The pistol was stiff-armed in front of me in my right hand as I pushed through the opening and into the large, dimly lit room. My bad shoulder had been the battering ram for the door, and it now burned with absolute agony. My ears were filled with a rush of noise, and I realized that it was my own tortured scream as the pain blossomed outward.
The room was laid out as a studio. Light stands strategically placed with gel filters resting in holders. Reflective umbrellas perched at angles, pointing diagonally toward the ceiling in order to shower their bounced luminance back down onto the scene. Rolls of backdrop fabrics were suspended from a wheeled rack in a cascade, ready to be spooled out behind the subject.
In the center of it all was a chair, and in that chair sat my wife, clad in an ornate wedding gown and staring vacantly into space. A garish mask of makeup was painted onto her face, lending an almost plastic quality to her features.
“NO!” a distinct and vile male voice screamed from the shadows. “She’s MINE!”
I’d heard the voice before. I’d even felt the ragged insanity of it inside my own head. I twisted toward the words, and my eyes came to rest on Harold. He was standing twenty feet away from Felicity and twenty yards away from me, a camera in one hand and a cigarette protruding between the middle two fingers of the other. He stepped closer to the chair as if to protect a prized possession.
“Stay away from her!” I screamed at him, tracking his movement with the pistol in my outstretched hand.
I wanted him dead. I wanted him dead right now. But I had a huge problem and I knew it. He was far too close to her and I was a lousy shot.
“She’s MINE and you can’t have her!” he screamed back at me with crazed defiance in his eyes. “She doesn’t want you! She wants ME!”
If I was in a movie, I knew I would have a suitably dramatic line to deliver. Somehow, reality just isn’t quite like the movies. All I could muster was a hoarse scream of, “Get away from her, you bastard!”
I heard heavy breathing and the shuffle of feet behind me but didn’t turn. I knew full well who it was.
“POLICE! Step away from her now!” my friend’s stern voice ordered.
“SHE’S MINE! CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?! SHE’S MINE!” Harold screamed once again.
Ben was moving slowly forward. On the periphery of my vision I saw the muzzle of his nine-millimeter move into view. The tip of the sidearm was followed by his arms, which were locked into a rock steady firing position. Finally, the rest of his body filled the corner of my eye as he came alongside me.
As I directed my attention forward, I could see my hand shaking-the polished surface of the revolver flickering in the dim light.
“I’m ordering you to step away now, sir!” Ben returned, keeping his attention fully focused on Harold. In a quieter but no less demanding tone he issued a command to me. “Put the gun down before you get yourself killed, Rowan!”
“GO AWAY!” Harold demanded wildly. “GO AWAY, SHE’S MINE! SHE’S PERFECT AND SHE’S MINE!”
“Put the fucking gun down, Rowan,” Ben snarled at me again.
I knew he was right. I needed to heed the order and be done with this. In my mind, I knew it was over for me. Ben had control of the situation and he was the professional. The emotions that were driving me had no choice but to give wide berth to the reality of the situation. It was a given that I couldn’t pull the trigger and risk hitting Felicity. As much as I wanted this man dead, there was literally nothing I could do, so I started to lower the gun.
Or at least that is what I tried to do. My arm wouldn’t move.
“Rowan, Rowan, you’re the guy! You found our killer, now don’t be shy! We wanna make him suffer, don’t you know. We wanna make him die, don’t let him go!”
The angry ditty rang inside my skull, audible only to me and the cheering section that was chanting it. My hand continued to shake but never wavered from its target.
“Dammit, Rowan, we’ve got a problem here,” Ben hissed. “I can’t take this guy down if I’ve gotta worry about you shootin’ me in the back!”
I could feel my finger tightening on the trigger, and as I watched, the cylinder of the revolver started to perceptibly rotate.
“STEP AWAY FROM HER!” Ben ordered Harold again and then said to me, “Help me out here, white man. I don’t think this asshole is real stable.”
“I…can’t…” I managed to stammer before gritting my teeth.
It was taking every ounce of will I had to keep my finger from squeezing the trigger any tighter. The colors in the room were blooming in a kaleidoscope of contrasts, and my head felt like an echo chamber. An urgent voice bounced from every corner, riddling my brain.
“Come on, Rowan! Do it! Make him die!”
My entire body was shaking now. Harold was staring at me as if he was completely unaware of the guns that were trained on him. I looked past him at my wife’s slackened face and in the dim light saw a dark line running down her cheek. Even at this distance I knew it was a tear.
“This would be so much easier if you were using your left hand like a normal person!” Debbie barked in my ears.
“Jeezus, Rowan, put the fuckin’ gun down!” Ben ordered again.
I felt the control over my index finger slip and watched in horror as the cylinder began turning again. It was less than a second away from rolling over and being struck by the hammer when I made my decision. If Debbie Schaeffer needed to exert that much force on my finger and arm because I was using my right hand, maybe her control over the rest of my body was severely weakened.
In a final bid I gave up fighting against her and thrust every ounce of energy I had left into changing the target instead. With a scream I twisted hard at the waist. My finger squeezed tight on the trigger, but I was already swinging to the side and brought the weapon to bear on a blank wall just as the hammer released. There was a loud roar and fire flashed from the muzzle in a bright burst. Dust flew as the projectile punched a hole in the sheetrock well away from any human targets. The gunshot echoed in my eardrums as the explosive sound bounced from the walls. My ears instantly felt clogged, and they began to ring with a painful stab deep inside. The recoil jerked my arm upward and its force allowed me to loosen my grip on the weapon. As my hand opened, it went flying and clattered across the concrete floor.
As I continued to spin I detected motion from the corner of my eye, and I saw Ben rushing toward Harold, then slamming into him full force, and knocking him to the floor.
It was all over in the proverbial blink of an eye. Harold was screaming, “SHE’S MINE, SHE’S MINE… FELICITY, HONEY, TELL THEM!” as Ben snapped a pair of handcuffs onto his wrists and patted him down. I scrambled across the floor, putting as much distance as possible between the discarded revolver and me before finally climbing to my feet and bolting for my wife.
I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around her, not saying a word. I was simply listening to the soft sounds of her breath and feeling the rhythmic thump of her heartbeat. Tears were streaming down my face as I hugged her close and felt her warmth against me-alive and unharmed.
We were starting to hear sirens and squealing tires in the near distance as squad cars from the Briarwood Police Department arrived outside. Whether summoned by a silent alarm or by Ben, I didn’t know. I was glad to hear them nonetheless.
Ben slipped his Beretta into its holster beneath his arm then folded himself to the floor next to me with a tired sigh. Harold was on his stomach, several feet away, hands securely cuffed behind his back. His head was turned to face us, and he wore a pained mask of loss. Through choked sobs he continued to call out, “Felicity…tell them…you’re mine…”
My friend pulled out his badge and held it up in preparation for the impending invasion of local police officers that would be descending upon us at any second. Somewhere inside the building, a clock finished chiming out the hour with the final bong in a series of twelve consecutive notes.
Still holding his shield and ID aloft, Ben looked over at me and said, “Merry Christmas, Kemosabe. Merry fuckin’ Christmas.”
