Robbers

thirty - six

// thirty - six //

The resounding gunshot split her eardrums into pieces. The pistol seemed to pop as it recoiled in her hand, and her palm burned from the backlash.

Jackson tumbled backwards over the coffee table, the edge of the glass catching his upper calves and sending him crashing across its surface. Cocaine and twenty-dollar bills scattered the air, and Jackson collapsed onto the carpet behind the coffee table. Money fluttered to the floor, and the air was deathly still.

Ella stood frozen in place, her eyes fixed upon Jackson. The pistol rested in her right hand. Smoke curled in tiny vapor strands out from the chamber's exit.

Her right foot stepped forward, cautiously, but Jackson didn't move. He was face down on the carpet, left arm bent oddly beneath his chest from the fall. Ella side-stepped the sofa as slowly as she could manage, still holding the gun outwards as though it would shield her. She held her breath as she stepped closer, and her eyes ached from the lack of blinking. She couldn't look away, not even for the briefest moment.

Blood spotted the blue-grey carpet, a sickening crimson contrast. It had sprayed in an arc across the floor to the left of him, and Ella stepped carefully to avoid it. Everything was deadly silent and her ears felt ready to collapse inwards from the ringing quiet, after being shredded from the sound of the gunshot. Amid the rushing that filled her eardrums, all Ella could hear was the sound of her own panicked breaths.

Jackson was completely still. His face was pressed into the carpet, the skin an ashy grey color. Ella held the gun tightly and carefully stretched out one foot, digging the toe of her heel into his side in a quick jab. Jackson's body lolled from side to side from the pressure, only for half a second, but he went still immediately after.

He was dead.

Ella didn't pause long enough to think. She turned and started for the apartment's exit. She stuffed the gun into her jacket's pocket and, leaving the lock unlatched, slipped through the door into the hallway.

The night air was even more frigid than before. Ella hurried down the sidewalk towards the white Honda, the bare skin of her right foot burning from the frozen concrete beneath it. She had had to abandon her right heel at the apartment building's entrance, lodging it between the door and brick wall to prop open the door. If it had closed behind her, she would have had no means of getting back inside the building.

She wasn't shaking as she unlocked the trunk of her car. Ella's fingers remained quite still as she reached inside and removed the large canister of gasoline, the red one she had taken from her garage when she'd gone home to change. The trunk slammed shut, echoing loudly up and down the deserted street. Ella could hear no voices from the surrounding apartments and other buildings, so it was clear no one had heard the gunshot. The air was still, frozen in place around her, and the blackened clouds above the streetlights were devoid of falling snowflakes. It seemed this street was locked in time.

Ella's right foot had gone numb by the time she reached the building's entrance for a second time. She forced her toes into the shoe as she held the door open with one knee, the can of gas sloshing at her side. The gun was still buried in the pocket of her jacket, warm against her side.

She felt calm, and cool, and she felt eerily unlike herself. Ella felt like the girl she had become when she had robbed the convenience store alone, animalistic and unforgiving, except this time she wasn't watching from the outside; everything was close, and very, very real.