Desperate to Touch

I could hide, but there’s nowhere to hide in here other than under the bed defenselessly. I have a window in my bedroom, but the fire escape stairs are in the living room. The ones made of steel that go all the way down and lead outside.

Sometimes you can’t just breathe. Sometimes, you just have to face it.

When I push the door open, listening to the eerily soft creak, four men face me.

Three of them have black masks, dark blue jeans and black shirts. All nondescript. None of them recognizable from their voices or what little I can see of their eyes. They stand in a relative half circle, my coffee table pushed back.

Three men who have come to do something awful, although seeing masks covering their faces, calms a side of me. The logical side, the side that thinks, is telling me they hadn’t planned on killing me. If they had, they wouldn’t have worn masks to hide who they are.

They came for something bad, though. That much is known from the slow clap and chilled laughter from the one on the right, the one by the coffee table. As if the masks and breaking into my apartment wasn’t enough to give it away.

I may be terrified, but a part of me is ready. That little piece that screams inside my head that I should have put a bat next to my bedroom door.

“There she is,” he calls out, his voice harsh with brittle humor. I don’t know how I stand so tall when they’re so much bigger than me.

I try not to look at the fourth man. Swallowing harshly, my bottom lip quivering, I search my whirling mind for anything I can do to stall as Seth moves quietly to close the front door. I don’t want my focus to go to him; I don’t want them to see him sneaking up on them. In his oxfords and disheveled suit, a gun already in his hand and not on the doorknob.

My lips part to say something as the hot tears slip down my face, but I can’t even speak. The barrel of a gun stares at me, the man on the left raising it. Fear is a crippling bitch. She can fuck right off, but right now, she’s got her grip on my throat.

The barrel of the gun pointed at my face is a dark hole, like one I’ve imagined falling down so many times.

The bang isn’t from it though, and the next bang and hollering isn’t either.

“Behind you!” the not-so-funny man yells to man number two. Man number one, the one who dared raise a gun to me, is already lying face-first on the floor with a hole in the back of his head. Blood pools around his face.

Bang! I scream instinctively. Seth shoots but so do the other two. Bullets ricochet and fly, something breaks and I can’t track it all at once. I don’t know what is happening, just that I need to move.

Even shaking, I can see everything clearly, but only seconds of it. A second of logic and clarity and then a whirl of chaos. Grabbing the clock on the wall, the large sixteen-inch barn clock, I run and scream, slamming it into the back of the man’s head who’s closest to me. Cursing, he stumbles, but doesn’t fall. I raise the clock again to strike him, wanting and needing to do anything at all, but I hear another shot and then another and the frightful burst of the bang forces me to huddle down.

My heart races. My body hot, I blink away the chaos. My breathing screams in my ears and it’s all I can hear.

Seth’s still standing. I’m standing. My gaze moves to each of the men accordingly. One, two, three. All still, all not moving. I watch them each again, listening to my ragged breathing. Is it over already? Are we okay?

We’re alive. My chest pounds, my heart pumping hard and fast. I feel faint.

“We’re okay,” I whisper, rocking as I lean against the wall. The bullets weren’t clean and simple. There’s blood everywhere.

Is that blood? There’s blood on Seth. His shirt. There’s too much blood. Not like the bits that have spattered behind me. Not like what’s on me. It’s a circle and it’s growing.

A mix between a grunt and a groan leaves Seth as he checks his gun and then it clicks loudly as he heads back to the front door, locking it.

“Are you okay?” I ask in what feels like a yell although it sounds like a murmur, hoping he can hear me. Inhaling sharply, my heart beats wildly and my lungs refuse to move right. He’s walking, he’s okay. He’s okay. He has to be okay.

Everything is shaking and my hands don’t stop shaking. I clasp them, trying to calm down, but that’s when I see the blood on my hands. There’s so much blood.