Participants:
| Scene Title | Dinner Guests, Part II |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Everything changes. |
| Date | November 26, 1970 |
A turntable console situated by an open window crackles and pops with the crooning voice of Elvis Presley. Canary yellow curtains blow in the cool autumn wind, one corner perforated by small holes that catch the last rays of evening light shining between tenement buildings.
We're caught in a trap
The kitchen is a disaster. The tile backsplash behind the sink is pock-marked by bullet holes and the trail of their violence continues up through the walls and their floral wallpaper. Dishes stacked up beside the sink are chipped and cracked. A fresh cup of coffee sits beside an aluminum percolator, still steaming.
I can't walk out
There’s a trail of food from the kitchen to the dining room. Mashed sweet potatoes in a drizzling trail to where the dining room table is flipped over on its side, the wood perforated by bullet holes. The table cloth has fallen down over the dishes and food that hadn’t yet been cleaned up from Thanksgiving.
Because I love you too much, baby
A single ray of warm, golden sunlight cuts through the dining room, highlighting blood on the corner of the table and the back of a seat still left standing. There’s bullet holes in the rattan seatback, fresh blood dripping from one of the holes down onto the hardwood flood.
Why can't you see
A shoe has been forgotten by the edge of the dining room. Lamps in the living room are flickering, shades crooked. The wallpaper here is likewise marred by gunfire, but also arterial spray. It rolls down the wallpaper onto the back of the sofa sitting in front of a television displaying nothing but static.
What you're doing to me
Someone knocked over the bookshelf on the far end of the living room. There’s books and kitschy knick-knacks scattered on the floor, some crushed underfoot. Broken glass glitters in the evening sunlight where windows were blown out by gunfire. Stuffing from an armchair still drifts in the wind, fluttering down from where it is caught in the vortex of the ceiling fan.
When you don't believe a word I say?
And a drizzled trail of blood leads from the living room toward the front door of the apartment, where wheezing breaths gurgle below Elvis Preseley’s smooth voice.
We can't go on together
And a man missing a shoe lays slouched against the wall, blood pulsing between his fingers.
With suspicious minds
Then he breathes no more.
Fifteen Minutes Earlier
Thanksgiving Day
Delilah & Tom’s Apartment
Brooklyn, New York
November 26th
1970
4:01 pm
“Almost done!”
Tom Porter chirps from the kitchen, bracing a large ceramic bowl to his hip with one hand while he vigorously applies a potato masher to the other. His strawberries and cream colored apron is speckled with the remnants of mashed sweet potatoes and smudges of brown sugar.
“I cannot believe you forgot the mashed potatoes.” Nowak says from the kitchen table, a mostly finished meal in front of him. His smile is a broad one as he slouches back in his seat, contentedly. The rattan back creaks under the weight and he slaps his hands on his stomach. “I hope you saved room for andrut.” He says across the table to Walter.
“There’s no good movies out!” Walter slaps a newspaper on the table with a pout, not having been paying attention to Nowak.
“I know, right? Star Wars doesn’t come out for another eight years!” Matthew whines, dejectedly throwing his fork onto his plate with a clatter. “Who wants to see—” he slaps the newspaper, “Scrooge or the Pizza Triangle? What even are these”
A seat down, Howard Frady uses a napkin to dab some gravy from his mustache as he looks at the kids. He offers a glance across the table to Delilah and Elaine, then laughs and shakes his head as he sets the napkin down.
“I dunno what a Star War is, but the drive-in’s playing Cold Sweat.” Frady says with a little smirk. “Charles Bronson, now that’s an actor.”
“Who?” Matthew stares at Frady in disbelief.
Frady looks back at Delilah and Elaine with a laugh. “Maybe you kids are too young for it. There’s a lot of guns and cussing.”
“We’ve seen a lot of guns and cussing,” Odette says simply as she moves up behind Walter to get a look at the paper, squinting to read the small text from a distance. “Owl and the Pussy-Cat? That one sounds fun.” It also sounds like it could be a soft-porn, with a title like that, though it does appear to be rated PG. As usual, she’s attracted to anything that seems like it might involve an animal.
Even a make-believe one. She absolutely loved Harvey. “Do you think the Pizza Triangle is about pizza?” she wonders out loud, as she goes back toward the kitchen, as if anticipating Tom asking for help bringing things in to the table.
"I hate to say Odette's right about the guns and cussing, but she is. It doesn't mean we're going to go watch more of it, Odette. We've certainly had enough of that," Elaine says, her plate mostly cleaned but a spot has been carefully saved for the potatoes. Her gaze drifts to the newspaper as she tries to recall just how many of the movies read off that she's actually seen. Leaning on the table slightly, she chuckles.
"You can't go wrong with a Charles Dickens' classic, though. I'm not sure what version this one is, but I tend to like them. Especially as we head towards Christmas. It kind of sets the mood for the season, I think. Maybe it's also because I loved the book," she says, turning her attention towards the kitchen and Tom's hurried attempt to bring out the absolutely necessary potatoes.
"Definitely not Pizza Triangle." Delilah intones between sips of cider, brows lifting up in response to Walter about to ask 'why not?'. Because she said so. Odette's addition makes it a little less concerning, and Dee's laugh is a bright and brief contagion.
"It's deeefinitely not about pizza, love." Owl might squeak past the parental censors, though- - maturity is all relative, of course. And maybe just… a reminder that guns and cussing sure do grow them fast.
"Hey," Skirt bunching as she twists in her chair, Delilah calls out after Tom in the kitchen, a cheeky smile on her face all the while. "How many more beatings until morale improves, cap'n? Your drink looks lonely."
“These movies all suck.” Matthew whines.
“Language,” Frady and Tom say from separate rooms simultaneously, eliciting a bark of laughter from both men.
“Nowak, how’s the new job going?” Frady asks, “It’s a desk job, right?”
Nowak smiles, gesturing with his fork as he talks. “Hammermill,” he explains. “It’s at a desk, but I spent a lot of time in a warehouse.” His English is getting noticeably better, and while he still has an accent he’s a more fluent speaker now thanks to Elaine’s help. “It is a good job, pays well, and… without knowing how long we are going to be here, it is nice to be able to provide for my family.” He says with a smile over at Elaine.
There is no performative expression in that, there is earnest care. Nowak has fallen for Elaine in ways facades can’t be imagined. Hearing that confession in the kitchen, Tom’s shoulders slack some and he slows his mashing of the sweet potatoes.
“So do you like, make hammers?” Matthew asks, picking at his food.
Nowak laughs and shakes his head. “No, no. It’s a paper distribution company. But I think the New York office is being bought out by another company soon.” He glances at Elaine. “Sorry I kept meaning to tell you. My job is safe, though, I’ve already met the owners of the other company and they are very impressed by my work ethic.”
Odette gives the two men an odd look when they yell language and she looks over at her mom and whispers to herself, “Since when was suck a bad word?” While Tom’s shoulders slack, the small girl beams a pretty smile at the idea that Nowak thinks of them as his family. She seemed to genuinely like “Tata Nowak” as she called him. It was the Polish word for Papa, which she had quickly adopted. Just like she called Tom her uncle easily enough.
“Can I help with anything?” She asks of Tom, looking eager to please.
Any look of concern that might have crossed Elaine's face is quickly washed away by Nowak's reassurance. "I'm not surprised you've made a good impression," she says, fondly. "Getting in with the new owners sounds like you'll have a leg up on any intercompany promotions they feel like handing out. Might not be a dream job, but there's certainly something to be said about job security."
Turning back to the table and nursing at her glass of cider, Delilah absorbs the exchange between the men with a moment of silence, a brief sidelong smile for Elaine soon after. Brows lift in interest at what Nowak shares, pinching in the middle as Delilah looks to the table. Maybe she really is just paranoid anymore- - this life seems to do that to a person- - but even the words 'paper company' bristle her everytime Nowak mentions work. Instinctual aversion, that's all.
"That's good you'll be grandfathered in. You are a busy bee." Delilah sighs softly, pretending the breath isn't for her own sake. She turns a look over her shoulder to the kitchen and back again, thoughtful.
“If it weren’t for you being, you know, time-traveling fugitives I’d have you come to work for us,” Frady says with a lopsided smile. “We could use more people with a knack for learning, and,” he glances at Elaine, “God knows we could use someone with your gift for languages. But,” Frady turns his eyes down to his plate, “well, yeah. Shoulda’s, woulda’s, and coulda’s.” He remarks wistfully.
Nowak offers Frady a lopsided smile and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Well, if you ever want to come work in the paper business I can put in a good word with Mr. Bishop!” He says with a bright laugh and absolutely no awareness of what that name means.
Tom, in the kitchen, doesn’t hear Nowak’s remark and instead offers a warm smile to Odette. “Oh hey, kiddo. Yeah if you wanna help,” he says, setting down the bowl he’d been mashing the sweet potatoes in on the counter, “grab that carton of milk and pour just a little in while I mash, it’ll make it nice and creamy.”
“I can do that,” Odette confidently says as she goes to the fridge to retrieve the milk carton to follow those simple instructions, moving closer to pour only a little bit of milk at a time so that she doesn’t accidentally ruin it. As she looks up at Tom, one of her eyes seems a little redder than the other, like she’s been rubbing on it or something. It’s been pretty commonplace lately— that and the squinting— they might need to look into glasses for her in the future.
“I like regular mashed potatoes better,” she confesses quietly, “But sweet potatoes are yummy too. But why do some people call them yams and others don’t?” It’s the curious kid question, one that probably doesn’t even need to be answered, honestly, but something that she asks anyway.
"… Bishop?"
Elaine sets her fork down, her eyes going to Delilah for a minute before she looks back to Nowak. "Thomas, what's Mr. Bishop's first name?"
Delilah often has moments where she could use a large scoop of ice cream, and now happens to be one. She keeps an ear out for Tom and odette, though her visual focus seems to be Elaine.
“We both know this isn’t exactly a time known for subtlety…” Despite her assertion, it is worth a nervous laugh before she looks up to Nowak. “It’s, ah, Robert, right?” It will shock her more if it is a no.
“He goes by Bob.” Nowak says with a cheerful smile, standing up to walk over to the record player, picking out something to put on in the background. “He is nice! A little uh, doofy?” He wrinkles his nose with a smile, sliding an Elvis album out of its sleeve. “But he means well.”
Nowak places the album From Elvis in Memphis on the turntable, then sets the arm down. “To be honest, it’s his business partner Charles that I—”
We're caught in a trap
Then the kitchen window explodes with a gunshot. Glass flies past Tom and Odette, and he moves as quick as he can to grab her and pull her out of the way. The two crash down to the floor, shards of glass raining down around them.
I can't walk out
Walter is up and out of his chair and across the room faster than Delilah’s heart can skip a beat. It’s a reflexive teleportation to the sound of a window breaking, he’s behind the armchair, looking bewildered at how he got there.
Because I love you too much, baby
Matthew is diving out of his chair, throwing himself to the floor. The single sound of a gunshot sends his little heart racing, and he digs his fingers into the carpet to make sure the floor isn’t concrete and that he isn’t back there. He forces the gurgling last breaths of his mother out of his mind.
Why can't you see
“Get down!” Frady barks too late for the first shot, but in time for the second. This one comes in through the living room window and hits the dining room table right where Walter had been seated. It blows through the table and his chair and into the floor a few inches from where Matthew lays. “Get down, get down!”
What you're doing to me
Frady reaches for a gun under his arm that isn’t there.
When you don't believe a word I say?
Nowak throws himself onto the floor, down on his knees, hovering over Matthew to try and shield him. Another window blows, a bullet rips through the air and Frady drops down onto his side, yelling, clutching his arm. Blood blooms up from his sleeve. “Fuck, fuck!”
There’s only one surprised gasp from Odette at the sudden explosions and noise, perhaps because she’s trying so hard not to drop the milk— that doesn’t work out well, as she’s pulled down to the floor by Tom, the glass bottle hitting the floor with a solid thud and rolling away, leaving a trail of white liquid behind it as it traverses the kitchen floor away from the two.
Blood and glass mix with the milk.
From where she’s secured, her now free and bleeding hands, cover her ears, her eyes wide as she tries to look around Tom’s arm, as if hoping to see her mother, her friends.
Elaine tips herself out of her chair, diving under the table only to find it's not the safest place for her to be. She crawls, trying to get some sort of bead on the direction of the attack so she can position herself somewhere safer, but she's distracted when she sees blood on Frady's arm. "Fuck, we need to get out of here. We're not safe here anymore," she says, her tone panicked.
She means the house by here, but a deeper part of her means this time.
The buzzing in her head isn't coming from something else, it is the anger and fear sloshing in her ears when she realizes what is happening. Reflexes find Delilah sliding heavily out of her seat beside the table, eyes searching for a son that has displaced into the next room, and a second one now experiencing an episode.
White hot incandescent rage sparks in her stomach, barely containing itself in the deep breath Delilah takes. She will scream later, she promises herself.
"Elaine, the floorboard under the carpet- -" One sharp jab of a finger towards the living room before her eyes skim over the blood on Frady. She can't tell how bad it is just yet. "Tom?! Dette? Are you alright? Can you get to the sink?" Delilah is already bracing for the next intrusion, trying to crane a look to find where the initial shots had come from.
“We are very much not alright! What the hell is going on!?” Tom screams from the kitchen. He wills himself to move, keeping his body hunched over Odettes as he crab-walks her to the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. The moment Tom pokes his head out from around the corner of a cabinet there’s another gunshot and more glass blowing out of the window. The shot blasts a chunk off the corner of the cabinet and sends wood splinters into Tom’s cheek.
“Fuck!” Frady howls, crawling under the table. “Fuck,” he hisses a second later, touching a spot at his side beneath his suit jacket that is dark and wet. “Oh, fuck.” He exhales the words, shakily crawling across the floor toward Matthew, who he sees staring vacantly into the distance and hyperventilating, shielded by Nowak.
“Mom!” Walter cries from behind the chair, trying to move to get out only to draw a sudden blast of gunfire from somewhere outside the apartment that punches through the wall near his head.
“Stay down! Walter, stay down!” Tom screams.
Another gunshot perforates the chair Walter was using for cover, goes right through him
but he’s not there
He is a cheetah on the savannah. He is a stone skipping across time and space.
Walter appears with a rush of air next to Delilah and knocks her over a split second before a bullet punches into the floor where she was crouched. That shot came from across the street—could’ve killed her. She sees Walter clinging to her with tears in his eyes, shouting, “Mom, mom, mom,” muffled into her shoulder.
Could have
did
Did kill her.
But Delilah is fine. Causality be damned.
“Stay.” Tom urges Odette, planting a hand on her head. “Nowak! Think with Portals!” He shouts before diving toward where Delilah had pointed. Gunfire rips across the wall beside Tom, and Nowak stands up to do as asked.
He throws out his hands, creating a dimpling ripple in the air between Tom and the windows. Gunfire rings out, bullets rip through the portal, and then are spat right back out. Nowak nearly collapses from the use of his power, jostling the record player as he catches himself.
Tom slides to a halt, flips up the rug, and hauls out a shotgun, a bolt-action hunting rifle, and two revolvers. The rifle is slid across the floor to Elaine, the shotgun to Delilah, and one of the revolvers to Frady under the table. He takes the other for himself and fires blindly out one of the windows.
Elaine has had a good angle on the windows from the corner of the dining room now, and it feels like there’s at least four sharpshooters honing in on the apartment. Two are across the street, probably on the roof of the adjacent apartment. Two are likely shooting from the neighboring building’s third floor. She can’t see any of them, but she has a general idea of the tactic and positioning.
“What do we do!?” Tom shouts, back pressed flat to a wall, looking at Odette where he left her in the doorway.
“We gotta—” Frady daubs fingers at the wound at his side. There’s blood on the corner of the table near where he was sitting and the back of the chair he was sitting in. “We gotta get outside. But they’ve gotta—they’ll have the exits covered. Fire escape. Everything”
They.
Frady suspects what this is.
“We gotta get out.” Frady says hoarsely, wincing as he clutches his side.
Elaine's attention stays on the window, seeking out the potential shooters and assessing the situation. It's more than they're prepared for. More than she was prepared for. She snags the rifle as it's slid to within her grasp, and she catches Tom's gaze as she takes it in hand. "Howard's right, this amount of muscle means they're coordinated." Pulling the shrug she was wearing from her shoulders, she balls it up with her free hand and tosses it in Frady's direction. She doesn't need to tell him to put pressure on it, it's implied in the look she levels him as she discards her favorite jacket.
"Got any ideas for a wild escape? They've got to have at least four or five shooters, we need…" She trails off. She has no idea what they need other than an exit.
Hearing the panicked shuffling from her family is one thing that crawls down Delilah's neck every time. It has been more than too many times and is intimately familiar. She looks up to where Frady is shuffling, only managing an open mouth before shots ring out again, peppering wood and upholstery.
Cold hits her when she can see the debris of the wall and chair flaking up into the air from one of the blasts. Then something else hits her, this time from behind in a mess of arms and displaced air. Instinctively, Delilah wraps her arm around her son, hand on his head when she finally spots the puncture on the floorboard where she was. The scrape of metal and wood pulls her back, and her other hand slips out to wrap around the shotgun Tom's slid her way.
"I'm okay," Delilah whispers into Walter's head at her shoulder. "I'm okay, love." She has no idea what is going on in his head, and finding out can be a Later problem. Provided that they see a Later. Looking to Elaine and doing a little of her own math in her head, Dee's expression shifts to one of strain before she looks to making sure the shotgun is filled. She doesn't know either, but saying as much is out of the question right now. "Do we let them come to us?" Waiting for a breach is not ideal, but it's not like she can pull a tank out of her bra.
“Mister Tom is scared, mommy,” Odette says with that too-calm voice she often has in times of stress. Danger is an old friend. Hearing the voices in the other room relieves a lot of what would make her afraid. Her red hair, locks falling in front of one side of her face, has come undone, covering most of it from sight as she crawls with Tom along the floor.
“We should get out of here?” It’s both a statement and a question, because she wants to help. It was their home. Had been for so long. She spared a thought for her “friends” in her bedroom, but she knew they could be replaced, stuffed and made of plush as they were.
Mister Frady couldn’t be.
They needed help.
Odette tenses for a moment, for all her worth looking like a deer caught in unseen headlights. Something rushes through her mind, overwhelming and confusing. The world around her is muffled, everything is tunnel-vision dark. The thoughts racing through her mind are boiled down to their essential salts. Three components of physics: momentum, energy, and space.
Walter peeks over Delilah’s arm, looking at Odette frozen where she’s crouched. He sees the blood vessels in the girl’s left eye rupturing, pock-marks of red flooding the whites of her eyes. “Mom?” Walter whispers over the momentary silence as the gunfire has abated. Blood weeps from Odette’s tear duct and rolls down her cheek. “Mom!”
Matthew looks past Frady and meets Odette’s gaze, seeing the single line of blood rolling down her cheek from a fully red eye. His jaw trembles, his heart races.
Nowak, looks up from where he’s shielding Matthew, watching Frady crawling across the floor, leaving a dark red stain on the hardwood. “Nowak. You need to do your thing.” Frady hisses. Nowak’s hands tremble, and he shakes his head, eyes wide.
“I—I can’t—I can’t.” Nowak stammers. Fear. There’s too much at stake.
Walter.
Matthew.
Nowak.
The world comes back into focus for Odette. They need an exit. They need Momentum, Energy, and Space working in tandem.
From where she lays on the floor, hair falling in her face, Odette makes a soft sound, one that Tom might take as pain. She presses the side of her face against the floor, then starts to murmur. Soft at first, then with increasing urgency.
“He needs help. He can’t do it on his own. Help him, Matty. Make him work.” Her little voice is getting louder, carrying throughout the rooms. “And Walter. Walter too. All at once.”
She looks up, red hair spilling to the side, eyes opening wide—
And there’s something— off about one of them.
The color has changed. The deep brown that she had shared with her mother has lightened on one side. One eye shifting brighter, like a light has burst forth behind it.
A golden light.
Walter's whisper catches her ear, but it is the second more desperate hiss of mom that has her following his eyes. Delilah's widen as the cold stone in her stomach turns over like a beast in its grave.
"No, no, nonononono- -" Memory is a powerful sense, and as her own comes alive again Delilah's breath and whisper betrays a frantic attempt to quell it. "Odette, honey, please, can you get to mom?" She doesn't know what is happening, of course- - but simply her own history dictates her words. "Honey, breathe slowly- -. Please. Slow."
It takes a second for Elaine to catch on to what's happening to her daughter, but Dee's words key her into it instantly. She holds one arm out towards Odette, the other cradling the gun safely. Half of her screams with mothering instincts and the other half has no idea what to do. "Just breathe," she echoes, the instructions just as much for her as they are for the potato sack of a girl. Her eyes dart to Delilah. She's the one who's dealt with a child manifesting–she's the prepared one.
Somewhere floors below, a door is kicked in. Elaine and Delilah know the sound from their youth. There’s no bark of Federal Agent or anything of the sort. There are more pops of gunfire, but no damage to the apartment. They sound distant, almost unrelated? But then when Matthew tries to move to Walter there’s another rifle report and a hole is punched into the floor next to him, eliciting a yelp from the boy as he recoils.
Walter—brave walter—presses his nose to Delilah’s cheek. A little non-verbal cue they share. An apology for when words to say “I’m sorry” are too big, too emotional, and too hard. He’s sorry because—
—he appears in a rush of air with Matthew and Nowak. “You heard Odette!” He hisses, grabbing Matthew and Nowak’s arms.
“She’s eight!” Nowak shrieks, questioning the veracity of an eight-year-old’s plan.
“Matthew.” Walter squeezes his friendly arm. Their eyes meet. “Please. Anywhere but here.”
Matthew nods, hands trembling, and he looks at Nowak who mirrors his fear. The lights in the apartment flicker. The television turns on and off. Nowak’s jaw trembles as a vein throbs in his brow. He looks at Delilah, Elaine, Odette, Tom, Frady.
Frady gives a firm nod. Do it.
Walter closes his eyes, clenches his jaw, focusing.
“Come on, come on, just a little more kiddo.” Tom’s voice is shaky as he tries to shield Odette as he creeps closer to Matthew, Walter, and Nowak without getting in line of sight of the windows. He offers a pleading, apologetic look to Elaine. “We’re almost—” He feels something. Tom’s eyes dart to the door to the apartment.
Delilah is turning before the door is even open. This isn’t her first rodeo.
Everything happens so fast.
Well, don't you know I'm caught in a trap?
A man in a black suit steps through the door and is shot dead-center in the chest by a shotgun blast. He crumples backwards like a marionette whose strings were cut. Odette covers her ears from the noise, mouth open in a silent scream drowned out by a tinnitus roar.
I can't walk out
Matthew, Nowak, and Walter’s forms blur and gutter as if they were made of smoke and candle flame, not flesh and blood.
Because I love you too much, baby
As Delilah is racking back that round, ejecting a smoking shell, another agent ducks into the room with a revolver trained on the trio in the middle of the room. Frady screams, one hand on his gut and the other on his revolver as he jumps to his feet and fires.
Well, don't you know I'm caught in a trap?
Once. Twice. Three times. Two more handgun blasts. The report of a shotgun and a rifle together.
I can't walk out
The agent crumples in the doorway. Frady falls backwards, tripping over one of the toppled dinner chairs. His shoe comes off and he collides wetly with the wall, leaving a dark red streak down the wallpaper until he slouches to the floor.
Because I love you too much, baby
All the light fixtures gutter, flare brightly, and then go dark. There is silence, now. Silence, and the distant sound of police sirens.
We're caught in a trap
The kitchen is a disaster. The tile backsplash behind the sink is pock-marked by bullet holes and the trail of their violence continues up through the walls and their floral wallpaper. Dishes stacked up beside the sink are chipped and cracked. A fresh cup of coffee sits beside an aluminum percolator, still steaming.
I can't walk out
There’s a trail of food from the kitchen to the dining room. Mashed sweet potatoes in a drizzling trail to where the dining room table is flipped over on its side, the wood perforated by bullet holes. The table cloth has fallen down over the dishes and food that hadn’t yet been cleaned up from Thanksgiving.
Because I love you too much, baby
A single ray of warm, golden sunlight cuts through the dining room, highlighting blood on the corner of the table and the back of a seat still left standing. There’s bullet holes in the rattan seatback, fresh blood dripping from one of the holes down onto the hardwood flood.
Why can't you see
A shoe has been forgotten by the edge of the dining room. Lamps in the living room are flickering, shades crooked. The wallpaper here is likewise marred by gunfire, but also arterial spray. It rolls down the wallpaper onto the back of the sofa sitting in front of a television displaying nothing but static.
What you're doing to me
Someone knocked over the bookshelf on the far end of the living room. There’s books and kitschy knick-knacks scattered on the floor, some crushed underfoot. Broken glass glitters in the evening sunlight where windows were blown out by gunfire. Stuffing from an armchair still drifts in the wind, fluttering down from where it is caught in the vortex of the ceiling fan.
When you don't believe a word I say?
And a drizzled trail of blood leads from the living room toward the front door of the apartment, where wheezing breaths gurgle below Elvis Preseley’s smooth voice.
We can't go on together
And Howard Frady, missing a shoe, lays slouched against the wall, blood pulsing between his fingers.
With suspicious minds
Then he breathes no more.
Meanwhile
Loose pieces of trash blow across cracked asphalt. Pages of a discarded newspaper flap in the wind like wings of a guileless bird. As the wind blows stronger, rats scatter from the back alley.
Beyond the alley, the lights of New York City flicker at once like a candle threatening to go out. Street lights gutter, cars screech to a halt beyond the mouth of the alley, horns honk and people’s voices rise up in surprise as the lights of every skyscraper go dark one by one.
Deep in the alley a pinhead of red-orange light bends into existence like a heat-mirage, then expands outwards until it reaches roughly six feet across. Inside the sphere, a helmeted figure sputters and crackles into being like an out-of-tune television channel. When the sphere pops like a soap bubble, he solidifies and drops to one knee from a standing position. The asphalt beneath her is scooped out like a bowl, filled with quickly-dissipating sparks and glowing white-hot around the edges.
Slowly, the armored figure stands back up and fumbles with the latches at the back of his helmet. He unfastens the helmet from the collar of his armor and pulls it off. Long, dark hair spills out from inside. He blinks his eyes to adjust to the sudden dark and panic he is thrust into.
“Move.” He whispers sharply to himself.
There’s not much time.
New York City
July 13th
1977