My hands were slipping, and my face slammed into the ice. The snow felt heavy enough to break through the cement. I looked into a reflective red pool that glossed over the road. From what I could see, my face, hair and soaked black jeans all had a fresh coat of the stuff. I ran my hand down my neck towards my chest, stopping when I reached the void. There was supposed to be meat there.
A groan.
The lights on the street had shut off by now, and only the occasional car passed by, ignoring the trail of red snow I left behind.
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.
“Mr. Bretz? Right this way.” She carted me off like an airplane attendant, flinching when she saw my neck.
“Michael Bretz,” the doctor peered through his thick glasses, examining a variety of papers in a clipboard. “The bullet is too close to your windpipe for us to extract. We're going to have to leave it there." He looked at me, solemnly. "But you'll recover within a few weeks of rest here.” He stared at the ground, then turned to the door. “The police should be here momentarily.”
A man in a blue uniform, carrying a shiny NYPD badge, walked in, raising his pants. A cop.
“Sir, we’d like to ask you some questions.” His partner stepped through the door, sporting the same attire. “Can you tell us exactly what happened?”
“Well, I was headed towards the bar, I got out of my truck, and then I looked to my left, and there was this guy. He had a red hat on maybe? Maybe he had red hair, I’m not sure. He shot me pretty **** quick.” My voice sounded croaky. A dull deep frog type of sound.
“Any other features you can identify?”
“Well, he had a pretty big nose…I could spot him in a line-up.” I started scraping the top of my shoe against the side of my other leg. I hoped they didn’t notice I was lying.
“We can’t form a line up from the features you gave us. Ya got anything else?”
“He had big, black eyes, a really protrusive jaw… that’s it.”
“Thank you sir.” He handed me a card. “Call us if you have anything more.” They headed out the door just as mechanically as they’d entered, without a word to the doctor.
“You’re probably pretty mad.” The doctor closed the door.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well, leave it to the police. Don't get too angry, keep living your life, and soon things will be back to normal.”
“I know.” I wish I'd meant it.
On my way home the next week, I noticed the blizzard had gotten worse. My door had gotten nearly completely iced over. I must have left the heater off.
“****.” I fumbled in my pockets for a key, and found it covered in lint. Brushing it off, I pushed it into the lock.
“Yer ****tin’ me,” I told myself, in a half-laugh half-plead kind of way. The key wouldn’t turn. From the overhang, long tendrils of ice hung, just waiting to fall. I kicked the door, and felt one run down the back of my neck, stopping when it hit the ridge of my pants. It nearly put another hole in my head.
“God ****ing dammit.” I pulled the long icicle out, noticing the particularly sharp tip. After about an hour of breathing on the lock, the key turned, and I ran inside.
Once inside, the bill made itself apparent. I started gritting my teeth, and I flexed my right arm. Making sure to leave the heater on, I stepped back outside, and took a deep breath, stretching my arms out. The lights were still on in the streets.
My car pulled up at the police station the next morning.
“Any luck with the uhh, shooter?” I watched the officer finish some paperwork. He paused briefly, then nodded. He took me to a tiny computer, and pointed at about twelve pictures of ex-convicts.
“That one.” I pointed to one of the men.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” He told me to wait, and walked away to speak to some of his fellow officers. My only chance. Being an ex-police officer, I pulled up all the names of the women in the area. A memory floated back to me.
“Godammit.” I got out of my car, gripping my head, wincing. F ucking headache.
“Young man, would you help me find my kitten?” Sounded like an old hag. The kind that acts like she has some authority over you because she’s older. Do it yourself, lady. I turned around to look at her.
“Of course, ma’am. Where’d you see it last?” I let go of my head and feigned health.
“I believe she was running just across the street, and then I lost her!” I looked across the street. Stupid lady, the cat’s rummaging in the trash. I walked over to the trash can, and pulled the cat out. It looked scared. Scared of me.
“Oh why thank you,” there was no pause in her speech, but the instant the cat jumped into her arms, “young,” her face was drained of its age, and she instantly became a young woman, not thirty years old, “gentleman.”
I saw her billowing golden hair, moonlight reflecting on it, illuminating every crevasse of her face. Beautiful. White gown, a bright green necklace, she looked like a fairy tale character.
She lifted her arm, and smiled. I leaned closer, but she made an odd signal with her hand. A black cloud? A gray one? Something was forming around her hand. “You’re welcome,” she said. I couldn’t tell what it was until—
I got up, bloody, face in the ice.
It didn’t take long to find the woman who shot me. I pulled up her address and other information, writing it on the pad I’d concealed in my back pocket.
When he returned, he asked me again. “Are you sure?”
“Actually… I’m not. I guess he looks kinda like him, but the shooter had a different eye color, and nobody else looks really like‘im.”
“Well, come back if you remember anything. We can’t do anything without more information.”
When I got home, I sat down on a moth-ridden couch, and pulled the note from my back pocket.
“1439 Wheeler Rd, you say?” I gritted my teeth, and laid down on the couch. “I’ll find you, ‘Alex Darrel’.” I kept the nine millimeter in a drawer near the bed, in case of intruders. It wasn’t loaded though, so I don’t know how much good it would have done me, until now.
The snow was coming down like meteorites, each flake nearly crushing my skull. When I managed to get into the car, my hand nearly froze to the handle. At least I’d be the only one on the road.
About two miles on the highway, it started swerving.
“****.” I yelled, trying to regain control of the vehicle. ****ing wheels of death. The car swung on the road like pendulum, gaining more and more momentum with each pass. I slammed on the brakes, thinking that the roads weren’t as icy as I thought they were. The car skidded, hopelessly begging me not to hit a tree. Hopelessly is right.
I felt the hard surface of the windshield slam against my face, right before it ruptured and let me loose in the snow sheeted landscape. It softened my fall a bit, but my left arm still felt like it shattered on impact. It was a sack of broken parts hanging from my shoulder. ****ing useless. I gritted my teeth, and pulled instructions from the decimated glove-box of my car.
“Just ****ing three more miles, and I’m there.” I don’t think anybody was listening, but I didn’t really care. It was like the earth was someone’s glass and the snow was their ice cubes. I couldn’t wait to find out what their drink would be like.
Wheeler Rd, exit 34. I started walking again, being only a few minutes from civilization. The first gas station I saw was a Shell.
“Pack of Lucky Strike unfilters and a lighter” He pulled a pack down, and I picked out a purple lighter.
“That’ll be seven eighty-nine.” He paused, and stared at my arm.
I handed him a ten. “Thanks.”
As I walked down Wheeler, the snow began to pick up pace, seeming to blow me back a step for every one I took forward. Then the constant gas stations and fast food restaurants turned into trees.
“She lives on a dirt road?” I kept walking, but I didn’t see any houses. The map told me I should’ve been there miles ago.
“This must be it.” Almost confused, I walked down a narrow dirt path, coming to a small white home in the middle of a massive forest. I checked the gun. Seven shots left. I quickly lit a cigarette, and put it in my mouth. I don't smoke.
A young woman walked out the door. She was fairly tall, slender, and incredibly pale. She looked almost ghostly with the long slender white dress that came down to her ankles, and a green necklace that shimmered even through the bitterest snow. Fine features, bright eyes, and a pretty face, for the most part.
“Hello?” she was nearly my height.
“Oh, hello Michael. It’s been a while.” I started gritting my teeth. In the moment before I put the gun to her face, I remembered the bullet entering my neck, the walk to the hospital, the catastrophe I’d led up until this point. I pressed the gun to her face with my barely moveable arm, finding strength in hatred, and slammed my fist into her face with the other. She shriveled up like a prune for an instant. I smothered her neck with a burning cigarette, letting the fire caress her like a lover, with the pain of an unfaithful one.
Her screams nearly deafened me, but I was smarter than to let that stop me. I punched her again, and her back bent inwards in pain.
“You think you can just ****ing shoot me?” My face was red. The cold, the wind, the snow, and the woman. ****ing all of it all at once.
Duct tape. I silenced her. It was her time to listen, to hear my words.
“So. I helped you out a little. I saved your cat, or whatever.” I’m not the type of guy to get philosophical and epic, but this was hardly me speaking. “I treated you kindly, don’t you agree?”
Some muffled agreement came from her. She continued, but my fist quelled any desire for her to speak.
“I was nice to you, wouldn’t you say?” Silence. “I did you right, and then you put a bullet in my neck.” She became a fallen statue, sitting and listening and observing. Her eyes looked crazed, red with fury or fear, I don’t know.
“You tried to kill me.” This was my first time. My first time behind the trigger.
“And now, you’ll get what’s coming to you.” The gun was rigid in her face, my arms locked. “Any last words?” The tape came off. I was ready to pull that trigger. I was begging to pull that trigger. Her last words were a formality. I’d probably only hear half of them.
A croak came from her, “I saved you.” She was done. The gunshot and her words penetrated me in unison. The realizations came to me. I felt a typhoon in my stomach, its waters begging to be unleashed.
I was not the one to stop it. My eyes became gray, and I fell to my knees. Blood was splattered all over me, and it wasn’t mine. My knees only lasted so long, and my face fell into her body. Still warm. Unconsciousness crawled through my veins, each heartbeat pumping more into my brain. It overtook me.
But even the deepest sleep can’t stop a killer from dreaming. It wasn’t so much pulling the trigger that had cut me so deep, but the moment after. In that instant, everything seemed to go way too fast, a song you can’t keep up with.
When my eyes opened again, it was gone. The house, the woman, the blood. Disappeared. I looked at my hands, and while I saw nothing but cold flesh, the slate was not clean. I’d done what I’d done.
One day I’ll get what’s coming to me. I looked around me, shrouded in a forest, cradled by snow. Nothing was here for me anymore. No anger, no hatred, no sadness, no regret. Nothing. My hand felt my neck. No scar either. I stood up, meaningless tears forming in my eyes. The first one fell, and I followed it to the ground. Something shiny sat there. My fingers wrapped around it, and I looked at it. One shiny bullet, like a mirror. I gripped it hard, and felt the words “This is what you get.”
“The neck, the icicle, the car crash.” Three seemingly unrelated things all engraved on the bullet. Next to each of them a tick mark, counting the number of times it’d kept me alive.
The long walk back led to darkness outside by the time I got back into my town. Despite every effort to see, my eyes were too weak. The street lights were my guides in a maze with no end. I walked aimlessly for hours, thinking my house wouldn’t be there when I walked up the most familiar street.
The street lights came off, and with them my shroud. My shroud of crowded streets and bustling people, gone.
Some middle aged men were lurking, seeking a thrill they wouldn’t find. They substituted with a mugging.
“Check this punk out.” They were the kinds of men that you would only meet on the streets at two forty-five in the morning. They weren’t the strongest, but somewhere between their drinking and their fights, they’d found new ways of giving a man pain.
Listening to the sound of bone creaks, I lifted myself. A few steps brought me to a porch I’d seen all too many times. Looked the same as I'd left it, not a day ago.
It was too dark to see, but I pressed whichever button my thumb touched. I knew it’d take me to the right place.
"Hello?" a soft whirring from the phone was the only sound in the room as the word ended.
“This is Michael." I smiled, and let out a tired laugh. I paused for a moment, and looked at the ground, sheepishly. "Sorry." I hung up the phone.
A groan.
The lights on the street had shut off by now, and only the occasional car passed by, ignoring the trail of red snow I left behind.
St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.
“Mr. Bretz? Right this way.” She carted me off like an airplane attendant, flinching when she saw my neck.
“Michael Bretz,” the doctor peered through his thick glasses, examining a variety of papers in a clipboard. “The bullet is too close to your windpipe for us to extract. We're going to have to leave it there." He looked at me, solemnly. "But you'll recover within a few weeks of rest here.” He stared at the ground, then turned to the door. “The police should be here momentarily.”
A man in a blue uniform, carrying a shiny NYPD badge, walked in, raising his pants. A cop.
“Sir, we’d like to ask you some questions.” His partner stepped through the door, sporting the same attire. “Can you tell us exactly what happened?”
“Well, I was headed towards the bar, I got out of my truck, and then I looked to my left, and there was this guy. He had a red hat on maybe? Maybe he had red hair, I’m not sure. He shot me pretty **** quick.” My voice sounded croaky. A dull deep frog type of sound.
“Any other features you can identify?”
“Well, he had a pretty big nose…I could spot him in a line-up.” I started scraping the top of my shoe against the side of my other leg. I hoped they didn’t notice I was lying.
“We can’t form a line up from the features you gave us. Ya got anything else?”
“He had big, black eyes, a really protrusive jaw… that’s it.”
“Thank you sir.” He handed me a card. “Call us if you have anything more.” They headed out the door just as mechanically as they’d entered, without a word to the doctor.
“You’re probably pretty mad.” The doctor closed the door.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Well, leave it to the police. Don't get too angry, keep living your life, and soon things will be back to normal.”
“I know.” I wish I'd meant it.
On my way home the next week, I noticed the blizzard had gotten worse. My door had gotten nearly completely iced over. I must have left the heater off.
“****.” I fumbled in my pockets for a key, and found it covered in lint. Brushing it off, I pushed it into the lock.
“Yer ****tin’ me,” I told myself, in a half-laugh half-plead kind of way. The key wouldn’t turn. From the overhang, long tendrils of ice hung, just waiting to fall. I kicked the door, and felt one run down the back of my neck, stopping when it hit the ridge of my pants. It nearly put another hole in my head.
“God ****ing dammit.” I pulled the long icicle out, noticing the particularly sharp tip. After about an hour of breathing on the lock, the key turned, and I ran inside.
Once inside, the bill made itself apparent. I started gritting my teeth, and I flexed my right arm. Making sure to leave the heater on, I stepped back outside, and took a deep breath, stretching my arms out. The lights were still on in the streets.
My car pulled up at the police station the next morning.
“Any luck with the uhh, shooter?” I watched the officer finish some paperwork. He paused briefly, then nodded. He took me to a tiny computer, and pointed at about twelve pictures of ex-convicts.
“That one.” I pointed to one of the men.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” He told me to wait, and walked away to speak to some of his fellow officers. My only chance. Being an ex-police officer, I pulled up all the names of the women in the area. A memory floated back to me.
“Godammit.” I got out of my car, gripping my head, wincing. F ucking headache.
“Young man, would you help me find my kitten?” Sounded like an old hag. The kind that acts like she has some authority over you because she’s older. Do it yourself, lady. I turned around to look at her.
“Of course, ma’am. Where’d you see it last?” I let go of my head and feigned health.
“I believe she was running just across the street, and then I lost her!” I looked across the street. Stupid lady, the cat’s rummaging in the trash. I walked over to the trash can, and pulled the cat out. It looked scared. Scared of me.
“Oh why thank you,” there was no pause in her speech, but the instant the cat jumped into her arms, “young,” her face was drained of its age, and she instantly became a young woman, not thirty years old, “gentleman.”
I saw her billowing golden hair, moonlight reflecting on it, illuminating every crevasse of her face. Beautiful. White gown, a bright green necklace, she looked like a fairy tale character.
She lifted her arm, and smiled. I leaned closer, but she made an odd signal with her hand. A black cloud? A gray one? Something was forming around her hand. “You’re welcome,” she said. I couldn’t tell what it was until—
I got up, bloody, face in the ice.
It didn’t take long to find the woman who shot me. I pulled up her address and other information, writing it on the pad I’d concealed in my back pocket.
When he returned, he asked me again. “Are you sure?”
“Actually… I’m not. I guess he looks kinda like him, but the shooter had a different eye color, and nobody else looks really like‘im.”
“Well, come back if you remember anything. We can’t do anything without more information.”
When I got home, I sat down on a moth-ridden couch, and pulled the note from my back pocket.
“1439 Wheeler Rd, you say?” I gritted my teeth, and laid down on the couch. “I’ll find you, ‘Alex Darrel’.” I kept the nine millimeter in a drawer near the bed, in case of intruders. It wasn’t loaded though, so I don’t know how much good it would have done me, until now.
The snow was coming down like meteorites, each flake nearly crushing my skull. When I managed to get into the car, my hand nearly froze to the handle. At least I’d be the only one on the road.
About two miles on the highway, it started swerving.
“****.” I yelled, trying to regain control of the vehicle. ****ing wheels of death. The car swung on the road like pendulum, gaining more and more momentum with each pass. I slammed on the brakes, thinking that the roads weren’t as icy as I thought they were. The car skidded, hopelessly begging me not to hit a tree. Hopelessly is right.
I felt the hard surface of the windshield slam against my face, right before it ruptured and let me loose in the snow sheeted landscape. It softened my fall a bit, but my left arm still felt like it shattered on impact. It was a sack of broken parts hanging from my shoulder. ****ing useless. I gritted my teeth, and pulled instructions from the decimated glove-box of my car.
“Just ****ing three more miles, and I’m there.” I don’t think anybody was listening, but I didn’t really care. It was like the earth was someone’s glass and the snow was their ice cubes. I couldn’t wait to find out what their drink would be like.
Wheeler Rd, exit 34. I started walking again, being only a few minutes from civilization. The first gas station I saw was a Shell.
“Pack of Lucky Strike unfilters and a lighter” He pulled a pack down, and I picked out a purple lighter.
“That’ll be seven eighty-nine.” He paused, and stared at my arm.
I handed him a ten. “Thanks.”
As I walked down Wheeler, the snow began to pick up pace, seeming to blow me back a step for every one I took forward. Then the constant gas stations and fast food restaurants turned into trees.
“She lives on a dirt road?” I kept walking, but I didn’t see any houses. The map told me I should’ve been there miles ago.
“This must be it.” Almost confused, I walked down a narrow dirt path, coming to a small white home in the middle of a massive forest. I checked the gun. Seven shots left. I quickly lit a cigarette, and put it in my mouth. I don't smoke.
A young woman walked out the door. She was fairly tall, slender, and incredibly pale. She looked almost ghostly with the long slender white dress that came down to her ankles, and a green necklace that shimmered even through the bitterest snow. Fine features, bright eyes, and a pretty face, for the most part.
“Hello?” she was nearly my height.
“Oh, hello Michael. It’s been a while.” I started gritting my teeth. In the moment before I put the gun to her face, I remembered the bullet entering my neck, the walk to the hospital, the catastrophe I’d led up until this point. I pressed the gun to her face with my barely moveable arm, finding strength in hatred, and slammed my fist into her face with the other. She shriveled up like a prune for an instant. I smothered her neck with a burning cigarette, letting the fire caress her like a lover, with the pain of an unfaithful one.
Her screams nearly deafened me, but I was smarter than to let that stop me. I punched her again, and her back bent inwards in pain.
“You think you can just ****ing shoot me?” My face was red. The cold, the wind, the snow, and the woman. ****ing all of it all at once.
Duct tape. I silenced her. It was her time to listen, to hear my words.
“So. I helped you out a little. I saved your cat, or whatever.” I’m not the type of guy to get philosophical and epic, but this was hardly me speaking. “I treated you kindly, don’t you agree?”
Some muffled agreement came from her. She continued, but my fist quelled any desire for her to speak.
“I was nice to you, wouldn’t you say?” Silence. “I did you right, and then you put a bullet in my neck.” She became a fallen statue, sitting and listening and observing. Her eyes looked crazed, red with fury or fear, I don’t know.
“You tried to kill me.” This was my first time. My first time behind the trigger.
“And now, you’ll get what’s coming to you.” The gun was rigid in her face, my arms locked. “Any last words?” The tape came off. I was ready to pull that trigger. I was begging to pull that trigger. Her last words were a formality. I’d probably only hear half of them.
A croak came from her, “I saved you.” She was done. The gunshot and her words penetrated me in unison. The realizations came to me. I felt a typhoon in my stomach, its waters begging to be unleashed.
I was not the one to stop it. My eyes became gray, and I fell to my knees. Blood was splattered all over me, and it wasn’t mine. My knees only lasted so long, and my face fell into her body. Still warm. Unconsciousness crawled through my veins, each heartbeat pumping more into my brain. It overtook me.
But even the deepest sleep can’t stop a killer from dreaming. It wasn’t so much pulling the trigger that had cut me so deep, but the moment after. In that instant, everything seemed to go way too fast, a song you can’t keep up with.
When my eyes opened again, it was gone. The house, the woman, the blood. Disappeared. I looked at my hands, and while I saw nothing but cold flesh, the slate was not clean. I’d done what I’d done.
One day I’ll get what’s coming to me. I looked around me, shrouded in a forest, cradled by snow. Nothing was here for me anymore. No anger, no hatred, no sadness, no regret. Nothing. My hand felt my neck. No scar either. I stood up, meaningless tears forming in my eyes. The first one fell, and I followed it to the ground. Something shiny sat there. My fingers wrapped around it, and I looked at it. One shiny bullet, like a mirror. I gripped it hard, and felt the words “This is what you get.”
“The neck, the icicle, the car crash.” Three seemingly unrelated things all engraved on the bullet. Next to each of them a tick mark, counting the number of times it’d kept me alive.
The long walk back led to darkness outside by the time I got back into my town. Despite every effort to see, my eyes were too weak. The street lights were my guides in a maze with no end. I walked aimlessly for hours, thinking my house wouldn’t be there when I walked up the most familiar street.
The street lights came off, and with them my shroud. My shroud of crowded streets and bustling people, gone.
Some middle aged men were lurking, seeking a thrill they wouldn’t find. They substituted with a mugging.
“Check this punk out.” They were the kinds of men that you would only meet on the streets at two forty-five in the morning. They weren’t the strongest, but somewhere between their drinking and their fights, they’d found new ways of giving a man pain.
Listening to the sound of bone creaks, I lifted myself. A few steps brought me to a porch I’d seen all too many times. Looked the same as I'd left it, not a day ago.
It was too dark to see, but I pressed whichever button my thumb touched. I knew it’d take me to the right place.
"Hello?" a soft whirring from the phone was the only sound in the room as the word ended.
“This is Michael." I smiled, and let out a tired laugh. I paused for a moment, and looked at the ground, sheepishly. "Sorry." I hung up the phone.
