The Guily Ones

Smoke and Mirrors

Do you know that feeling when time stands still? And I don't mean the kind of time standing still like, 'Oh my God, that last physics class was so boring, I swear to you time stood still' kind. I also don't mean the cheesy 'time stands still with him/her' kind.

Actually, I'm talking about the kind where you're in an incredibly dangerous situation and, thanks to what feels like a hundred tons of adrenaline, suddenly you see everything around you happening in slow motion. Everything sharp and slowly and deliberately, and you wonder why nobody moves any faster to prevent something awefull from happening.

The blood, which in reality had almost reached the speed of light in my vains, pulsated slowly and sluggishly for the moment, and the horrors around my burned themselves into my brain for eternity.

Yet, even though it felt like I had all the time in the world, I couldn't do anything.

I saw the elevator door open out of the corner of my eyes. The elevator mirror, which was mounted opposite the door, gave me a view of a black leather jacket over a well-defined chest with an almost laughably low-cut tank top in the same color. The glass was stained with blood and dirt from the previous fight, so I couldn't see the face.

He is handsome, shot through my mind completely absurdly, and I had to suppress a hysterical giggle with all my might. Somehow I never pictured a psychotic serial killer to be handsome, but I had been biased as it seems. Stupid me. Another giggled threatened to burst forth. I was absolutely loosing it. Now was not the time to go into shock.

The man looked down at Tom's body. One of his feet was stuck in the door, preventing it from closing. He kicked it, and Tom's shoe fell off. Anger boiled up in me as I suppressed the sudden urge to him scold him , but apparently I was still intelligent enough to hold back.

"You've caused me quite a bit of trouble!"

The voice, which must have belonged to 'Eric' from the previous conversation, cut through the air sharper than a knife.

I was about to throw myself on the floor and beg for my life when I realized he wasn't talking to me, but to the corpse.

"Not sure if it was worth the effort..."

He absentmindedly ran his hand through his, as far as I could tell from here, shoulder-length hair.

Then he cursed... In... Swedish?

"Motherfucker, is that blood IN MY HAIR!"

A few more curses followed, which were so imaginative that I couldn't even begin to understand what was meant, before he hissed and kicked the door...

...which gave way.

The door gave way?

I could practically feel my eyes widening so much that they could have fallen out of my head. What kind of pumped-up lunatic had I encountered here? He must have been on drugs!

And worse, he was now definitively on his way into the elevator.

I held my breath and tried to make myself as small as possible. Not move. Make myself invisible. Eric's broad back loomed in front of me as he unexpectedly bent down and grabbed Tom, lifting him as if he weighed no more than a child. His head rolled lifelessly backward, and his organs seemed to want to leave his body, which elicited a damn gasp from me.

The man instantly spun around, spraying blood and other things that were leaving Tom's body and that I didn't want to think about, in the elevator.

His eyes were as bright blue as a cloudless day in the Caribbean. And he focused on me. Squinting those beautiful eyes and staring at me. Staring... through me. He took a deep breath. No... He sniffed the air. Then, completely unexpectedly, he grinned.