Trent Jamieson - Death most definite

"One thing I can't stand is noisy eaters," Lissa says. "If you're going to inhale that thing, at least do it quietly."

"Anything else you don't like?"

"I never really liked my job."

I'm impressed by her segueing. "Well, quit."

Lissa glares at me. "Aren't we Mr. Glib."

I'm feeling a little better. The kettle's boiling, I pour the water into my cup. Mom loved her tea. The thought that I'll never have a cup with her again takes the breath from me. I'm not sure I want it anymore. I put it back down and step away.

Lissa's giving me a worried look, now. Is this the best that I can get? Concern from a dead girl? Someone who was lost to me before I even got to know her, someone who should be receiving that concern from me. What's wrong with me? And here I am having a cup of tea.

"You're scaring me a little here," Lissa says.

"Mom," I say, gesturing at my cup.

Lissa frowns. "Well, she wouldn't want you to stop drinking tea, would she?"

I shake my head. I need milk for the tea. I drink my coffee black, but I take milk with my tea. Mom was very particular about that, even with tea bags-boil, then steep, then milk, but no sugar. Don't get me started on that. I open my fridge.

"Shit."

There's a bomb in there. A mobile phone, wrapped in a tangle of wires that is buried in a lump of explosive like a cyber tick on a C-4 plastique dog. And the phone's LCD is flashing.

Lissa screams, "Run!"

I'm already doing it.

"Molly," I yell, as I grab my bag in a reflex action that may just get me killed. I hurtle out the back door, down the steps and into the backyard. "Moll-"

I'm consumed by brilliance. A wave of heat comes swift on its tail. I'm lifted up and thrown into the bamboo that lines the back fence. Behind me the house is ablaze. A few moments later, the gas tanks beneath the house detonate. Molly, where's Molly? I throw my arm over my face and weep. My house, the one I've been paying off for the last six years, is all gone. Fragments of my CD collection are part of the smoldering rain falling on my backyard.

I crawl back through the bamboo. It's digging into me, there are shards of wood that are actually stuck in my flesh. I wrench myself out of the thicket, dragging my bag. Something whines.

"Oh, Molly."

She's broken. Her back is twisted at an angle that makes me sick with the sight of it. She tries to rise, even manages it for a moment. She moans and slumps back to the ground. There's blood all through her fur.

I'm running to her side, and she looks at me with her beautiful eyes, and there's terror and pain there. This isn't fair. It isn't fair. She doesn't understand what's happening. She tries to rise again. "It's OK, girl," I say, and I rest my hand on her head, and her breathing steadies a little. It's the only comfort I can offer her. "Molly."

I don't know what to touch. I don't know how to hold her, what's not going to hurt her anymore. She's shivering, and I stroke her head. "Molly, good girl."

What's left of my house burns, flaring up when something particularly flammable catches alight. My face is hot, and I stroke my dog's head. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Molly takes one more shuddery breath, and is still. And she isn't my Molly anymore. Something passes through me, gentler than a human, but it hurts regardless.

I look up and Lissa's watching me, her eyes wide.

"I was going to get Tim to pick her up," I whisper, as though I have to justify this. Christ, what if Tim had opened the fridge?

"Oh, Steve. I'm so sorry."

"It's OK," I say. "It's OK." But it isn't.

Molly is dead. There's only her ruined body, and even now it's growing cold, and it doesn't look like her anymore, because with Molly it was always about the way she was thinking. The way she moved. She really was a clever dog. She didn't deserve this. She put up with so much. She never got enough walks. Molly's gone, and I can't make it up to her.

Lissa's gaze stops me. Her eyes, green as a hailstorm now, are serious, and they're focused on me. For a moment they're all I see. Lissa saves me with that stare. I don't know how to explain it. It's as though she's always been a part of my life, as though she knows exactly what to say or do to comfort me.

I'm in an alternate universe, though, and one far crueler. One where Lissa and I never connected when we were alive. Never had a chance to tumble into love, and all its possibilities. Her gaze saves me, but it also makes me bitter because I'm never going to get that chance. She's dead, and my parents are dead, and Molly's dead.

And that fills me with something hard, cold and resolute.

"We have to get out of here," I say.

"Yeah, we do."

One last look at Molly and I jump the fence behind the burning bamboo into the neighbor's backyard. The sound of sirens is building, filling the suburbs as they rush toward my home. People are heading toward my house but I'm running in the opposite direction, and it has to look suspicious. My house is going to be on the news tonight. My face is going to be there, too, and beard or no beard, the people on the bus are going to remember that face, and the guy whose car I stole. But I try not to think about that. And while I need it, desperately need it, I have no space for strategy, except this.

I have to stay alive now.

Someone has to pay for what has been done to me and mine.

We're halfway down the block when the pale blue sedan pulls up alongside us. Its headlights flash. I flinch, wondering whether or not this is it. There's nowhere to run, just the road to my right, and tall fences to my left. No one pays this car much attention besides me but that could well change if someone starts firing rounds out of it. The passenger-side door opens.

"Get in," Tim says.

My jaw drops.

"There's no time to explain, just get in!"

"Can you trust this guy?" Lissa demands.

I'm already in the car, shutting the door behind me. Tim races down the road. I can sense Lissa's displeasure emanating from the back seat of the car.

"This isn't your car," I say. The car smells of cigarettes. Tim has the radio on and we have a background of inconsequential jokey disc jockey chatter. It's somehow calming where I would usually find it irritating. Bad radio hints at normalcy, and this is seriously bad radio.

"Do you think I'd be stupid enough to drive my own car?" Tim looks terrified, and wounded, like a man who has lost his parents. I recognize the look I had seen in my own face earlier. He takes a deep breath, slowing the car down to the speed limit.

"Didn't think about that," I say. "I haven't really been thinking about anything."

"Shit. Steve, what the fuck's going on?" Tim lights up a smoke, waiting. Suburbia streaks by. My house is the only one that's exploded, but everything looks wrong, feels wrong. The lens of losing everything has slipped over my eyes and I wonder if I'll ever see the world in the old way again.

Tim keeps swinging his gaze from the road to my face and back again, as though it or I have answers. I'd put my money on the road. "I don't know. I don't know. How did you…"

"I got a call. I don't know who from, just a male voice, it was all very confusing. They said you were in danger, and that I needed to get to your place right away." Tim smiles, it's a weak, thin thing, but a smile all the same. "They also said not to drive my car, that people might be looking for it. I borrowed this. It's a neighbor's. When I got to your house it was in flames. I saw you leap the fence."

He sighs. "Why didn't you call me again? That message you left, what the fuck was that?"

"I didn't want you to get dragged into-"

"Jesus, I'm always going to be part of this. You Pomps, you snooty bastards. I'm a Black Sheep, but that doesn't mean I can't be some help. Shit, my parents are dead. They were murdered, so were yours."