While I’m brushing my hair, he’s cleaning his guns.
They lay across the kitchen table, black and polished, the hard shells of beetles glinting beneath weak fluorescent lights. He’s frowning, greasy cloth in his hand. He’s thinking, or remembering.
There’s a difference.
Our cabin is dusty, smelling of breakfast and wet pine through the open windows. My limp is almost gone. He should have heard my footsteps, their dragging rustle over hardwood. But when I stop beside his chair, he doesn’t look up.
“Hey,” I say, running the back of my finger down the hard line of his jaw. Dark stubble has grown to scruff there, enough to cover the marks. The healing skin is shiny and pink. He inhales, brown eyes meeting mine, as if he was holding his breath.
I pulled him from a memory, then. Most of them are ugly.
He scoots his chair back and his big hands find my thighs. His fingers are shiny with gun oil, they’ll mark my jeans, but I don’t care because he’s pulling me between his legs, resting his forehead to the hollow between my breasts.
“I could turn myself in,” he says. His breath is warm through my shirt.
“Don’t,” I say, closing my eyes, burying my nose in his short hair. “Don’t do that.” I inhale the scent of his shampoo, the musky smell of his scalp.
I thought he was dead that night.
I thought they all were, both the men who tore at me and him, the man who loves me enough to stop them. I was on the asphalt, purple bruises already blooming and water seeping into my ripped clothes. The dark alleyway was ripe with the tang of iron-rich meat, like the inside of a butcher shop. Moments before, there’d been grunts, the dull thud of a knife entering cloth and flesh. Then, the repeated crack of a gun. Now, there was only the drip of unseen water. I whimpered, rolling myself up to my hands and knees, to crawl to him. But then he stood. Spine rolling up, tall over the cluster of motionless bodies. He was panting, shoulders heaving. Crimson blood dripped from his jaw, flowing down his neck. The neck I loved to wrap my arms around.
“You should run,” he said, eyes finding mine. He held a gun in a clenched fist and a knife in the other. Neither were his.
“We should run,” I said, and that’s what we did.
There’s a breeze through the cabin’s windows. The pines sway, shaking out this morning’s rain. He sighs, wrapping thick arms around my hips, grinding his forehead against my breastbone. I hold him back, cradling.
What he did was vicious, a thing of horror. There are warrants out for his arrest. His face is across news networks, neon with sensationalism, with analysis of his sanity and rumors of his whereabouts. It’d be better if he were found.
“Are you happy?” he asks, the dampness of his breath through fabric. After the terror we’ve seen, this is what matters to him.
I think. I rub the pads of my thumbs down his ears, gentle touches.
“Yes,” I say, into his hair, and mean it.
This is a story of human displacement, like lovers who’ve lived through war or natural disaster. This is the loss of life, but we have each other.
So we’ll go on. Me and this man that’s still mine, somehow.
About the Author
R.C. Reyn won 1st place in our 2nd Annual Napkin Microfiction Contest (May 2022) with the award winning story WE SHOULD RUN. Reyn won a cash prize and will be published in Indie It Press’s 2nd COURAGEOUS CREATIVE Anthology: Volume II, in 2023.
R.C. Reyn lives and writes in North Carolina with her husband, four young children, and a cat named “Cat.” She writes a variety of genres, from paranormal to mystery, and always during naptime. Join her on Instagram at @rcreynauthor
