Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

Keep moving, my Better Sense told me.

Hey, now… what’s going on here? Asked my Inner Self. This was my Better Sense’s mentally handicapped roommate, and it kept me rooted to that spot on the sidewalk. And when I saw what was going on in the shadows, I couldn’t leave.

Where the houses came together, even the moon couldn’t penetrate the darkness. A narrow alleyway separated a boarded-up Victorian from the Craftsman bungalow next door, also boarded up—but the properties weren’t deserted. Up against the wall of the Victorian, three men stood shrouded in black velvet. I blinked and saw a smaller figure, too, a woman. And when I saw the positions they were in, I froze.

Two of the men stood on either side of the woman, who struggled unsuccessfully against the hands pinning her arms against the rotten siding. They’d forced her face-first against the house, the two subduing her while the third, standing behind her, reached around and did something with the front of her pants. He pulled these down, and as he did so her struggle seemed to take on a new intensity. She began to moan no, no, no over and over, gaining in volume until the man who had just pulled her pants down grabbed her by the hair and bounced her face off the side of the house.

“Shut up,” he growled.

The moaning stopped. So did the struggling. The man began to undo his belt buckle.

I knew what I was witnessing, but I couldn’t move. The scene unfolding before me came from another planet, another world whose gravities and atmosphere I couldn’t process—my muscles couldn’t work there, my lungs couldn’t breathe. A cold, slippery feeling writhed in my stomach and I thought that I had never felt so sick in my life.

“Fuck her brains out,” said one of her restrainers.

The woman began to moan again, prompting the third man to take his hands off his belt buckle long enough to smash her face against the wall again. Her knees buckled this time, and she would have fallen but for the two other men pinning her up against the house. His hands returned to his waist. I heard the clink of the buckle, then the snick of his zipper.

Do something, Bobby shouted. Do it now!

And so I did.

“What in the fuck are you clowns doing?” I barked, stepping forward. “Get your hands off that woman right now!”

Mr. Pants Puller jumped about a mile in the air, stumbling backwards so fast that he would have gone sprawling on his backside had the wall of the bungalow next door not stopped him. But it did stop him, and when he hit it he bounced forward just as his partners in crime released the woman and scrambled away from where they’d been holding her for their friend. She collapsed and fell sideways.

“Shit!” One of them exclaimed.

Shit, indeed. Three of them, one of me. Closer in now, I could see that they were all young—the one fiddling to get his pants zippered back up couldn’t have been more than twenty, twenty-two. He had his head down, trying to see his zipper in the dark, but even with this I could tell that he, like his friends, stood taller than me. Three of them, one of me, and while the two restrainers held their hands up, in just about five seconds they would figure out that this newcomer wasn’t anyone to be afraid of and then…

Burn that bridge when we get there, Bobby said.

“Who is you?” Asked the restrainer on the left.

“Detective Bobby Swanson of the Durham Police Department,” I said in my best command voice. “You got five seconds to get your asses out of here!”

Left and Right—the threat-tracking software in my head had assigned them names already—took two hesitant steps backwards, arms still raised in the air. They’re buying it, my heart sang gleefully as they began to turn, it’s working !

But then Pants Puller finished buttoning himself back up and said, “Hold on.”

They stopped. My heart stopped singing in mid-trill. I looked down at the woman on the ground, who hadn’t moved from where she’d collapsed. If I’d hoped for an ally in all this, I wouldn’t find it in her—she appeared either dead or asleep.

Why isn’t she moving? She was moving a second ago, why is she so goddamned still…

And it dawned on me then what I’d walked into here. I blinked at the woman, at Left and Right and Pants Puller. I had thought I was witnessing a gang rape, but in reality…

A setup , Bobby hissed. You’ve been ambushed.

By golems. The Bald Man had set me up, throwing this cast and crew together to draw me into the shadows using the rope of my own good nature—the knowledge that Kevin Swanson couldn’t stand by and let something like this happen. These were golems.

I saw his bald head outlined against the window of his darkened room. His eyes glowed with red malevolence and although I couldn’t see him, I felt him grinning.

Three against one, he chuckled. Let’s see how the Hero of the Month handles this!

“If you a cop,” said Pants Puller, stepping forward towards me, “show me your badge.”

“I don’t have to show you a goddamned thing!” I growled with false confidence. I raised my voice. “You are all under arrest for the crime of attempted rape! Turn around and put your hands on the wall!”

Left and Right didn’t. Their hands began to lower.

“If you a cop,” Pants Puller said again, “show me your gun .”

Which, of course, I couldn’t do. Because I didn’t have one. I had an AK-47, but this was locked up in my gun cabinet in my basement in Burlington.

“Mother fucker! ” Exclaimed Left.

“He ain’t no cop!” Declared Right.

Pants Puller grinned now, and I thought in a flash that he might not be a golem at all. This right here was a demon in the flesh, he had a brain and a malevolent soul, I could read it on his young features and see it glowing orange and red in his eyes. He reached inside his jacket pocket and came out with a small automatic pistol. He leveled it at me.

“You in a heap of trouble now, cracker,” he said. “You done fucked with the wrong motherfuckers.”

Bobby? I cried. What do I do now?

Before Bobby could answer, Pants Puller had snatched the front of my London Fog coat and propelled me against the wall of the bungalow. He aimed the gun squarely between my eyes. My eyeballs rotated in on themselves to try to focus on the gun. Unlike the knife in the hands of the man who had tried to mug me in front of my office, the gun didn’t shake.

“You a dead motherfucker,” Pants Puller said in a voice that was half-growl and half-whisper but all grin. “Oh, you is so dead!”

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. My voice sounded amazingly calm and steady. “I don’t know who you are; hell, I can hardly see you. We can all just go ahead on and…”

“Shut the fuck up.”

So I shut the fuck up.

Over his shoulder, he said, “Go ahead. Pick that bitch up and do it.”

Left obeyed. He bent over and hauled the woman to a standing position while Right first stared, then understood what he was supposed to be doing and began unbuckling his pants.

“You think you bad?” Pants Puller asked me. “You ain’t shit!”

Right worked a lot faster than Pants Puller had. His pants came undone with lightning speed, and now his hands went into them to free himself from the constraints of his boxer shorts. He moved forward towards the woman, whose head lolled from one side to the other.

That could be Abby, that could be somebody’s daughter and I’m just going to stand here and…

No.

Before I could launch another thought, my hands shot up and my body shot sideways. My palms connected with Pants Puller’s gun hand and forced it first up and then violently down as they closed around the weapon and twisted his wrist, making it mechanically impossible for him to continue holding it.