Page 68 of Brave
“Something tells me Puppy may not want my forgiveness,” Ethen said, a corner of his mouth turning up in an echo of the handsome smile that had first hooked her oh so long ago. Back before she knew what kind of master he was. Back when he was still interested in the chase of her, and she still thought it exciting to submit.
The beautiful shoe, came the unexpected thought. The one that hurt so badly.
“The bitch truly has turned on her master.”
“I-I-I’ll go pack,” Pony stammered, wringing her hands and nodding, still with that quiet desperation. Backing away from them both, she slipped past him, heading back down the hallway towards their bedroom.
“All that training,” Ethen tsked, reaching into his coat. “But you know what they say…”
Cynthia didn’t realize she’d backed away until she bumped into the coats, hanging on their wall hooks. He had her leash in his coat. He was going to beat her right here.
“There’s only one thing to do when a bitch—or a pony—ceases to obey.”
It was like watching a movie, seeing him pull that gun instead of her leash out of a holster under his coat. It looked like a kid’s toy. Small, shiny. Not at all real. Right up until he turned, pointing it straight at Pony’s retreating back, and pulled the trigger.
He shot Pony in the head, spattering a fine crimson spray across both walls and all the childhood photographs hanging there. Her hands flew up as she went down, hitting the carpet with a reverberating ‘whump!’
Someone screamed. Cynthia didn’t realize it was her until Ethen turned back around, fixing her in the ice of his unsmiling stare.
“Can’t call it a menagerie with only one animal.” He raised the gun even with her eyes.
Rooted to the floor, she stared into the blackness of the muzzle taking aim at her.
“Ungrateful bitch,” he said, almost fondly.
Cynthia jumped at the shot, except it didn’t come from Ethen’s gun.
Jerking, Ethen snapped a protective arm up against his side. He spun, taking aim at her mother now, still standing in front of her chair, her open purse dangling limp from one hand, while in the other a black metal revolver pointed steadily back at him.
She fired again, the bang of her 9mm drowning out the crack of his smaller pistol.
He went down, and in the three steps it took her to walk across the living room, shot after shot, she emptied her gun into him.
Hands clapped over her mouth, Cynthia cringed amidst the coats until her mother ran out of bullets and he stopped twitching. Gasping, she stared from him, to the gun he’d dropped on the entryway floor. Finally, she stared at her mother as the older woman slowly lowered her arm, letting both it and the gun dangle limp at her side.
Pony…
Shoving off the wall, she ran to where Pony lay motionless, blood seeping into the carpet like a crimson halo, turning her white-blonde hair an awful red.
“Oh God,” she gasped, her shaking hands not knowing where to touch.
Pony was dead.
Hugging herself, Cynthia rocked back against the blood-spattered wall and lost it completely.
Chapter 17
Cynthia had no idea who called 911. Later, as she sat beside Carlson in the hallway of a hospital, Pony’s blood on her shirt and stiff on her hands, all she could think was maybe it had been a neighbor. Maybe her mother. For the life of her, she couldn’t even recall when or how Carlson arrived. One minute he wasn’t there, and in the next, he simply was.
“H-how…” she started to ask, but everything was so strange. Finding words was like picking her way through a fog. All she could do was flounder, puzzled, until he fit the missing pieces in for her.
“How did we get here?”
She looked around the hallway at the busy nurse’s station in front of her, at the doctors wandering in and out of occupied rooms that stretched the length of the sterile tiled corridor as far as she could see, and then back to Carlson when he gave her hand a squeeze.
“We followed the ambulance. It’s okay if you don’t remember. They gave you a pretty good sedative when we got here. You’d be in your own exam room right now, except you refused to stay put and they got tired of constantly chasing you down.”
She didn’t remember the sedative, or the ambulance, or anything apart from Pony lying on the floor of her mother’s hallway. “Oh God… Did I call you? D-do you kn-know wh-what…” Her voice broke and she couldn’t finish.
