Catharsis [Novel]

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

            "What the heck just happened to Julian?"  Lefty shouts and drops into a crouch next to the door (I'm pretty sure the guy's name isn't "Lefty", but I don't know what else to call him.  From where I'm standing the only good identifying features for him and his friend are that one is on my left while facing the house, and the other is on the right.  I don't want to keep referring to them as "guy", so calling them Lefty and Righty will make it a bit easier.  Oh, and he didn't say "heck", either.  I just can't bring myself to repeat what he actually said.  Just because I fear my soul may be headed there soon, doesn't mean I have to go against my mother's teachings and say it myself.).

            "Truck, man!  Truck!"  Righty exclaims and begins to vehemently bang on the heavy wooden door behind him (He didn't say truck, either, but refer to my earlier statement.  Just because these two are willing to commit to the depths of unintelligent language, it doesn't mean I have to, also.  Use your imagination.  You'll figure it out.), before also sliding down into a squatting stance to make his body as small as possible.  For large, tough muscle men, these guys really look like they are trying to assume fetal positions (The visual irony would make my old English teachers proud.).

            Their curled forms are effective in limiting how much damage I can do with my projectiles, so I decide to forego trying to knock them out with a single shot.  Let's go the opposite direction.

            Starting with Mr. Righty, I move through my remaining rocks on the chimney's edge hurling each one with as much speed as possible but not really worrying about accuracy (aside from just aiming for the lump that is his body).  I get six rocks launched before pausing to see how effective the fusillade was. 

            Four manage to strike his body and the last two just smash into the bricks of the wall behind him (But their impact is powerful enough to shatter several bricks and spray his body with red clay shrapnel.).  The four that made direct contact with him never reached his head so I wasn't able to knock him unconscious, but they did pound his body mercilessly.  As soon as the sixth rock hits and the clay dust settles, Righty rolls away from the front porch and takes off limping around the side of the house.  His escape would bother me, but he did it without his gun (which he left lying on the dirty, gray cement) and without the use of his right arm (which was dangling uselessly to his side as he awkwardly trundled away).  I don't have much worry about him returning tonight.

            "Eight down.  One to go," I say to myself and rummage in the plastic mailbox for my next few rocks.

            "Ship! Ship! Ship!"  I can hear Lefty saying down there as he wildly spins back and forth pointing his gun at everything and nothing; whichever can gain his attention the fastest.

            He's going to hurt someone with that thing, I realize.  And it's more likely to be some random guy on the street walking a dog (well, that's not very likely in this neighborhood, but you get the point) than someone who deserves it, like a fellow drug thug.

            His movements are too jittery and chaotic for me to get a consistent bead on his head, so instead I take a similar path as I did with Righty: launch several shots in his direction and hope for the best.  Four quick throws later, I stop and wait for the results.

            The first two smash into the wall of the house and spray debris on him.  Hunching his shoulders for protection he curls his upper body as a shield from the sharp bits flying at his backside.  The third rock smashes into the large rifle in his hand.  I don't know if it hit hard enough to damage it, but it was certainly enough to make him drop it (just as effective in my eyes).  The final rock connects just below his sternum and the momentum of it carries him backwards into the red cloud of brick dust and the wall.