I angle myself so I can look up the stairs, but I can’t see him. I can’t see anything but more stairs. I’ve never been up there, but I’ve drawn pictures in my mind of what it looks like.
That’s when I hear it—the sound of feet pounding up the wooden steps to the front door. This can’t be some lost delivery man trying to find one of Earl Rae’s fellow reclusive neighbors. This can’t be some door-to-door salesman trying to sell windmills and water tanks to the off-the-grid types drawn to these kinds of remote locations.
There are too many footsteps. They’re too loud. Almost like a herd of wild horses have been set loose and are about to charge through the front door.
Since I’m getting nothing from upstairs, I rush through the kitchen toward the living room to see if I can tell what’s going on. I hear shouts, but I can’t make them out. Still more pounding. How many people are out there? There could be a thousand from the sounds they’re making.
Earl Rae keeps the windows sealed up, but there’s a peephole at the front door. I don’t want to get that close though. I feel safe here, not too close to the front door. I don’t know who or what’s on the other side of that door. I want them to go away. I want the noise and shouting to stop.
Other than Earl Rae’s voice and the household sounds, I haven’t heard anything in years. The feet pounding on the porch and the fists pounding at the door and the voices shouting outside probably aren’t as loud as they seem to me.
I can’t make out what they’re saying, but it doesn’t sound friendly or like they’re asking. They’re telling. Ordering. I know that tone. It was the only tone I’d heard for months.
Finally I can make out sounds upstairs. He’s moving around the room, quickly from the sounds of the creaks the floor makes.
“Earl Rae?” I don’t wince in anticipation of what he’ll do to me for using his real name. What’s banging on the front door is scarier than any punishment he can dole out.
He doesn’t answer.
More frantic noises come from upstairs.
More angry noises come from outside.
More panic surges inside me.
“Earl Rae!?!?” My lungs strain. I haven’t screamed this loud since the beginning. I haven’t screamed half this loud since then.
What I hear next, I want to pretend I don’t. I want to pretend I don’t know what it is. But I do. Once upon a lifetime ago, someone close to me was a police officer, and the sight and sound of guns have been embedded in my head. I’ll never forget the way a gun sounds when firing. The chilling sound a shotgun makes when being pumped. The explosion it makes when it goes off.
Up until today, I’d only experienced those sounds in a gun range, with sound-cancelling headphones and targets downrange. It isn’t until today I hear the sound it makes to the unmuffled ear when it goes off a floor above you. The sound a body makes when it crashes to the floor a moment after the blast.
The feeling that pools in the stomach of the person left behind.
“Earl Rae!” I scream, but I know it. I know he’ll never reply again.
That’s when the front door bursts open behind me in an explosion of wood shards and dust. I crawl across the kitchen floor and huddle beneath the kitchen table as far as I can go before the chain gets tangled up in the chair legs and I become stuck.
Stuck.
I’ve been trapped in the same small square for years, but I’ve never felt so stuck.
What seems like dozens of men in black outfits, helmets, and bulletproof vests storm through the front door, all of them holding guns. Most of them fan through the house, some ducking into downstairs rooms and some sprinting upstairs. Their guns are all aimed forward, ready. Four large white letters are stamped across their vests, and even though I have a distant memory of what they mean, I can’t quite remember. It doesn’t stop me from being scared of them with all of their guns and all of their shouts.
I wrap my arms around my legs and curl into as small of a ball as I can. I’ve never been tall, and I’ve gotten so thin Earl Rae’s brought me back children’s sized clothes from thrift stores whenever I’ve needed something new. I imagine becoming so small they won’t see me. I imagine becoming invisible so that once they’re done doing whatever they’re doing, they’ll leave and never find me.
I’ve been taken once by a man I didn’t know. I don’t want to be taken again by a bunch of men I don’t know.
I’ve almost convinced myself they won’t find me when I notice two dark shadows kneel beside the table. I shiver and try crawling farther under the table. The collar cuts into me, and I cry out in pain.
The two men don’t crawl under the table after me. Instead, they stay where they are, one of them taking off his helmet slowly. I don’t recognize his face, not that I would. I’m not sure I’d recognize my parents’ faces anymore.
The man beside him also removes his helmet. One is older, the other younger. They both have clean-cut faces and look friendly enough, but I know from Earl Rae that these kinds of faces aren’t to be trusted.