Page 20 of Chaos

He takes another step, then pauses, and while I can’t see him, I know he’s looking into the shadows of the cellar. “Where are you?”

I hold my breath.

He takes another step.

One more, then another, and then he’s there. He’s in position, right in front of my hands.

I do it.

I snatch the ankle of his boot just as he’s mid-step.

And I yank.

It happens so fast. He lurches so hard my wrists slam into the stair before I can release.

But it doesn’t matter.

His momentum carries him forward, his body flying, arms flailing. Buckets clatter on a wave of water that sloshes with him.

I barely breathe, frozen as I watch him plummet.

He lands at the bottom, face down with a sharp snap, followed by a heavy thud and a shriek, one wrist below him, legs out wide, one having caught between two stairs at a bad angle and clearly broken.

His shriek turns into a choking, gasping wail as he frees his leg from the stair and cradles it in his arms.

I scramble around the stairs toward him, and yank his gun off his hip, check the top of the stairs, but no one’s there.

Someone should be there?

Where are they?

A million questions storm through me.

Is this a trap?

A trick?

And then the skin along my spine rises as I hear the sharp, deafening crack of a gun reverberating through the building, shaking the walls of the cellar and making me flinch.

Scraggle gargles at the bottom of the stairs, lurches below me, his hand coming up with a knife clutched in its grip. I squeeze the trigger of the gun, but nothing happens.

It’s empty.

No bullets?

I squeeze again.

Nothing.

His hands tighten on my calf, and I do the only thing that occurs to me—I lift the gun and bring it down in a sharp arc right to the top of his head.

Once.

Twice.

I did this with a bong once.

Again.

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