Flash Bang by Burden Kellen

Author:Burden, Kellen [Burden, Kellen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: MLF Press
Published: 2014-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

20. Twenty

I dream of thunder. Macabre images of the guy with the tattoos on his face jumping in his seat, falling apart. Gore, and fire, and mayhem. I wake to aching jaws and crusty eyes and my ribs are absolutely humming with pain; a single sustained note of agony that resonates throughout the entirety of my body, fucking with my breathing and my heart rate and the muscles in my face. On the bright side, I’m at home. They kicked us all loose at 0400 once they’d decided there weren’t any dead people lying around that hadn’t asked for it. They’d written us receipts for our guns, which they booked into evidence, and told us that when they were done with them, they’d get back to us. Harkin went back to Etch’s place because all his clothes are there, and I went home. Neither one of them wanted me to go home alone, but there wasn’t really anything they could do about it.

I remember opening the door to my empty apartment and sitting on my couch in the dark. I remember loading the shotgun and setting it next to the bed, checking the street before climbing under the sheets. As I was nodding off, my brain decided that I hadn’t had enough yet. I thought about the last thing I ever did as a Special Agent. The fluids dripping out of the storage container. The sound of grown men vomiting and the smell of bile and death over fresh-baked asphalt. Bang! And I drifted off to nightmares yet again. The digital clock next to my bed says 11:00. Outside my windows I can see the wind blowing, and I watch the skeletal branches of the elms dancing against a blue sky, listen to the sounds of cars going by on14th and Colfax. It takes some doing, but I get out of bed over the course of about 10 minutes, go into the bathroom and stare into the mirror until I hear my phone buzzing on the bedside stand. I limp in and get to it before it goes to voicemail. It’s Etch.

He says, “You kill yourself?”

Say, “You guys hook up?”

We decide to meet at the bagel place that Harkin and I ate at two very long days ago. When we hang up I go back into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and stare at my face in the mirror again until the steam settles in and I can’t see me anymore.

When I get to St. Marks, Harkin and Etch are already there, posted up near the back at a table, instead of a booth, with chairs that can be jumped up from and thrown aside. Harkin’s chair is close to the entrance to the kitchen, Etch’s to the fire exit. I check my six after coming in the door, walk straight to the table and sit down between the two of them. If it hits the fan, I’m turning the table over, following Harkin into the kitchen. There’s a

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