pictures of men in ski masks holding guns. They looked like the type of criminals Batman beat up in between fighting supervillains in the comic books Sarah had read as a child. The salesman handed the targets to Sarah, then opened the door and led the way into the shooting range.
“My name’s Mike by the way.”
He held out a big, meaty hand with hairy knuckles.
Josh shook his hand first and then Sarah did the same.
“Josh and Sarah Lincoln.”
“Pleased to meet you both. Go ahead and put the goggles and headphones on before we get in there.”
He put on his own, then waited while Sarah and Josh donned their own protective equipment.
The range was full of people lined up putting holes in paper targets. There were couples like Josh and Sarah, fathers with their sons, and single men and women. The sound of the gunshots was deafening. They walked up to an empty booth and the salesman put the gun on the table along with two boxes of ammo and ejected the clip, laying the gun and the clip side by side.
“Now you load the clip like this.”
The salesman shook out eight bullets into his hand, picked up the clip, and began pushing the bullets into it one at a time with his thumb. Then he took them all back out and handed the clip to Sarah.
“You try it.”
Sarah loaded the clip, pushing the bullets in with her thumb just as Mike had done.
“Then you slide the clip into the gun like this, click the safety off. See that red dot? When you see that dot that means the safety’s off. You just pull the slide back like this and that puts a round in the chamber there. Now you’re ready to go. Just line up the sights, like this. Take a deep breath. Hold it. And squeeze the trigger.”
Sarah went through a hundred rounds of ammo. By the time they were done she felt like an old pro. She was almost eager for someone to come walking into her bedroom uninvited. She wanted to see what those hollow points would do to human flesh.
“Why didn’t we ever do this before? This is fun. We should go shooting every weekend,” Sarah said.
“So, I guess we’re buying the gun then?” Josh asked.
“Hell yeah we are!”
They walked back into the store area with Mike.
“Do you have a blue card?”
“I do. I just bought a gun here a few weeks ago.”
“Then you should register it in your name. Otherwise you’re going to have to go through a two-week waiting period while we do a background check on her. If it’s just going to be in the house and she won’t be carryin’ it around, then it won’t matter whose name it’s in. Eventually, you’re probably gonna want to get one registered in her name though.”
Sarah watched Josh hand the salesman his gun permit and his driver’s license. She felt amazingly relieved. If anything happened now, at least she’d be able to defend herself. The salesman copied down the information and took a Xerox of it along with Josh’s driver’s license. He handed both the license and the permit back to Josh and Josh handed him the credit card. Minutes later, Sarah and Josh were walking out of the store with her new gun.
“We need to make one more stop.”
“Where at?”
“I want to get you something to hide that in where you can get to it fast if something happens. Just in case.”
Sarah leaned closer to him and kissed him.
“Thank you, Josh. I know you think I’m losing my mind but I appreciate you doing all of this to make me feel safe. You could have just taken me to the psych ward to get my head examined.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going to do that too.”
Sarah punched him in the arm, then kissed him again.
When they pulled up at The Spy Shop, Sarah looked confused.
“Trust me. This place is cool. You’re going to love it.”
He looked like a little kid in a toy store as Josh rushed through the door, nearly forgetting to hold the door for Sarah, then catching it just before it swung back and almost smacked her in the face.
“Sorry, my fault. But just wait until you see the stuff they have in here.”
Sarah followed her husband to the back of the store where deceptively innocuous clothing hung on racks. She could not wait to see what kind of weird stuff they’d built into these garments. She felt like James Bond preparing for a mission. There were leather jackets with built-in bulletproof vests and holsters, purses with a slit in them for storing a gun for easy access. There were kitchen aprons with gun pouches, negligees and garters with built-in holsters, a Kevlar baseball cap, a pair of gloves with a built-in Taser gun, Kevlar pillowcases with hidden gun pouches.
“Okay, this place is pretty cool.”
They ended up buying the Kevlar pillow with the hideaway pouch for a gun. On the way out of the store, Sarah stopped to look at the surveillance equipment.
“I think maybe we should get a burglar alarm.”
“I don’t know if the house is prewired.”
“I think it is. We just need to hire a company to set it up and monitor it.”
“I’ll look into it tomorrow. It sounds expensive.”
She picked up a teddy bear with a camera in it.
“What’s this? He’s cute.”
The man behind the counter perked up, sensing a sale. Sarah guessed that he was probably on commission.
“That’s our nanny cam. It attaches to a VCR. You just turn it on and it’ll record everything that goes on in the room. Then you just play it back when you get home.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
Josh took the bear out of her hands and handed it back to the salesman.
“Maybe next time. We’re going broke here.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We can take the pillow back if you want. We don’t need it.”
“No, I want you to have it. I don’t work as hard as I do for nothing. We can afford it. Let’s just leave before we buy anything else.”
“There is one more thing that I want.”
“What?”
“Let’s stop by The Linen Store and buy some new sheets.”
Josh didn’t ask her why and Sarah didn’t volunteer the information. She knew he’d figure it had something to do with some type of rape-trauma recovery, a ritual like cutting your hair or buying new clothes. Maybe he’d figure the sheets reminded her too much of the dream.
When they arrived at the store, Sarah began looking at sheets that she knew Josh thought were hideous. She didn’t care. The more hideous they were the better the chance he would remember them and that’s all she wanted. She picked up a set of green sheets with polka dots, flowers, and stripes.
“No way in hell. I’m sorry but those things are so loud they’d keep me awake all night.”
Sarah laughed.
“Okay, how about these?”
She held up a set of paisley sheets with big lotus flowers all over it.
“Didn’t Jerry Garcia die in those? They look like they should come with a bong and a nickel bag.”
Sarah covered her mouth and giggled. She always loved Josh’s sense of humor.
“It’s either these or the green ones.”
“Okay, but if I start having acid flashbacks in the middle of the night, you’re going to have to talk me down.”
When they got home, Josh went straight to bed, but not before Sarah stripped the bed and put on their new paisley sheets. There were still those disturbing bloodstains on the mattress. They had dried now but they were unmistakable.
