Week 6 Story: Guns for Hands

Three minutes.

I left the grocery store for three minutes—just long enough to cross the parking lot and grab my wallet from the car—and when I stepped back inside, it had happened again.

All the fluorescents overhead had been taken out, which was my first sign. In the weak light from the streetlamps outside, everything looked pale, ghostly. The bulbs’ shattered glass crusted the linoleum floor like crushed ice, and when I glanced up at the hollow light bays, they stared down at me like empty eye sockets.

That much alone told me I wouldn’t want to see anything else. Already, a dull throb was starting up behind my temples.

But my sister was here somewhere, and I couldn’t leave her.

“Sloane?” I called. “Sloane, it’s me. It’s Reagan. Where are you?”

Nothing.

I pulled my cell phone from my jacket pocket, switched on its flashlight.

Fifteen feet away, on the other side of the fleet of shopping carts, I found the first three bodies.

They were slumped on the floor, halfway behind their checkout counters. Both women looked like they’d landed okay, but the guy had had a rough fall; his neck was bent at a funny angle. He looked maybe nineteen, barely older than Sloane and me.

All three of them were bleeding from their eyes, their ears. Even when they’d stopped breathing, the blood kept trickling. I stood there for a minute, staring down at them in the darkness. Finally, when one of those blood trails rolled out to touch the toe of my boot, I stepped carefully back and maneuvered around them.

“Sloane!” I snapped. “We seriously need to leave—”

And then I found her.

She sat huddled in the middle of the Halloween aisle, surrounded by monsters and witches and foam tombstones. Her long blonde hair hung in a sheet over her face, and I knew she knew I was there, but she didn’t look up. Behind her, a cheap Grim Reaper cloak swung on its hanger.

“Are you okay?” I asked after a minute.

She hesitated, then shook her head. I hesitated, too. Dad would’ve known what to do.

I sighed, then crossed the aisle and took her hand, tugged her to her feet. Maybe she should’ve had to look at the people she’d killed, but I didn’t want to see them again, so we skirted around them.

Dad would’ve known what to do, but he wasn’t here anymore. And the truth was, I knew what to do, too.

I just wished I didn’t.

***

I’d been destined to kill my twin sister since we were thirteen years old.

Really, since we were born, I guess. But I’d been thirteen when Dad sat me down and explained what was wrong with Sloane, why we moved around all the time. He’d quit trying to hide the bodies from me after that.

The thing was, it never should’ve been like this. Tons of people on Mom’s side of the family had abilities. I couldn’t remember her very well, but Mom herself had been scary powerful, and that had eventually gotten her killed. Even she’d been nothing compared to Sloane, though.

Because Sloane had gotten a double dose. Half of her power should’ve gone to me, but she’d gotten both shares, and it was too much for her. Too much for the people around her. Since Dad’s death, she’d only gotten worse, and it was supposed to have been my job to keep that from happening. To stop her from hurting anyone else.

Usually, I couldn’t even think about that. But it was easier now, with those dead grocery store clerks burned into my head, the smell of their blood still in the back of my throat. I couldn’t let that happen again.

Sloane was miserable, and I was miserable, and all we did was break everything we touched. For a long time now, I’d thought we were cursed.

Maybe we were the curse.

Later that night, I waited till Sloane had gone to sleep, and then I dug out Dad’s old pistol. When I stood, that headache had started up again behind my temples, but my hands didn’t shake. I wasn’t sure if that was actually a good thing.

But some small part of me, somewhere in the back of my head, had been planning this since I was thirteen.

***

Sloane couldn’t sleep without a TV on, so muted reruns of old cartoons greeted me when I squeezed into her tiny room.

For a minute, I just stood there by her bed, waiting for some kind of sign. Her back was to me, but something in the slump of her shoulders—the tilt of her head—made her look peaceful. Younger, too.

I lifted the pistol and took a deep breath, but I still didn’t pull the trigger. And then Sloane said quietly, “I wish you would, Reagan.”

“I know,” I said after a minute, lowering the gun.

“I wish you could.”

“Me too.”

She rolled over, staring up at the ceiling instead of at me. I wondered if she’d been awake all along. When we’d moved in, she’d stuck those glow-in-the-dark stars all over the ceiling, even though I’d made fun of her. Now we’d be taking them down and leaving tomorrow. If her outburst at the store had taken out the lights, it would’ve wrecked the cameras, too, but that didn’t matter.

It was time to move on.

“I thought I had it under control this time,” she said eventually. “I wasn’t going to let it happen again. I won’t let it happen again.”

“I know.”

Idly, I wondered which of us was the bigger liar, how many times we’d had this exact conversation before. How many times we’d have it again.

I sank onto the bed beside her. She held out her hand, so I took it.

We sat and planned our next move, and Dad’s gun sat between us.

Neither of us mentioned it.




Author's Note: This week, my inspiration came from "Gandhari and Dhritarashtra," an early story from the Mahabharata. In this story, when the king and queen’s first son is born, there are all sorts of terrible, ominous omens. The royal couple’s advisors explain that their son is destined to bring something terrible upon their kingdom, and that it’ll be better for everyone to just get rid of him while they can—sacrifice the part to save the whole, and all that jazz. But the prince's parents are fond of him—he's their favorite son—and they decide to ignore the omens and the advisors and the best interests of their kingdom, just to spare him.

I found that kind of compelling: the idea of a main character being close to someone and knowing that person will hurt all kinds of people someday, but not being able to bring herself to prevent it. The idea of her choosing to let everyone else suffer before she’ll let this one person die. To explore those themes a little bit, I used Reagan and her sister, Sloane, who’s kind of a gentle soul but also a ticking time bomb. The idea was that they both know Sloane is escalating and only going to get worse, and that both know exactly how to solve their problem—but they aren’t quite strong enough yet. So for now, they just keep running.

Bibliography: Mahabharata Online: Public Domain Edition. Source: Laura Gibbs's Indian Epics blog.

Image Credit: Two Hands by milivanily. Source: Pixabay.

Portfolio: Table of Contents

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. If that’s the case, the people in this collection of stories would probably reach for some sunglasses.


What Comes Around  In a world where people's shadows are the physical embodiments of their sins in past lives, one student desperately wants to find out what his past self did wrong—and another student desperately wants not to.

Guns for Hands  Since she was thirteen, Reagan has known she'll have to kill her sister someday. So far, the girls have survived in that muddy gap between knowing and doing—but as the bodies pile up around her sister, it's finally time for Reagan to act.





Image Credit: Dark Shadows at Evening. Source: Max Pixel.


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Week 2 Story: What Comes Around

I was sitting in Trig class, one ragged dress shoe kicked up on the chair in front of me, when Brendan Russ leaned over my desk.

“Tyler, man,” he said, glancing warily across at Mrs. Ramirez. “I need to talk to you.”

I lifted an eyebrow. Russ and I weren’t exactly friends. We got along just fine, and we were next to each other on Ramirez’s assigned seating chart, which also made us occasional math partners. But that was about the extent of it.

It really wasn’t in Russ’s best interests—short, curly-haired Russ, with his polished dress shoes and just-so school uniform—to talk to me.

“Shoot,” I said, unwrapping a piece of gum, only halfway disinterested.

He said, “It’s about my life before,” and I felt my disinterest plummet another few notches. Together, we turned and looked back at his shadow.

Brendan Russ’s shadow was a thing of nightmares—much bigger than he was, hulking and hunched over itself, gnarled and snarling. It had spines and wicked edges and too many arms that never seemed to stop moving. The kind of thing that bewildered you at first—what could a simple creature like Russ have ever done to earn a Shade like that—but that everybody eventually got used to.

It didn’t really matter what he’d done in his past life. Something pretty nasty, sure, and a whole lot of it, if the embodiment of all his sins looked like that.

But in this life, Russ would probably have trouble maiming a fly. So nobody worried too much about it.

“I think I’ve got a lead on what exactly I did,” he said eventually. “Who I was before.”

I snorted. “I think you’ve got a pretty good idea who you were before even without any digging, man.”

“I know.”

He was quiet for a minute, and at first, I didn’t think he was going to answer. I turned back to my trig assignment. Not that it was any more entertaining, but the cost of tuition at Ashford Prep was obscenely high, and I wasn’t letting it go to waste.

Then he said again, stronger this time, “I know. That’s why I have to find out for sure. I need you to track this person down for me. Ask your drug dealer people or whoever.”

I laughed, maybe a little harshly, snapping my gum. “My drug dealer people. Christ, Russ.”

“I’m serious. This is important.”

The bell rang. I looked across the room at Laurel Wesson, who was standing and straightening the lapels of her Ashford blazer. She scowled when she saw me.

“So will you do it?” Russ asked. “Everybody says you’re the guy to go to. I have money.”

I glanced at him. Normally, I’d found it was best to stay out of situations like this. But he looked obstinate in that desperate, teeth-set way people got, and the money was always nice, and I was kind of curious about his Shade despite myself.

“I’ll think about it,” I said absently.

Then I stood and followed Laurel Wesson out of the classroom.

***

Fourth period, I had World History with Mr. Dennis, but I headed across the Quad to Laurel’s study hall instead, keeping pace with her. Eventually—probably when she realized I wasn’t going away—she whirled around, face pale.

“What do you want?” she snapped.

I smiled pleasantly, reaching into my backpack. “I think the real question here is what you want.”

She actually flinched when she saw the manila envelope. At first, I didn’t think she’d touch it, but then she lunged forward at the last second, snatching it out of my hands. Like if she was holding it now, she was suddenly holding all the power, too.

“That’s your copy,” I said. “You can go ahead and keep it.”

I watched her shaky hands as she lifted one of the photos out, but I didn’t look at the picture itself. I didn’t need to see it again.

“The question,” I said again, “is if you still want to be valedictorian.”

She stared across at me, dead-eyed. A blotchy flush was rising up her neck.

“And how much you’re willing to pay to make sure that happens,” I added.

She snorted. “You’re scum, Tyler Strauss. Literal scum of the earth. I didn’t think lowlifes like you actually existed. You’re—”

“Ten minutes late for class,” I interrupted, checking my invisible watch. “Which means I’m fifteen minutes late to the headmaster’s office.”

When she didn’t say anything, just slid the photos back into the envelope and folded the little metal arms firmly closed, I grinned.

“A thousand dollars,” I said. It was a lot of money, but rich kids like her always managed to pay up when it mattered. And Ashford Prep was expensive. “Cash only. All of it by the end of the week, or the headmaster gets a copy of all this too, and the end of the year looks a lot different for you.”

She looked like she was about to cry, and I really didn’t have time for that, so I turned and walked back towards World History.

Beside me, my shadow was mild and amicable, hands in his pockets.

***

Russ tried to corner me at my picnic table after school. When I saw him coming, I nodded at the small ring of guys I’d been talking to, and they scattered. Russ hesitated, fidgeting at the other end of the table.

“Well?” he said. “Think you can get that info for me?”

I looked at his Shade again, all looming menace, and at mine, thin and relaxed and easygoing. I even halfway thought about telling him it was better for him if he didn’t know all the things his past self had done in that other life, that that Russ probably wouldn’t have wanted future versions of himself to know anyways. I knew I wouldn’t.

But he looked determined. And Ashford was expensive.

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

Author's Note: While the Ramayana’s main plot is interesting itself, when I read it with the weekly retelling in mind, I find myself focusing more on small, random details than on the bigger picture. This week, for instance, I was struck by a throwaway line of Sita’s, just after she’s first glimpsed Rama.

Though the pair haven’t even spoken in this life, they knew each other in a previous one, and that connection sparks something that feels like love at first sight. Love, as it turns out, is kind of miserable, and pretty soon Sita is irritated by every happy thing around her, since she can’t be happy herself without Rama. When a bird starts singing outside her window, she cries at it, “The sins I committed in a previous birth have assumed your form and come to torture me now!”

I was really struck by this idea of a physical embodiment of somebody’s sins from a former life, so that’s what I explored with my retelling. More than that, I was curious what kind of impact that would have on people, literally being followed around by all the mistakes they’ve ever made. Through Russ and Tyler, I was able to look at both extremes: someone who desperately wants to know what he’s done wrong, and someone who desperately wants not to, because he already knows what he's doing now.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

Image Credit: "Money" by 401kcalculator.org. Source: Flickr.