Blood Red

“Angie, I’ll shoot if I have to.” He snorted back the drips from his nose and shook his head to get the tears out of his way. His fingers fumbled the last of the bullets into the .44.

Brian looked through burning eyes and studied his wife where she hung suspended above the bedroom window.

He didn’t know if he could pull the trigger. After all the arguments and the disappointments, all the times she’d said she had a fucking headache and all the times he’d cheated on her, he still wasn’t sure. He loved her. He did. He just couldn’t always show it the way she wanted him to.

He took aim at her shadowy form. “Go away, Angie, I mean it. I’m sorry if I hurt you, baby, but you have to go away now.”

“I know you’re sorry, baby . . .” That sultry, pouting tone was still there.

“Please go away.” He was crying again and his hands were trying to shake.

“But Brian . . . this time it’s not enough. This time ‘sorry’ won’t cut it.”

Her hands pushed and the glass from the window exploded into the bedroom, raining down in jagged blades. Brian pulled the trigger six times, his wrists bucking from the recoil. Thunder ripped apart the night and blasts of fire lit the room in lightning flashes.

He saw the first bullet hit, saw the way her head slammed backward as the lead punched through her skull.

The second shot ripped through her collarbone and blew out a chunk of her back.

The third hit her right breast.

The fourth shattered two ribs on its way through her body.

Then she was falling, and the fifth struck the swell of her stomach where their unborn child rested.

The sixth bullet missed her completely.

She fell out of his sight and he heard her hit the boards of the wraparound porch.

“Oh fuck, Angie, baby, why did you make me do it?”

He got up and moved toward the ruined window, trying to swallow his heart and to get back his hearing. The gun trembled wildly in his hands and he moved as quickly as he could, weapon held at the ready. It was empty, but that didn’t register.

He had to climb onto the bed and move to the headboard to look out the window.

Angie stood up and looked at him from inches away. Shadows blurred her face, but he recognized her just the same. He would know her face anywhere, even with the hole that was dripping blackness all over her white features.

Angie smiled, her faintly blue lips peeled away from her teeth, baring them in a leering, savage expression. “Sorry’s not enough, Brian. Never again.”

Her hand lunged through the window and slapped him across the cheek. The impact made him see stars and knocked him completely off the bed.

He felt numb and dazed, and it took him almost a minute to recover.

When he was able to move again, Angie was gone. He would have believed it was a nightmare, but the window was still broken and his cheek was bleeding from where she’d struck him.

Brian Freemont sat on the floor of his bedroom and looked at the darkness beyond his window. There was nothing to see but darkness. He rocked back and forth, moaning deep in his chest.

II

Ben had no idea where he was going, only that it was imperative that he get there. He ran a good portion of the way, homing in on the need that filled his body.

Maggie needed him. Nothing else mattered. When he could no longer reach his destination walking, he backtracked to the apartments and got into his car, the agitation blooming in his stomach, filling him with nervous energy.

“Maggie . . . Maggie . . . where the hell are you?” The radio was too loud so he shut it off, making himself listen for the sound of her voice. Instead he heard the crows, wild and raucous as they flew into the night air, hundreds of them cawing and cackling into the night.

They flew around his car, soaring in graceful arcs, gliding on currents and peering through his window, yet not one of them blocked his path. It took a while for him to understand, but they were guiding him, their mass of bodies shifting and focusing his direction with subtle shifts in the tunnel they formed around him.

He’d be afraid later. Right now, if the birds wanted to help him get where he needed to be, he would let them. He saw several people staring at the black cloud of birds around him. Many simply looked on, slack-jawed. Others backed away, shaking their heads.

Ben ignored them and so did the crows. For whatever reason, they were all on the same mission.

“I’m coming, Maggie. Just don’t get yourself killed in the meantime.”

III

Tom was getting bored now. Lenny broke too easily and cried like a fucking baby in need of a diaper change. Seeing as he’d shit himself almost fifteen minutes ago, that was fair.

“Lenny, where’s my money?”

“Honest to God, Tom. I don’t know.” He was still capable of using his voice, so Tom knew he hadn’t gone too far.

His little girl, Renee, was in the next room. She was watching TV, because Tom didn’t want her screaming all the way through the torture session with her father.