Dan Roberge immediately recognized the pattern of darker and lighter green. It was stairs.
Last time, he had chosen not to run, but instead to wait out the day in a Holiday Inn just east of downtown Sacramento, then head south on I-5 in the morning. But the cops had found him somehow, at three in the morning. Perhaps the taxi driver who had dropped him off at the hotel had tipped off the police. The cops didn’t say how they had found him, only that they were good at what they do, and, by implication, Dan was not good at evading them.
On the ride to the police station, Dan had joked that if the loops kept happening, he would get better at evading them.
One of the cops, the woman, had turned to him calmly and said, “We learn, too.”
Dan started up the stairs. He had spend Saturday in jail thinking up ways to evade or outrun the police. After all, he reasoned, if the time loop kept happening, he had to avoid capture only for a little more than a day. Then the time loop would carry him back to these stairs, and he could kill her again. Kill both of them again. As many times as he wanted, over and over and over.
But now that he was on the stairs again, ascending again to the bedroom of his poorly named wife and her mustached young goat lover, the thought of killing them again wearied him. And the thought of killing them over and over again in an infinite progression was a prison. A prison of his own making, but a prison nonetheless.
He turned the gun in his hand so that he gripped the barrel, and held it so that it pointed to the side. He reached the bedroom doorway.
In the bedroom, Zombie Goat cowered in a far corner.
Faith stood facing Dan, naked and gleaming. She spread her arms out to the side and glared at him. “Well?” she said. “What are we going to do this time, asshole?”
Dan held up the gun, which he still gripped by the barrel and which was still pointing to the side. He reached out with his other hand and released the… well, he didn’t know what to call it… the chamber that housed the bullets and rotated them one by one into firing position. He tipped the barrel upwards and four of the bullets fell out, thumping on to the carpet.
“Fuck,” Dan said, and shook the gun. Another bullet fell out. With his fingernail he dug at the last bullet, which finally popped free and fell onto the carpet beside the others.
Dan heard a noise and looked up. Faith stood near the wall, holding a table lamp, reared back as if prepared to strike.
Dan tucked the gun into his pants behind his back, and raised his hands, palms forward.
Faith said, “So you’re no threat, is that it?”
“Apparently I never was much of a threat.”
“What are we doing here, Dan?”
“Whatever we want to do, sweetheart.”
Faith set down the lamp. She reached down and plucked her powder blue panties off the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed, pulled her panties up to her thighs, stood, and pulled the panties the rest of the way up. She then repeated the process with her jeans.
Goat boy, still in the corner, said, “Can I go?”
Faith turned sharply. “You? Not we?”
Dan said, “It looks as if you have poor taste in men. Or in boys.”
“Yes, well, I knew that before I came up here with my little friend, didn’t I?”
Dan looked at Bigote. “Looks as if you’re going to spend eternity coming back to this moment, fucking a woman who despises you.”
“Jesus,” Faith said, and looked at her former lover. Her future lover.
“What’s the matter, honey? Don’t like the idea of having this weasel’s cock inside you over and over throughout eternity?”
“Can I go?” Bigote said. “Can we go?”
Faith raised her voice slightly. “Jesus, grow a pair, will you? Why don’t you just try it and see what happens?”
Bigote stepped gingerly out of the corner and retrieved his clothes from the floor. He held them in a bunch in front of his privates and took a step toward the door.
Dan stood his ground in the doorway.
Faith said, “For Christ’s sake, Dan, let him go. This is between you and me.”
“Wait,” Bigote said. “Shouldn’t you two go? I mean, it’s my house.”
Dan reached down and scooped at the bullets with his fingers. Two of then spun under the bed. He pulled up two in his hand. With his other hand he reached behind his back and gripped the gun.
“Okay, okay,” Bigote said. He again stepped, again tentatively, toward the doorway in which Dan stood.
Dan pressed his hands outward into the doorjamb, the gun in his right hand.
Faith said, “Dan, let him go.”
Bigote took another step.
Dan didn’t move.
Bigote ducked forward, angling between Dan and the edge of the door. He got his head through, but his shoulders didn’t fit in the space. He turned sideways, but the hand holding his bunched clothes bumped against Dan’s leg. He moved the hand away, and slipped between Dan and the doorjamb, and as he did so his penis brushed Dan’s leg.
“You son of a bitch,” Dan said. “You just wiped my own wife’s juices onto my leg. That’s the kind of thing that could make a guy angry.” He pointed the gun toward Bigote’s head.
Bigote turned and ran down the stairs. He opened the door and ran out without closing it behind him.
Dan turned back toward Faith just as she began to swing the lamp. He ducked, and the lampshade dimpled on his head, popped off the lamp, and flew into the hallway.
“Hey!” Dan said, and stood up holding his hands up.
“I’m going, Dan.”
“No, you’re not.” Dan stepped back into the doorway to block Faith’s exit.
“We have nothing to talk about.”
“We have everything to talk about.”
“I have nothing to say to you, and I’m not going to listen to anything you have to say with a gun in your hand.”
Dan tossed the gun across the room. “Happy? Now can we talk?”
Faith pulled the lamp back. “Are you going to let me by?”
“Why don’t you just try it and see what happens?”
“You don’t have the gun any more,” Faith said. “You can’t shoot anybody.”
“What? Who the hell would I shoot even if I had the gun? There’s nobody here but you and me.” He started to turn to wave his hand to indicate the empty hallway and stairway, but Faith threatened him again with the lamp.
“You don’t have the gun anymore.”
“Why the hell do you keep saying that? You saw me throw it.”
Faith rushed at him.
Dan stepped back and tripped over something. Something big. Something that moved. Zombie Goat?
“Where’s the gun?” the thing said in a voice that was not Zombie Goat’s voice. A kid’s voice. Kid. A young goat.
And there was yet another person in the hallway, moving toward Dan. Someone too small to be Goat Boy. Another kid. Before Dan could see the second kid clearly, the kid slammed the lamp shade down over Dan’s head. The kid on the ground shoved, and Dan fell again. There was no floor to catch Dan. He tumbled down the stairs. As he fell he heard and felt a sharp snap in his lower leg. He stopped head downward on the third step. His cracked leg poked between the slats of the railing and his good leg pointed upward toward the bedroom, toward where Faith stood pointing his gun at him.
The doorway darkened, and a man said, “You can put the gun down, Mrs. Roberge. We’ll handle it from here. It’s nice to see you alive again.”
Tags: manuscript