Third Time

A moment of clarity. The jagged pieces of reality that make up my perception of the world suddenly snap from disarray and everything becomes clear for just an instant. At this time, I don't do things because I want to or need to, I do them because they are the only things that could ever make sense. Afterwards I'm left in a daze and barely remember the moments just before, but while I experience them they are the temporary embodiment of a perfectly executed concept. The universe seems to be in chaos, then for that second the fog is lifted and I see the world and my life through disconnected and clairvoyant eyes. Just as quickly, the fog returns and I'm snapped back inside my head and the world continues just as before, only reeling from whatever I had just done.

Twice so far this had happened to me. The first was eight days ago, when the comfort of my existence was interrupted by the threat of violence and a fist driving toward my face. The second time was six days ago, with another interruption of my stasis when a man began firing a silenced pistol through the darkness and through the windshield of my car. Both times, the violence sucked my attention from the typical malaise of my life and into that moment of clarity. Both times, I performed actions I would never have considered before. Both times, I hurt people in ways I didn't know I would ever be capable of. Both times, I couldn't have cared less about the pain I caused.

The third time happened like this:

A solitary desk lamp fought away the night darkness in my bedroom as I stood in silence, listening to the steady thumps as my heart forced blood through my veins. Downstairs, the front door's lock was picked, the door opened. My legs and arms relaxed, then moved nimble and dedicated through my bedroom door, down the hallway, and partway down the stairs. My knees and ankles shared the tension and accepted my weight so I made no noise.

I ducked in the stairwell landing and peered from the darkness into the main floor, just as I had done years ago while my parents argued about baseball team tryouts. Through the wooden slatted banisters and down the main hallway I could see the front door, now open. One man was walking through it, one man was behind him, one man was already inside and turning into the kitchen. They crept like me, their knees crooked and steps silent. They wore uniform black body suits, black nylon harness vests around their chests, black domed helmets on their heads with tinted goggles covering their faces. They carried compact carbine submachine guns in their hands. When the sight of these peoples seemed in no way unusual to me, I realized I was again operating on autopilot.

The second man came through the door as the first disappeared into the kitchen, and the third came in as the second turned to his right into the living room. The third came straight down the hallway towards the stairs.

It wasn't a SWAT team, I thought, they weren't maneuvering in a stick formation and they were clearing rooms without cover. If it was a SWAT team, I would have just turned myself over. SWAT, a division of local Police departments, has rules to follow. They subdue people and take them into custody. They also bust through doors with rams and explosives, screaming "Police" and generally making their presence known. They weren't SWAT. That's all I needed to know.

When the third man turned toward the staircase, I sunk back into the darkness and went back up the stairs. To the left were empty bedrooms, to the right was my bathroom and my bedroom with soft yellow light seeping through the partly open door. The rest of the floor was pitch black, including my bathroom where I went, pressing myself against the back wall. I heard the soft jingle of gear dangling from a vest as the third man came up the first set of steps, turned across the landing, and started up the last set. I heard him stop at the top of the stairs, perhaps choosing a direction, and choosing right and heading toward the light of my room. I listened to my heart beat in pace with his steps, and I made sure I was breathing. My knife was still in my hand.

When the dark shape of a man passed the bathroom door, I sprang from the darkness in a single step and plunged the blade of my knife into the man's right shoulder through the back and brought my left hand around to cover the man's mouth just as he tried to scream from the pain. If I had been in a more rational place, I would have noted how the Teflon coating and unique tanto -point design let the blade slide through cloth, bone, and muscle with little resistance. With a quick tug I dragged the man backwards into the black of the bathroom. He dropped the gun from both hands and it dangled from the strap clipped to his harness and over his left shoulder. The knife still stuck into the meat of his shoulder, he wouldn't dare move his right arm, and his left was pinned by my own arm. He breathed hot and wet through his nose against my hand.

"Who are you with?" I asked as quietly and as menacingly as I could. I put a small amount of pressure on the knife, and slightly lifted my hand from his mouth.
After a few tedious groans and winces, he said, "I'm an American." His voice was younger than I expected.
That was obvious. "What's your objective?" I asked in the same voice.
Between groans and whimpers, he said, "Some guy. Whoever lives here."
"Extraction or hit?"
"What?" he said, "I don't know. Not my call."

I sighed. This guy was either an idiot or was very convincing at playing one. I pulled the knife from his shoulder, closing my hand over his mouth to muffle the inevitable shriek, then grabbed the nylon gun strap from the front, pulled it back and twisted it so it closed around the guy's neck, and then tripped the man forward, holding onto the strap so it pulled his head back as he fell to the ground and didn't move. A part of me, deep down, wondered if he was still alive, but I pushed through it.

I rolled him over and unclipped the strap from his harness, then unwrapped it from his neck and picked the gun up. In the limited light I could barely make out the shape of the gun but it seemed foreign, even for asubmachine gun. I felt around the sides for a bolt, found one, and pulled it back. The guy hitting the floor had made more noise than I expected, so the other two had probably heard it.

I started down the first set of stairs quietly, but I heard that jingling noise again. Around the corner, someone was coming up the bottom set of stairs. I stopped at the landing, waited for the jingling to stop, and swung the butt of the gun around the corner and felt it connect with a helmet or goggles, and heard what sounded like a few sacks of potatoes being dropped down the stairs. I turned the corner and followed the noise down the stairs where a man lay crumpled at the bottom. I leveled the gun and raised it to look down the rail and took the last few steps.

I found the other guy, he was in the hallway following the noise. He was looking at the guy on the floor, then saw me and lifted his gun. Mine was already on him. I took a breath and started to pull the trigger when more movement caught my eye. Four more men, dressed the same, poured through the front door. There were more than the first three; that changed things a bit.

Three small explosions sent three small bullets toward me. I ducked back to avoid them, thought about dropping down again to try my luck at shooting some people, but the odds weren't in my favor. I instead just stuck an arm out and fired off a few rounds blindly for cover, than ran back up the stairs to my room. I locked the door behind me, pulled my bookcase over to pin the door shut.

I called Amy's name, said I was me, and knocked on the closet door. She opened the door, the gun still in her white-knuckled fist. She looked a bit like a wet cat. "I called the police," she said as one long stuttered word.

"We have to get out of here," I said, setting the gun I was holding down on my desk chair. In the light now, my suspicions about the gun looking unusual were confirmed. It had unusual curves, making it look kind of like a gun from a futuristic space movie. "XM8" was printed in stylized letters on the side of the butt. I shook my head and went into the closet, grabbing all of the loaded magazines for the USP and stuffing them in my pockets.

"What's going on?" Amy asked, standing in one place and turning at her hips to follow my movement.
"I don't know," I said. "Guys, guns, shooting. Just another Friday night."

I crossed the room and looked out my window at the back of the house. There was nobody out there. I opened the window with the metal crank as wide as it would go, then I turned and stripped the sheets from the bed and started pulling the twin mattress off the frame. Amy just watched incredulously, until I asked her to help. Together we spun the mattress and slid it through my open window, it fell and landed in the grass on the ground about six feet below the window. Not too bad, I thought.

I took the pistol from Amy, switched the safety on, and somehow fit it in my pocket.

The door to my room shook, the knob wiggled. The lock didn't have a key, they'd have to bust it in. That's what they started to do. I grabbed my car keys from my desk, and threw Amy her purse, then went back to the window. It was a tiny jump, but I still hesitated.

"Land like I do," I said over the banging on the door, then I stepped up onto the window sill, and stepped downward onto nothing.

The landing came immediately. I hit the mattress with my feet, felt my ankle sting, and rolled sideways to disperse the energy. I stood up and looked up at Amy through the open window, and waved her down. She emulated my movement well enough, but made a slight huff noise when she landed. I just then remembered that I left hesubmachine gun, the "XM8" up in my room. Great.

I drew the pistol and we crossed the back of my house together, staying tight to the wall. The corner to the side of the house was clear, so we followed the wall to the side of the garage. The side garage door was still unlocked from when I took out the trash earlier in the week, so I opened it slowly and we went into the garage. Amy started to ask what I was doing, but stopped before finishing. I went around my dad's car and into the corner of the garage where the grill, the gas generator, the cans of gasoline, and the miscellaneous car stuff was. There was an older, metal gas can mostly full of gasoline. I grabbed that by the rusted handle, opened the cap and stuffed a cloth rag down it, and grabbed one of the butane lighters from next to the grill.

I hoped that the van or truck at these guys had come in wasn't blocking my car, and I got lucky. It was a black panel van, unmarked, with the back doors open. Inside were bench seats on both sides. Two men, not dressed like the others, were standing outside of it, looking at the house.

Crouching down, we crept from the side of the garage to the side of my car. I unlocked the passenger door manually with the key, and told Amy that when I said so, I would open the door and jump in and she would follow.

I lit the rag sticking from the mouth of the gas can, waited for it to start to burn, then stood up and hurled it sideways over the top of my car and toward the van. The can wobbled oddly in the air, a streak of orange light from the flame on the rag. It landed on the street just short of the van and rolled sideways beneath the van.

No explosion.

The rag had fallen from the mouth of the can as it rolled, but gasoline was now pouring freely from the hole. The two men heard the metal can hitting the pavement and turned around to investigate. Gasoline flowed in all directions from the mouth of the can, eventually spreading to where the barely-lit rag lay on the ground.

The flowing gasoline soon turned to a flowing lake of fire spreading from all sides of the van. The two men yelled and ran away from the van. As much as I wanted to stick around and watch the show, I pulled my car door open and crawled over the passenger seat and settled into the driver's seat as Amy got in and closed the door. I started the engine and backed out of the driveway, turning wildly to clear the blaze on the street, then put all of my weight on the accelerator and drove off. Behind me I saw movement around the house. As I turned onto another street, I saw a quick flash of light and heard what sounded like the gas tank of a black panel van exploding.

I wasn't wearing any shoes, I just noticed. That made me laugh.