Charade

Vic

The door swung open.

Slowly, I peered inside. My heart was pounding relentlessly, drumming in my ears.

"Benjamin?" I called, stepping across the threshold.

I laid eyes on the gutted apartment. The place had been trashed. Shards of clear, glistening glass was scattered across the floor. Furniture had been moved, the coffee table flipped, blood splattered across the wall. I froze completely, standing still in the doorway, eyes falling over every inch.

I stepped over an upturned chair, my foot crunching in a pile of glass. I went to the bedroom, dark and cold, a draft blowing in from an open window. My heart felt as if it might explode in my chest. I reached around and felt for a light switch.

Benjamin was sprawled across the floor, blood trickling down his face and pooling behind his head. My breath caught in my throat, stuck behind a lump of shock. For the longest moment, my arms wouldn't move and my legs were completely paralysed. It was like being held at gunpoint.

"Benjamin?" I finally asked, falling beside him. "Benjamin!"

I felt for a pulse and detected the faintest signs of life. I gulped, hands shaking, and scooped his scrawny body up off the floor. Then, in the dead of night, I took him down through empty hallways and an unoccupied elevator, walked him through the lobby, and sat him beside my daughter in a car parked outside. Lily, frantic, clutched his shirt in her fists, but he didn't stir. Like a robot, I climbed into the driver's seat and paused.

"We have to take him to a hospital," Lily said at one point.

"We can't."

Lily stopped and stared at me like I was crazy.

"Why the hell not? Look at him! He's dying!"

"He's alive," I said calmly.

Lily released his shirt and stared at me through the rear view mirror.

"Dad, what's going on?"

I gulped, clenching my fists so my hands wouldn't shake.

"Somebody is after us. I don't know why, or who, or how to stop them. But they're fearless. They don't mind if they get caught, as long as we go down with them."

Lily took a moment to process, her eyes darting about like pinballs, before looking up at me again.

"What does this mean for us?" She asked.

I looked down at the gear shift, the steering wheel, the gas pedal.

"It means we need to get the hell out of here," I told her.

Then I slammed on the accelerator, and I didn't look back.

© A.G. Travers 2015