see through the blinding pewter rain. The labyrinth of buildings and petrichor aroma was effectively causing me to lose every sense of direction. 

My lungs burned, leaving a stark iron tang on my tongue. I tried not to give into my body’s desire to collapse but I desperately wanted to just lie down in a ball and be sick. The sight of my friends lying dead in their own home kept me running. Matthias’ black hair matted with blood hollow green eyes staring at the ceiling. His wife curled up position beside him, the fair skin of the arm holding her side stained vermillion with blood. 

I kept running. Nothing would cease my hunt for vengeance. 

Not my exhaustion.

Not my fears of damnation that swelled in my chest.

Not even my atrocious gun skills.

I’d told them that Edmond would be good to his word. That he would protect them despite his rocky beginnings.

 I trusted him.

Yes, he’d been in a gang. Yes, he’d had a rough start. But he’d left that in the past. Yes, I admit, he’d even gone to prison, but many ex-convicts became better people. That was precisely why I thought he would be a good body guard. 

I thought he was a good friend, but instead he was an efficient betrayer. He’d been hoping for the money but I’d gotten in the way, that much was very plain.

I thought this had been about a fresh start for him, a new beginning, but it was only about the money.

Filthy dirty money.

All of it was a lie, an illusion, simply a bunch of smoke and mirrors. 

I slid around a corner. Edmond, seeing no way out, careened through the stained glass window of the church before him. I leapt through the window, the past world seeming to dissolve into a frighteningly real present and a terrifying future. I could die at any moment, yet I had never cared less about my own life.

The rain was still pelting us, guns held to his head finger trembling on the trigger. I closed my eyes to clear my head, air filling my air-deprived lungs. Opening my eyes with a violent ferocity. If I waited much longer he would see right through my bluff. Edmond grinned up at me, his peridot eyes watching me as a viper watched a mouse. 

“Wuss...a real man would shoot me.”

The shattered shards of glass around me scattered like the lies I’d once believed. Rain poured down, like the anguish in my soul. 

Thunder split the sky in two, akin to the sound of the glass bursting apart. 

Above the din and howl of... cascading about me, I heard the faint cries of the police sirens. I had to do this, for my friends, no matter how I did this. Knowing I couldn’t pull the trigger, I threw down the gun, letting it slide over the soaking ground. Edmond launched himself at me. My world became agony, fists of rage, and glass slivers burrowing into my skin as Edmond and I rolled around in the glass mess we’d made. The rain from outside cascaded through the broken window, causing rivers to run over the floor, the ashen clouds outside slammed into each other, and thunder peeled out like bells from the church tower.

That was when I felt the slick blade slip beneath my skin. Edmond had plunged into my side. It burrowed further under my skin as he pinned me to the ground.

“Freeze!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was over, the police had followed me. Even if they thought I had killed Matthias and Jane, I prayed it was now obvious that I had not committed the tragic crime that now lay far from me. Now all I had to do was hope that this time Edmond stayed locked away for good. They grabbed writhing Edmond from off of me, his soaked auburn hair turning mahogany in the rain. A variety of foul verbiage spilled from his mouth like a putrid waterfall.

With Edmond off of me, I breathed my lungs filling with much needed air and my eyes were heavy with the burden of what they’d seen. It took great lethargy and effort to continue to keep them open. Everything seemed to melt and fall around Edmond like molten glass as the police dragged him away. Was this the end?

The sky lit with ivory heat of the blinding ire of... as I felt as my mind fade delicately into the comatose folds of ebony.