by R. G. Oram
David could see the dark holed eyes fought to keep their hold on him – keeping solidly in line with his. Then abruptly losing their dominant stare, Jerome Harris’s balls of vision turned to Lewelyn’s right, towards a blind spot ahead of the body language expert. Easing carefully forwards, not wishing to lose eye contact with Jerome, Lewelyn edged nearer the blind spot until his peripheral vision picked out the black silhouette of a human form in the corner of the bedroom floor.
Sensing an opportunity, the shadow sprang into life, and in one motion, seemingly drew out a gun from thin air. Lewelyn responded instinctively and lunged out at the rising gun hand. He grabbed the sleeved wrist, pulled it back around the corner of the wall, letting its thin sharp edge bite into the stretched arm. A shrill scream was instantly followed by a sharp metal clatter; the owner of the arm obediently came out of his hiding place to reduce the painful maiming action of Lewelyn’s counter move. Spinning on his heels, Lewelyn twisted Malcolm Harris’s arm into a V shape behind his back. Lewelyn had the actor in a half nelson and pushed his face hard into the wall. There was the crunching sound of a nose folding.
Malcolm Harris’s gun had fallen to the floor during the confrontation. Lewelyn had caught a glimpse of its shape on the reddened grey tiles. Although not an expert in gun knowledge, the weapon’s long and snoot nozzle told him it could be a Revolver.
But, using the weight advantage he had, Malcolm Harris levered himself off the wall and propelled Lewelyn backwards. Lewelyn desperately tried to retain his footing, but found it difficult to run backwards. His feet felt like they were going to tangle and topple him until he stopped, his back connecting with something solid. It was heavy, maybe a chest of drawers. At that instant, Malcolm, with one of his flat, fluffy slippers he wore, dug it into Lewelyn’s abdomen causing him to break his half nelson restraint.
SMACK! A hard fist made contact with his face, then another and in surprisingly rapid succession a third returned to his stomach. The fourth reached his temple. Using the tall chest behind to keep his balance Lewelyn braced for the next wave of strikes.
Still motionless on his bed, Jerome Harris sat idly watching the mêlée as through an imaginary 3D TV, obediently awaiting the climax.
Lewelyn saw Malcolm Harris’s arm swing as far back as it could, then deploying towards him like a haymaker punch. This was Harris’s mistake. The wind up allowed Lewelyn a split second more to counter the blow. He timed this hero’s punch, side stepping neatly to his right and causing Harris’s fist to attempt to push through a wall. The wall won and Harris exclaimed a pain stricken cry; his other hand instinctively shot up and caressed its injured partner.
The hero’s punch was favoured by untrained fighters. People who never trained as a fighter always assumed the best way to get the most power from a punch is to bring their elbow as far back as they can; winding up like a coiled spring or slingshot. But executing it only reduced the powered force and took longer to prepare. The further the distance away from the contact point, the more it depreciated the straightness of the arm. A boxer always brings his elbow back no further than the shoulder and then releases it forward; a good strike requires a straight, precise arm.
Immediately taking advantage of his wounded attacker, Lewelyn reciprocated Malcolm Harris’s attack, once again bringing the arm with the injured hand back to the shoulder. Then Lewelyn threw his best meat hook straight into the assaulter’s jaw.
In situations like this there was no time to think, you usually forgot everything else. As Lewelyn began to feed Malcolm Harris a barrage of punches he didn’t want to stop. With each clinical strike it seemingly became more convenient to repeat the motion. Lewelyn’s mind was oblivious to law and morals, driven by a callous rage and his body carried mercilessly on delivering blow upon blow.
Somehow Malcolm Harris was still standing and trying to aim some futile defensive blows on Lewelyn, but each hit his body took made his attempted punches swing further off target. Lewelyn applied a clean uppercut to finish, it skirted out and over Harris’s jaw after contacting firmly under the chin. Instead of flying limply into the air, Malcolm Harris’s head inclined back, face seemingly mesmerised by the ceiling. Lewelyn’s fists then opened and his hands converged on the fleshy area now revealed below the jaw.
A searing fury coursing through him, he saw black. Felt his hand’s clamp, squeezing hard, he couldn’t see what they gripped. The thumbs and fingers wanting to constrict, they trembled in their need to contract. Then the light began to go out; Harris’s skin was bathed in sweat bursting through drowning skin, veins tattooed his forehead – gasping, the man desperate to cough out air. He slumped slowly to his knees as Lewelyn’s palms crushed unyieldingly on both sides of his throat.
‘What?!’ Lewelyn’s consciousness and rationality began to return. He slowly released the vice-grip of his fingers and thumbs. Malcolm Harris began an involuntary spasm of coughing as life once more coursed through his body. The actor retreated painfully backwards unable to get off his knees.
Balancing on a desk with one hand on a flat laptop, Lewelyn began to regain control of his reason and master the foul hungering blood flow still driving him. The tips of his fingers tapped and tapped, then autonomously drummed a thunderous rhythm, demanding attention. The dark water swirling in his mind, overcoming Lewelyn, allowing Harris to move further from him as the man crawled slowly towards the door and clutched its frame, painfully inching himself onto his feet to a standing position.
For a moment it looked like Harris would fall through the bedroom doorway into the hall, but fortunately Lewelyn realised that the man appeared to be using the wooden sides to stabilise his mobility. Lewelyn thought of pointing his gun at Malcolm Harris and telling him to freeze. But, the problem was that Harris might force him to pull the trigger, electing for the suicide by shooter route. Malcolm’s gun was not a problem because it was on the floor behind Lewelyn and he blocked the way.
He gave Jerome Harris, behind, a glance – still in cryogenic stasis. The actor’s son still conforming to the instinctual Freeze reaction when faced with danger, when Flight or Fight are impractical.
Lewelyn returned his eye to the target of Malcolm Harris; the actor began taking slow steps back. David wanted to bring out his firearm and let Malcolm see it. His hands didn’t lower to grab it the weapon. Knowing it was the logical choice to point the gun at him, but Lewelyn feared the possibility of Malcolm Harris coming towards him, forcing him to pull the trigger to end the actor’s life and allowing the father of Jerome Harris to escape incarceration.
Lewelyn kept his hands raised. He lunged forward into a sprint. Hunching his upper body to get in line with the torso he tackled Malcolm with a spear. The two men fell out of Jerome Harris’s bedroom, onto the bone cracking hallway floor.
As they struck the ground, Lewelyn felt a sudden and sharp sensation in his shoulder. The pain was excruciating as if something hacked at his inside shoulder. A sudden blood surge and developing mist of light headedness didn’t help it. Lewelyn tried lifting the arm which connected to the wounded shoulder but could only manage a few degrees of mobility before the hacking pierced deeper.
Of all the times to happen, Lewelyn thought.
As Malcolm Harris’s body staggered to its feet, Lewelyn lifted himself up with his good arm, in a race to first footing. But by the time he’d noticed the speeding foot it had already hit the radius and ulna. Lewelyn went down in a heap again.
Malcolm Harris on two legs now, had beaten Lewelyn to the dominant upright position. Looking up at the face above him, Lewelyn saw the damage he had inflicted upon the actor’s main selling point; one eye swelled shut, the light blue shirt stained in red and a cake of blood splattered his face.
Once again Lewelyn tried to rise up using his good arm. But the ruthless Harris came once more and kicked it sideways. He watched Harris shuffle back to the bedroom.
The gun! Lewelyn thought.
Lewelyn’s eyes moved to Jerome, just picking out the static man behind Malcolm Harris’s shape. Jerome Harris had the gun cradled in his hands. It aimed at nothing, the long end pointed impotently to the floor. Lewelyn reached with his good arm for the handgun tucked in the back of his pants.
‘Jerome please do as I say. What I said earlier was wrong. I didn’t mean any of it. I was just upset,’ Malcolm Harris now inches away from Jerome.
‘No!!!!!’ Jerome screeched.
Lewelyn saw Jerome try get past his father, but Malcolm grabbed him. Father and son wrestled for the gun like a close knit tug of war. Lewelyn trained his weapon on the combatants.
‘Enough!’ Lewelyn shouted, but to no avail.
Malcolm and Jerome Harris continued to compete for possession of the pistol. Lewelyn managed to claw himself upright and stood in the doorway, the bad shoulder hanging lifelessly as he leaned the other against the doorframe. He watched the two men now oblivious to him, fighting like animals for territory. Malcolm tried to squeeze Jerome’s soft paws, and the actor’s son, like a cornered animal, savagely bit into his father’s hands.
Boom!
A gun went off. Lewelyn looked on as one of the Harris’s fell. Almost instinctively he checked the end of his weapon – no smoke escaped its funnel.
The person stood in the bedroom with a blood spattered shirt, gun grasped loosely in hand, Jerome Harris looked down at his father. Some of the red liquid from the father had even made its way onto the walls.
No response came and none would, eyes stilled. Neither from the nose or mouth did air flow. Under the chin a small neat hole gave away the point of entry. The speechless mouth remained open. Even without life, it somehow conveyed a message to those around it, asking, ‘What?’
Jerome averted his gaze from his father’s current form; he refocused on the nearest sign of life, Lewelyn, just outside the doorway. As if now only returning to the land of the living, Jerome’s entire body jolted. The frightful image of his father’s dead corpse seemed to become a thing of the past and Lewelyn was the new tormenter. The hand with the gun in it rose slowly.
‘Don’t!’ Lewelyn ordered, immediately levelling his gun with Jerome.
Jerome’s hand still went up, the arm didn’t angle out to Lewelyn – it went closer to Jerome. The end of the muzzle moved steadily closer to Jerome’s temple.
‘Stop!’ said Lewelyn in as commanding a voice as he could muster and trying to make a show of holding his weapon sternly.
An ambiguous look covered Jerome Harris’s face. He smiled painfully, mouth stretching across the cheeks, the eyes creased by their rising. Every facial muscle appeared to be racked and pulled. The area around the eyes portrayed a different message. The realisation of killing his father, the possibility of imprisonment, coupled with the non-stop breathing. Lewelyn read the fear transmitted through the eyes. He continued to point his gun at the petrified Jerome, not ceasing his stare fixed on the other gun’s trigger finger.
Instead of aiming Lewelyn was cautiously waiting. Jerome’s finger wasn’t on the trigger, his grip stayed on the handle. He eyed Lewelyn as if waiting for instructions.
‘Drop it.’ A new voice entered the frame.
Tom Forsythe, poised in a shooting stance on the opposite side of Lewelyn.
Now the climax of decision. Lewelyn watched as Jerome chose a path. The gun that he held pressed firmly to his temple had begun to lose its determination. Now it was massaging the fleshy surface. Unblinking, Lewelyn watched the arm and finger, the arm resolute to the hand’s position and the trigger remained unattended.
‘What do you want, Jerome?’ Lewelyn asked him.
Jerome Harris directed his eyes to the source. David Lewelyn saw them close and watched the finger move to the trigger; the gun and Jerome fell to the floor.
Chapter 43
A soothing breeze replenishing summer’s dusty air. A patent-blue sky, not too dark, not too light, hovering above. It would have been such a nice moment if red and blue lights didn’t flash or uniformed police officers were not wandering about, or overcurious onlookers didn’t pointedly scour behind the yellow tape.
Sitting in the back of a vehicle that had ‘Paramedic’ written all over its metal hide, Lewelyn drifted in and out of attentiveness. One of the paramedics told him the shoulder was dislocated and he needed to go to the hospital to have it put back in place. Before offering him the prognosis they asked him to try and lift the arm and move it sideways, but he was unable to do either.
Prognosis given, now he waited. Once or twice out of tempting curiosity he looked at his partially reflective face in the ambulance’s rear-door window. Blood like red sticky icing still streamed down past his mouth, but Lewelyn, not too bothered about a bleeding nose – it beat the cake of blood on Malcolm Harris’s decomposing face.
Lewelyn copped a peek at the injured shoulder then moved his attention to the other; a striking contrast, no twin resemblance. The usual oval shape had deformed into a square. The wait didn’t help the pain he was enduring, being racked with the pulsating sensation like someone drilling into his joints made him grow impatient. Lewelyn searched for anything of interest to dull his current, unpleasant, unending senses.
Earlier a stretcher with a sheet over it was brought outside, the corpse enveloped but Lewelyn knew who was hidden from the curious eyes. Preceding the corpse, Jerome Harris bound with shiny steel cuffs, walked slowly with a tightly screwed grin. The image of him being led out of his home made the curious eyes surge towards the enforced yellow line. The officer in front of it took a few steps forward and his hands went up in a bear-like fashion to discourage the photographic flashes.
Lewelyn thought he had seen George Taylor, the freelancer, among the eyes of curiosity. A crack-less face of assumed innocence did not appeal to David. Seeing that baby face was bad enough, the idea of Taylor sneaking in, asking him questions, persuaded Lewelyn to roll back further into the ambulance.
His phone incessantly called out to him from his pocket, its vibration irritating his bruised muscle and reminding him he couldn’t use that arm to retrieve it. Not able to fathom out who would be repeatedly calling him now.
Forsythe came in to offer him some company.
‘It’s dislocated.’
‘Say no more.’
Forsythe, not content with idleness, paced to and fro on the close shaved lawn.
‘I guess the profile Damian gave us didn’t match,’ Lewelyn spoke.
‘How so?’ Forsythe pacing and turning.
‘The profile theorized one person with two personalities. When in fact there were two individuals at the apartment that night. ’
‘That’s true but I don’t think Damian was entirely wrong with what he gave us. He told us there were two personalities. The only thing he got wrong, was adding in the personality disorder when the disorganised and organised personalities had their own vessels, Jerome and this other guy. Jerome being Disorganised and the other being Organised. Looking back at it I’m impressed with what he did find,’ Forsythe pointed out.
Lewelyn agreed, then he saw the man involuntarily stab the toe of his shoe into the grass, covering it with dirt.
‘You all right?’ He asked.
The pacing went on with a brisker pace and ever shorter laps.
He chose to ask another question, ‘What happened?’
The gritted teeth and furrowing eyebrows of Tom Forsythe told Lewelyn not everybody could be saved.
Chapter 44
He listened to the engine as it gently powered down, the process sharing similar symptoms to a slow death: blood and oxygen flow decreases,
resulting in smaller shallow breaths; breathing becoming a burden rather than a necessity.
Frank, chewing on an apple, lingered in Shaun’s driveway. Time not against him, even from the slight detour he had taken. Not many cars passing through the neighbourhood, most parked outside their homes with the curtains drawn – a day of rest it seemed.
The diversion brought about on his journey had been caused by a motorcyclist in the rear-view. Not always clearly visible in the mirror’s full reflection – the rider had lanes and lines of cars obscuring the view and was keeping at a distance. The bike was equipped with a high performance engine – judging by its boulder size – and a tall metal frame. The rider’s leather protection in the Californian sun had not revealed him, what had given him away was the emerald visor on the helmet.
Frank found himself wanting to know why it had that colour, why the manufacturer of the road safety gear chose that particular design. When the road came to an opportunity to create an intersection, Frank signalled right while the rider was in the same lane a few vehicles behind him. He turned right off the road and entered a new, unplanned avenue.
The two wheeled motor did not turn, the motorcyclist continued straight on the road Frank would otherwise have followed. Relaxing again, he noticed for the first time that a fracture in the shape of a spider’s web had formed inside the driver’s side window. The glass cried fractured tears from the swift blow struck by Frank’s reactive elbow. Furious at himself for succumbing once more to his paranoia.
You are safe, he told himself.
He performed a U-turn and re-commenced his travels along the original route.
It hadn’t taken long to get to Shaun’s, literally no cars on the road. The apple gone now, only a pip to acknowledge its past existence. Exiting the car, he placed it carefully beside the car’s lighter station and jogged quickly up to the front door. He pressed the doorbell, the electrical sound it emitted was a recording of Christmas jingles. He inspected the cloth in his hand, not going to sniff it to test its potency. A wide splatter of dampness covered most of its surrounding area.