July 2024: Storytime Bloghop – Chris Makowski

My colleague Chris Makowski is ready for the Bloghop too. He’s still revising his novel (with elves and stuff in our world, by what he posts about it, it’ll be a fascinating if dark read), so I’m hosting his story again.

Here’s his Bloghop story:

Two Feet

Chris Makowski

Get two feet closer!

Discharged yesterday and now I’m hallucinating voices.

Another bullet chews through the island, deflected by the good thick cast iron in there. Last one put a hole in my Magnalite dutch oven. He doesn’t know if I’m armed, but not stupid enough to dash in and find out the hard way.

Not a word, nothing after the flash bangs – someone hired a pro to finish things.

Bliss is big business, and I’m a headache.

Bullet by bullet, it’s hide and seek. Shoot low, shoot high, a few inches to the left and I’d be spurting instead of oozing blood. My open concept house being used against me, leaving me nowhere to go he can’t put a hole in me.

I’m running out of time fast.

Get Two Feet Closer!

Piece in a drawer I can’t reach, he removed the one under the sink – maybe the other one too, happy me, I’ve got a knife in a gunfight, and he’s a good ten paces into the living room, waiting, sixty feet out of my reach.

My foot twitches.

Get! Two! Feet! CLOSER!

I hear my imagination draw in breath.

You have nothing to lose, Charmyan Broussard!

A sharp twist toward the sink as another guess zips through where I had been, I set my feet against the base board and shove hard, a sprint for my life, come off the blocks and run damn it run hard run Run RUN!

Something rips out of me, through me, from me, he’s standing behind the couch, huge, six feet and then some, pistol coming around –

“MINE!”

BLAM!

I crash to the ground, slide under the table, kick the chair across the room – the couch flies out of the way, leaving me a clear view of …

Me.

A me carved of pure obsidian straddles his ribcage. Her – my – head turns, and that smile appears, the one I wore every time I put someone away.

She puts a finger in his chest, swirls it, and a bluish glaze comes out. Then the finger goes into her mouth, slowing coming out clean.

“Delicious.” Her voice – my voice, only colder, a distant echo. “You’ll have to replace that.”

My gaze follows her finger. Missed me by that much.

“New toaster, check.” She’s still there, watching me.

“Call Dispatch.” Then she leans forward and speaks into his ear. “Heart attack. Should really have used less Peruvian powder before breaking in to my house. Beep, beep – bzzzzzt.”

“He’s dead?”

Her eyebrow Spock’s at me.

One yank and the drawer’s open – Glock’s missing.

“It’s over there.” A flip of her wrist points her fingers into the dining room. “You won’t need it. There aren’t any more.”

A tongue flickers over her lips. “Unfortunately.”

“What are you?”

Standing, she’s my nighshade twin, down to the dribbling smear where I banged my noggin ducking. “I lived under your bed, and knocked on your closet door. You carried me all the way from Port Goode to here, nightmare by nightmare.”

In an eyeblink she’s right by me.

“Don’t you remember your wish?” She crouches. “Over and over and over?”

Memories flow through my head. Days, weeks, months in the hospital, hooked up to bags and machines and monitors. In and out of consciousness, reliving the horrors they’d put me through.

All through, my one thought, my reason for survival.

Find Nathan Hill.

Find Philip Dale.

Put them both in a hole so deep their souls will never crawl out.

“Heart’s desire, released to the night,” she singsongs. All her teeth are sharp, many of them pointed. “You want them. I want to live in more than dreams.”

A hand stretches toward me. “So from now on, you be Good Cop, and I’ll be Bad Cop.” Even with the predatory gaze, her smile is warm. “They’ll never see us coming. Ça va juste?”

He’s dead. I’m alive.

My hand reaches out and she flows into me.

It hurts for just a second.

Oh God, he tasted good.

 

Visit the others:
Spam or Not Spam, That is the Question! by Katharina Gerlach
Thief by Barbara Lund
Trampler of Dreams by Gina Fabio
Good Dog by Angelica Medlin
She Stood by Lyn McCarty
Not all Heros Wear Capes by Vanessa Wells
Morning Monsters by Jon Cloud
Some Imagination by James Husum