Short Story Fragment
I killed Russell Shaw.
I shot him dead. It was a reflexive action. Moments after bursting into my home and tearing through my personal library of banned books there was a dime sized hole in the center of his forehead. Blood was oozing out of it. The fury in his hazel eyes gone replaced with a glassy, empty stare.
I was shaking with adrenaline and, I dare admit, the thrill of taking another man’s life. Then I barely made it to the toilet where I violently threw up my dinner -chipped beef and gravy over toast. Sweat slid down my forehead in rivulets the salt stinging my eyes. I could scarcely believe that Shaw was dead and it was me who had ended his life. Just last night we had coffee at the corner café offering each other opinion on Hobbes.
Where did the gun come from? It was mine. I knew that. I had bought for just this purpose - protecting my home and possessions. I remember the day I purchased it from a bearded and light skinned man who sold weapons off the back of a stolen truck in a dark alley. I just don’t remember getting it from my night stand table…when did I run up the stairs and then back down to the library? Come to think of it how did Russell Shaw know about my library?
My stomach convulsed again and I heaved myself inside out into the porcelain bowel.
I never figured my neighbor for a somnambulant, cheerfully walking through his day to day until the agency stimulated the neurochip inside his skull. He didn’t seem the type to allow himself to be implanted. How did it come to pass that a member of the Freethinker’s Union…
I looked up from hugging the toilet to see a large man in a ski mask point a taser at me and fire. Tendrils of electric fire ripped through my body and a wetness expanded near my groin as I slipped abruptly into darkness.