Christmas Consort

Driven to Night

When Kylie decided to push on instead of stopping for the night to get much needed shut eye one thing was driving her, the nightmare. Drive another 30 miles, that was 30 minutes more without having to face the shooting. There was no doubt in her mind that two men came into her house that night. No doubt that she shot them both with her .44 Magnum. No doubt that two of the bullets were never found and only one man was taken away in a body bag. How could the Man in Black walk away with two slugs at center mass and leave no blood?

In her dreams the hallway to her bedroom stretches and the Mayo Man with his yellow teeth is chasing her, gaining with every step, chuckling about his lucky day. His breathing isn't labored like hers though. When the grab comes-"lucky day"-Kylie is knocked to the floor where he crawls up her pinned legs, sniffing her like a dog and asking for a side of mayo. No amount of kicking budges him. Her flailing arms can't make contact even though he is right there, snuffling up her stomach.

Then the weight of him is gone, lifted right up into the air by the Man in Black. Now it is the Mayo Man flailing and kicking. The Man in Black pulls him back into the wall and wraps an arm around his neck suffocating the protestations of "lucky day." Kylie is suddenly in her bedroom, her gun only a few feet away, the men struggling against the wall. She jumps for the weapon, hears a crunch and knows a broken neck is ending someone's lucky day. She turns, gun in hand, and sees the Mayo Man's head at an impossible angle as he rises from the floor.

She pulls the trigger but it is the Man in Black who takes the hit, holding his gut, piercing blue eyes asking her why. She puts the next two slugs in the Mayo Man, where they belong, but the man keeps coming. It is the Man in Black who staggers into the assailant, knocks him down on the floor at the end of her bed where she cannot see what is going on, but the yellow-toothed grin does not appear again.

Kylie knows that most of the dream is a supremely mixed up version of what really happened, but the next part she's not so sure about. Something in it rings true. The Man in Black stands and she sees his eyes are no longer blue, they are white and almost glowing. He raises his hands in surrender which is when she realizes she is still holding the gun, has it trained straight on him, and she blows him away, him and his burning white gaze. She is screaming and that's when she always wakes up.

Driving further into this night than she ought, it is not her fear-filled chase down the hall or the pawing of the Mayo Man that haunt her. No. It's the raised hands and white eyes as she takes down the Man in Black. Did I shoot an innocent man? A man who was only trying to protect me?