Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

Skin prickling from the stares of all those around me, I turned and ran.

“I never saw her again,” I told Dr. Koenig. “I wasn’t going back after something like that. I told myself, she’s crazy. Like Bobby said: crazy-ass, Yoda-ass, fucked-up-ass bitch. But she freaked me out.”

I shuddered at the memory.

“Four years later, I met Allie. Within… I don’t know, our first few encounters, I said, this is the one. I didn’t think about Ruby at all. Not for one second.”

“Kevin,” he said, “I need you to concentrate.”

“I am concentrating. What are you talking about?”

“You’re not answering the question. What happened? Tell me what happened. I need to know what you saw.”

He had rolled his shirtsleeves almost to the elbows and loosened his tie. He looked like he’d been working forever, like he hadn’t taken so much as an hour’s break since completing his doctoral thesis on stone tablets and turning it in to a faculty who could only read cuneiform. The bags under his eyes spoke of nights awake and gave the windows to his soul a sunken quality. I blinked at him, and I thought, he looks like I feel.

“I am telling you what happened,” I said. “This is all part of it.”

What is he talking about? I asked inside. My inner voice had taken on a shrill quality that made me feel like it belonged to someone else. My stomach lurched. My hands, clutching Southern Rifleman like a child might have clutched a beloved toy in a moment of high anxiety, shook.

“Kevin, we need to cut the baloney, okay? We need to cut it right now. I need you to open up that head of yours and I need you to tell me what happened .”

My stomach lurched again. I tried to stand, but my legs felt like rubber bands and so I abandoned the effort before they could dump me on the coffee table. I didn’t want that, because I hated the coffee table; I hated it every time I came in here, I hated to look at it, hated setting things on it. I hated it because that thing was bullshit on four legs. Sheets of what was essentially plastic painted to look like wood stretched over slabs of solidified fiberboard—the vomit of sawmills. Chinese factory workers shaking their heads and laughing as they packaged it. Stupid Americans. They think this is wood. Such a shallow people. Such a stupid people.

I looked at Dr. Koenig. His briefcase sat open beside him

briefcase, briefcase, briefcase why does he always get stuff out of a briefcase in his own office

with an array of papers poking out of it in a disheveled mess. Like their owner. His trouser leg had caught on the top of his black polyester sock, revealing a swatch of white flesh.

“I don’t feel good,” I said. “Something’s wrong. I need to go home.”

“Do you feel like you’re going to be sick?”

I nodded. He grabbed a wastebasket and plopped it in front of me. Then he sat down again, leaning forward across the coffee table with that vulpine intensity.

“Tell me,” he said.

“This is so fucked up,” I said. My stomach flip-flopped again and then did nothing more. But I still couldn’t stand up. “What’s wrong with me? Did you slip me something? What the hell did you give me?”

“Tell me about the Bald Man.” If he leaned in any farther, we’d be kissing. “Tell me what he did.”

“When you first discovered this whole idea of sliding,” I asked Brandon Cross, “what was it like the first time?”

We’d had this conversation a month ago, maybe two. I’d gone to see him so many times, all of our meetings blended together even though they’d taken place across the course of both winter and spring. On this occasion, we sat in the lounge again, alone.

“Scary,” he said.

“Scary why?” I asked.

“Just scary.”

“Because you didn’t understand what was going on?”

He nodded.

“It was a surprise to you.”

He nodded again.

“Was it in a dream? Were you in bed when it happened?”

“No,” he replied. “I was awake.”

I woke up on the couch in my basement man-cave. How I’d ever managed to fall asleep with all the doors and windows unlocked upstairs I didn’t know; at some point, I’d learned sheer exhaustion overpowers the mind and just shuts a man down. But I woke up now to a dormant television—it must have overheated and cut itself off—and the soft glow of the lights over my bar.

And the creaking of floorboards upstairs. My eyes rose to the ceiling.

There’s somebody here, I thought.

Game on, motherfucker! Bobby said. He sounded almost gleeful. It’s on! Here he comes!

I took the AK-47 by the pistol grip and thumbed off the safety. The enemy had penetrated my perimeter. This time, though, no problem. I’d unlocked the doors. I’d let him in. This wasn’t a home invasion, not tonight. This was an ambush.

I got up off the couch and crept over to the stairs leading up to the kitchen, covering the door with my rifle. By the sounds of it, he stood in my living room. Probably heading for the stairs, thinking he’d find Allie and Abby up there. In just a moment, he’d reach the staircase to the second floor and begin climbing it.

Get into position in the living room, Bobby said. He’s going to have to come back downstairs to leave the house. When he reaches the foyer, engage.

“Good to go,” I whispered. Above me, the floorboards creaked beneath his weight and suddenly dissipated, becoming almost imperceptible above the rush of blood in my ears. He had reached the staircase. Going upstairs now.

I grinned. I couldn’t see my own face, but I felt it, and what I felt scared me. And thrilled me. This right here felt good. Game on felt good.

Okay, Bobby said, slowly. Get into position.

I reached one foot out for the bottom step and

Suddenly I was somewhere else.

The light coming through the window of Dr. Koenig’s office spoke of mid-afternoon. Shadows of the dogwoods, flowerless now, reached across the hardwood floor for my feet. I wore work shoes, the brown pair of Eccos. I stared at the shoes, I stared at the shadows and I felt the ice crystals slicing the insides of my veins and arteries as my blood began to freeze.

What the fuck?

I looked up at Dr. Koenig. The last thought to run through my mind displayed in bright confusion on his face. His eyebrows had raised in surprise so profound it looked almost like fear. I had succeeded in blowing his mind.

How did I get here?

Of course I blew his mind. I had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I slid.

My slack jaw dangled from the rest of my face. My index finger curled around an invisible trigger guard; my hands were confused, too, wanting to know where the AK-47 had gone.

My next words emerged in a choked squeak, but I got them out. “What in God’s name just happened?”

He stared at me. This must have been how Kenny stared at Brandon Cross when the latter left every night to go back to his wife and his kid and his Navy. He turned his head to one side and then the other in the slowest of shakes.

“How did I get here?”

He swallowed.

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“In my basement! There’s somebody… that son of a bitch is in my house, and I was on my way up the stairs to hose his ass and put a lid on this once and for all! What the fuck, Doc, why am I in your office?”

“Go back,” he said. “Tell me what happens.”

I closed my eyes.

I stood on my basement stairs, the muzzle of the AK-47 covering the door. Slender bars of light around the edges glowed from the lamp over the stove. My trigger finger ached with the desire to open fire on something.