Fuzzy Navel

neck.

Pessolano tries to take a breath, but his throat is blocked.

There’s no pain. Only that same sense of detachment, as if this is happening to someone else.

Then, another shot.

Pessolano feels it burn right through his right thigh, snapping the bone in half.

He falls forward.

Now there’s pain.

Soul-searing, unbearable pain.

Pessolano tries to scream. Has to scream. But his clogged throat won’t let him.

Another bullet.

The other leg.

Pessolano writhes on the floor, his brain overloading on unbearable agony. Agony that can’t possibly get worse.

The next bullet blows off a good chunk of his arm.

The agony gets worse.

Pessolano is beyond reason now. Detachment has led to the keenest sense of self-awareness he’s ever experienced. He exists now only as raw, exposed nerve endings, millions of them firing at once.

When his other arm gets shattered by a bullet, his body finally diverts its remaining resources to Pessolano’s brain, giving him a brief moment of lucidity. A flood of thoughts assault him:

Please let me die.

Shoot me in the head.

Make the pain stop.

And then he thinks of something odd. Incongruous.

If they made a plastic green army man toy that looked like I do now, maybe I would have followed a different path.

That’s the thought bouncing around in his skull as his life blessedly fades away.

11:47 P.M. MARY

IT DOESN’T WORK, as Mary expected. As soon as she presses the circuit breaker, it pops right back out. Mary presses it several times, with the same results.

No ZAP. No cries of men being electrocuted.

Which means Harry and Jacqueline are completely vulnerable.

Voices, coming from the living room. Jacqueline’s voice. Then a man she doesn’t recognize.

Mary has no weapon, and even if she had one she wouldn’t be able to hold it. The OxyContin has made her lightheaded, and it’s dampened some of the pain, but she still can’t open her hands.

Mary heads down the hall anyway.

As horrible as the last few hours have been, Mary has learned something about herself. Old and useless are not synonyms. Age does not equal feeble. And even though Mary is beaten, bowed, and has been around for a long time, she’s far from helpless. Her daughter needs help. And dammit, she’s going to get some.

Mary slips past the refrigerator, moves quietly to the edge of the living room, pausing next to the wall. She sees two men in army fatigues, holding very large handguns.

They’re pointing these guns at Jacqueline.

Mary gets ready to call to them, to draw their attention, and then the taller man gets shot in the throat.

Jacqueline doesn’t waste the opportunity. She runs into the garage.

Get away, Mary thinks. Bring help.

But knowing her daughter, Jacqueline won’t leave until everyone is safe.

I should have raised her to be less considerate.

Then Harry rushes the other man, and there’s a scuffle. Though Harry McGlade is – what’s a good word? flawed – Mary has grown fond of the guy. She hurries into the living room to lend a gnarled hand. Mary abandoned him once, and won’t follow that particular path again.

More sniper fire. The man who was hit in the throat gets shot several more times, not in any vital spots. It’s so appalling that Mary knows Alex must be behind it. While Alex is preoccupied with that, Mary gets close to Harry, to push against him and keep the man pinned to the wall. But then the sniper gets a hand free, and he fires at both of them.

Mary gets knocked backward, Harry smacking into her.

She has no idea if she’s been shot, or if Harry’s been shot, or perhaps even both of them.

11:49 P.M. PHIN ALEX HAS FOUND A RIFLE.

She’s fifty, maybe seventy-five yards from Phin. He can’t see her body in the dark, but he can pinpoint her muzzle flash. Phin watches her fire at the house. Watches one of the gunmen fall. Watches Alex take the guy apart, limb by limb. Deliberately. Cruelly.

It’s a sneak preview of what’s going to happen to him, to Jack, to everyone in the house.

Phin shuffles along the asphalt to the front of the truck, out of Alex’s direct line of sight. He can’t bend his arm at all. His elbow is busted, or something in it is torn.

The pain is bad.

He seriously considers digging into his pocket, taking out the pot he stole from that Wrigleyville banger, and eating as much as he can. Marijuana is a marvelously effective analgesic. Phin is an expert when it comes to analgesics. The past few years of his life have been dedicated to a singular purpose: the numbing of pain. Physical, mental, and emotional.

After his terminal diagnosis, Phin dropped out of society. He left his job, because it was meaningless to work when you’ve been given a death sentence. He left his fiancee, because he wanted to spare her the torture of watching him die.

Since he had no hope for the future, he began to live day by day.

Sort of like a dog.

That’s not a negative comparison. Dogs live in the moment. They don’t think. They don’t dwell on the future. They exist to meet their base needs. Eating. Sleeping. Breeding. Surviving. No worries. No regrets. Minimize effort, maximize pleasure.

Phin tried to do the same. He lost himself in drugs, liquor, and whores. When the money ran out, he robbed dealers, gangbangers, pimps, and criminals. That led to hiring himself out as a rent-a-thug, solving problems for people who didn’t want to go to the police.

It worked. He was able to blot out his pain.

Then he met Jack. She arrested him after a fight with a group of Latin Kings. Later, he and Jack ran into each other at a neighborhood bar, and began to play pool on a semi-regular basis.

Which would have been fine if it didn’t go any further. But, unfortunately, they became friends.

Phin didn’t expect it to happen. He didn’t want it to happen. Friendship involved