Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

“Sure he’s dead?”

“I split his fuckin’ head. ‘Course he’s dead!”

“Go down and check.”

“I ain’t checkin’ shit!”

Only dimly conscious now of the pounding in my head, I pushed the door open with the rifle’s barrel. The door creaked softly on its unoiled hinges. I stopped.

Home Invading Bastard Number One: “You hear that?”

Home Invading Bastard Number Two: “Hear what?”

Home Invading Bastard Number One: “Door.”

Home Invading Bastard Two: “I ain’t heard a damn thing.”

I couldn’t shoulder through such a narrow space. I’d have to push the door open at least another foot, foot and a half. When I did that, the hinges would scream. Their voices put them in the hallway that shot off the kitchen and led into the living room. They stood right beside me; just inches of studs and drywall separated my right ear from their knees.

There they are, man, Bobby said. You need to bust up in there like Jackie Chan, homeslice. Don’t give them time to react.

I won’t, I thought.

Don’t hesitate .

I won’t, I said again.

Engage the enemy with extreme prejudice.

I will . And at that, I charged the door.

The door hinges screeched as I hit the wood. I covered the last three steps in a single leap that launched me into the kitchen. The AK-47 held out before me commando-style, I rocketed past the breakfast nook and collided with the edge of the counter. I spun on my feet, running backwards now. I stopped when my ass slammed up against the kitchen sink.

There. In the hallway. Two men dressed in dirty winter coats and black jeans, one carrying a bag. Skull caps. One right behind the other.

Blurry faces.

“Fuck,” said the first one.

Game on, bitch!

I pulled the trigger. Then I pulled it again.

The AK-47 barked, and in the muzzle flash I caught sight of the blur that constituted the man’s face. Although I couldn’t make out his features, I knew in my heart they showed shock, surprise, fear and astonishment. Something in the darkest part of my soul sang with glee. His body jerked like a paper target as bullets tore into his chest. Two to the chest, one to the head, the Mozambique drill that Bobby had shown me, because the recoil will automatically align the barrel with the enemy’s face after round two and…

My trigger finger curled again, quick but controlled. The man dropped.

Shell casings ejected from the semiautomatic action and pinged off of the Wolfgang Puck cookware Allie had hung from the ceiling rack. Ping ping ping , like a demon playing the triangle. The first man dropped, but his partner staggered backwards, blood and brains on his chest. I charged forward, bringing the barrel down for another Mozambique drill, two to the chest, one to the head. Lightning flashed in the kitchen and sent shell casings skittering across the travertine floor. Two to the chest, one to the head. The last bullet struck him between the eyes—pure luck, because my aim sucked even under the best conditions—and his head jerked backwards, the cap flying off just before the backside of his skull disappeared in a shower of bone and brain that splattered the portrait of Allie and I on our wedding day. The body fell.

Acrid gun smoke permeated the kitchen. It smelled nothing like the smoke of Allie’s candles, firewood in the wintertime or cigars on Bobby and Kate’s back porch. Sharp, ammoniac, chemical smoke stung my nose and sinuses and made them ring like my ears. I thought I heard yelling somewhere far off, but I couldn’t identify the voice because the gunfire had momentarily deafened me. I heard now only that ringing in my ears and popular song from the radio in my law school days.

Let the bodies hit the floor

Let the bodies hit the floor

Let the bodies hit the floor

Let the bodies hit the floor

Drowning Pool, I remembered, a song called, appropriately, “Bodies.” That lead singer had died. Drug overdose, car accident, plane crash. Something rock-worthy.

Ears clearing slightly, I identified Allie screaming upstairs. “Kevin? Kevin?”

“I’m okay!” I shouted, advancing into the hallway. “Stay where you are! Call 911!”

“Oh my God, what happened?”

“Get Abby!” I yelled. “Don’t let her come down!”

The danger, I knew from the silence and utter lack of motion, had passed. Still, I didn’t want my daughter seeing this mess. I looked at the wall. My lovely wife, her strapless wedding gown displaying the tanned shoulders of a movie star, smiled at me from the last decade. She held a bouquet of flowers in that picture, but I couldn’t see them now because a piece of somebody’s skull was sliding down the glass on a snail trail of blood.

I felt strangely detached. Shock, perhaps; a surreal quality to my surroundings made it difficult to fully process things like the red goo all over Allie’s wedding portrait. I saw it, but my brain didn’t fully implement its presence. I had two dead guys in my hallway, blood everywhere and pieces of their heads all over my family’s pictures, but this didn’t bug me at all.

I stepped into the hallway and looked down. The complete lack of give-a-shit I felt in the kitchen changed not one whit with a closer look. The second body, the one whose head had so spectacularly disintegrated, stared up at the ceiling. With the back of his skull gone, the front had lost the structural support it needed to keep his face lined up, and it had flattened. It looked not like a human face now, but rather a mask—stretched, rubbery features, sightless eyes painted into the sockets. And it was a mask, really. A demon had put it on just before breaking into my house.

I looked down at the dead man and his partner, both of them unrecognizable as human beings.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” I asked.

The body didn’t answer, but I felt like turning the rifle upside down and smashing the butt into the rubber mask anyway. I wanted him to be alive, if only so I could kill him again.

Good job, Bobby said. For real, that was some serious class-A work. You’re a hard son of a bitch, Swanson.

I smiled. I didn’t know what I looked like, but I knew this would horrify my wife and child in a way a couple of dead bodies could never do.

“Good to go,” I croaked.

I told Dr. Koenig everything. Including how I felt about it.

He said nothing for a very long time. His sharp features remained blank, the workings of the mind behind it veiled and undetectable. When I finished, he just adjusted his glasses, rested his face on his open palm and stared.

When he finally spoke again, he said, “That is an incredible story. I’m sure I said that before, but I have to say it again; it’s absolutely incredible. On a number of levels.”

“It is. That’s why it’s news. You don’t get a writeup in Southern Rifleman for buttering your toast.”

“You stood over the bodies and looked straight down and you still don’t remember their faces.”

“There’s nothing to remember. I mean… have you ever seen a face with no bone behind it? It’s skin. That’s all it is, skin—that’s why I remember a couple of Halloween masks, because that’s all I saw. My bullets took off the backs of their skulls. Their own mothers wouldn’t have recognized them. So if you’re going to run down a theory like I can’t remember their faces because I don’t want to confront my feelings over having taken two human lives, you’re not going to get anywhere. I can remember their faces because by the time I got a good look, they didn’t have any faces for me to remember. And I think I have a bigger problem than that.”