The Wrath of Grace

by

Charles Copeland


"Amalgamation of crap," was how she'd described the weather.

"IE: The kind of weather that makes a woman wish she'd stayed in bed all day," she answered herself.

Coastal storms make their presence well known this time of year, whether people want them to or not. There was no way around it, and bitching about it would get her nowhere.

Perhaps it would rain buckets, thereby stranding them at home.

"Lady," she said aloud to no one, "you can hope all you want, but it isn't gonna be so just because you wish it."

ND is an abbreviation for North Dakota, which is what Boston felt like these days. She wondered where global warming was, and why she hadn't been issued the proper amount promised to her by the National Weather Service.

It was supposed to have been the second happiest day in their lives, second only to the day of their marriage, the kind of day when everything would finally go back to normal.

Or so they both thought.

A thin veil of drizzle blurred out the surroundings, giving Boston the appearance of a fuzzy TV show. Shawna Harrison dropped a KISS CD into the open tray and pulled up to the curb. There he was, finally home from another tour in Iraq, waiting as patiently as could be expected of him. He was home, finally, and he was safe.

It had been a year of worrying and watching the war coverage on MSNBC and worrying some more. And it was a year of emailing and checking websites and rushing to the post office the moment she'd finished baking yet another batch of chocolate chip cookies to ship with more pictures wrapped in envelopes that warned not to show the pictures around because "They're just for you, if you know what I mean." The cookies were for everyone. The intimacy displayed in the pictures was not.

It was almost noon when she pulled up beside her husband, Staff Sergeant Steven Harrison, and popped the trunk. He tossed his duffle bag on top of the spare snow tire. She caught a mirrored glimpse of the Medal of Honor dangling from his neck, remembering how proud she'd been upon first hearing about the heroics that led to her husband becoming the only still-living soldier to receive such an honor in Iraq.

What words were spoken upon that first reacquaintance were spoken in the language of love, and do not need to be repeated here. One can imagine the feelings flowing from husband to wife and back. Description isn't entirely necessary.

"This is the closest thing to rain I've seen in a long time," Steven said when he sat in the passenger's seat and straightened his uniform. "I wouldn't be the least bit upset if it turns into real rain for the next damn week!"

"Doesn't matter if it does or not, since neither of us will be getting out of bed for a few days," Shawna said, raising and lowering her eyebrows like a goofy horny schoolgirl. And she meant it. Couple of days in bed, rediscovering one another, punctuated by brief pauses to retrieve food which they would turn into energy they would then use on one another. Shawna faced a deadline on her latest novel, one she stood no chance of delivering on, and that would chap her editor's ass. But what could he say?

Nothing. He would say nothing and deal with it. Because she was at Logan International Airport to pick up her heroic husband and NOTHING was going to stand in the way of their reunion.

Except for the incident that occurred at the Turnpike off-ramp in Framingham, when the driver she cut off in Weston finally caught up to her, and offered nothing but rage.

And destroyed her world.


* * *


They had been discussing details of the utmost importance, like which dessert topping to use on one another, in which room they would start, and who would be on top. Steven's hand was already wandering up her bare thigh and under the hem of her mini-skirt. Details like what was playing on the stereo are somewhat irrelevant. It had been a year since she'd felt the heat of his touch, and so, wanting to avoid an embarrassing fender bender, she decelerated and switched lanes --- and that was when she cut-off another driver. In Weston. She hadn't even noticed it. She also didn't notice the fact that the other driver had begun tailgating them as a result. All the way to Framingham.

At the line leading to the toll booth, she saw the man spring from his car and run toward them --- eyes bulging, teeth bared. She watched the entire scene in slow motion as the man pounded on her window and screamed at her. Then Steven got out and tried reasoning with the man and, for a moment, Shawna thought everything would be okay. But as soon as the man stepped back, that was when she knew the day would end in tragedy. That was when the man withdrew a pistol from the beltline of his jeans. And that was when he shot Steven in the chest. He died instantly.

A total of three years in combat, thousands of Airborne Ranger jumps and countless explosives detonations could not do what a single .45 caliber chunk of lead did in the time it took to blink an eye.

And just like that, Steven was gone.


* * *


After the Arlington National Cemetery full military honors ceremony, and after watching her husband's casket being lowered into the sacred ground, Shawna realized her life had no meaning. Steven was all she lived for, the reason the Sun rose and set, and now none of it mean shit. Now not only was she alone in life, but she was afraid.

If Steven could avoid death all his life, dodging enemy fire, only to be wiped out by a single bullet, what the hell kind of chance did she stand, or anyone else, for that matter? She stopped going to church because, well, she knew what they would all say there. It was his time. God has a plan and He works in mysterious ways. You'll meet up with Steven in Heaven. Blah, blah, freakin'-blah. And she could barely stand the company of some of those bastards anyhow. One of them was a police officer who had been the first on the scene, and even then he had said, "I've seen a lot of freakish accidents in my time, and you never know what God's got in store for ya."

On the other hand, people dressed the way the man was that day just don't come around Framingham very often. She went to Maine to visit one of Steven's Army buddies who had joined the CIA after leaving the Army, explained the entire incident, and listened in horror as he told her she was in grave danger.

"Things like that don't happen as acts of revenge for cutting someone off on the freeway. Maybe they do in Los Angeles and New York City, but not in Framingham. From what you've told me about how the man was dressed and what kind of car he was driving, I'll tell you it wasn't just a random act of road rage. Not like that."

His name was Andy Burgess and he had tried to convince Steven to join the CIA after his first tour in Iraq. They were best friends.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You have to remember who you're asking here, Shawna," he said, staring out the bay window of his house. His mouth clenched tight before he spoke again. "I deal with shit like what happened to Steven all the time."

"So what's that mean?"

"In simple terms, what happened to Steven was meant to stop him from talking about something he knew too much about."

"Like what? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Steven was silenced, the way people are silenced in the movies."

"He was silenced, though he could have just as easily been blown to bits in Iraq." Shawna heard her own voice, taut with anger and unwilling to accept the truth. She welled up with tears.

Andy kept watch outside the window. "I know it's . . . hard to swallow. But don't forget what Steven was. For Christ sakes, Special Ops soldiers face more danger in theaters of war than anyone else, because they're always the first ones in and the last ones out, and they're always in the very middle of shit. Rangers seem to have the feeling of invincibility, like it's impossible for them to be killed. The truth is, though, they always end up seeing something they shouldn't or knowing too much about something the fat cats wanna keep secret. That turns impossible into likely. I guess what I'm getting at is this: Impossibility is nothing more than a suggestion. When someone knows too much, they have to be dealt with. And there are plenty of people who deal with those who know too much."

Shawna could not speak. Her gaze searched the room and settled on a photograph of a beautiful young woman wearing a wedding ring. She wanted to ask who it was, but couldn't. Perhaps because she didn't want to know, the way you want to ask someone missing a leg what happened, though you're not entirely sure you'll want to hear the answer.

"You look like you haven't slept in days," Andy said. "When's the last time you were home?"

"I drove straight here after Steven's funeral, so, two days."

"I'd keep it that way if I were you," Andy said. "Now that they know you saw what they did to Steven, they'll be out to get you too. I wouldn't go home any time soon. At least not for the next few months. You're gonna need to get far enough away from everything that you'll be able to contact the proper people without them being able to track you down. These people aren't human, at least not in the context of anyone being human in real life. They're government spooks and they don't EXIST in real life. Not like you and me. You're dealing with pure psychopaths here, Shawna, so I wouldn't go wandering around in open public any time soon."

Shawna stood there, slack jawed, more confused and afraid than she'd ever been. Someone that didn't exist had destroyed the love of her life. How could she explain it to anyone if she had to? What if there were government spooks just outside, waiting for her to come out?

Suddenly, she felt dizzy.


* * *


Shawna Harrison checked into a motel outside Portland and did not leave her room for eight straight days, spending most of the time curled up on the couch while using her laptop to surf through infowars.com, JackBlood.com, UncoverTheNews.com, conspiracy websites and archived clippings on various online New England newspapers. Thirty-four emails awaited her attention, probably from her editor or agent. All went ignored.

She went over and over the incident in her mind, unable to grasp the Underworld chaos feeling that creeped her out, and unable to connect the dots that would allow her to understand and therefore come to terms with Steven's manner of death. Everything that led up to it could easily have been foreseen --- road rage is common across America and especially so on Interstate freeways --- but that wasn't what bothered her. What did bother her was the fact that Steven might have known something that got him killed.

She stopped writing almost entirely over the following week, unable to rely on her brain for anything except trying to figure out the incident. One of the motel's maids spent thirty minutes knocking on the door one day last week, which Shawna ignored. She barely ate any longer, but when she did it was always in the motel room. After three months passed, she hadn't paid any rent for the past week, because she could not bring herself to leave the motel room. But leave is just what she did when the police came to throw her out at the motel owner's request. She sold off all of the possessions she'd had with her and moved into a studio apartment in Salem, Massachusetts. It was then that she knew what her friends would say if they could find her.

Don't do this to yourself. You're way too talented a writer to walk away from it. Steven would've wanted you to move on and keep on writing.

But Steven was the Ideal Reader to whom she wrote her stories. Without him there to read what she wrote, there was just no point in writing it. And then one day, while staring at herself in the mirror, NOT writing was what caused her to come to terms with Steven's death.

A year had passed since that tragic day. Shawna sat at a table by the door at the Iron Kettle, a restaurant on Essex Street. For a writer, a year not spent writing is a year reviewing story ideas. It's what you do, when you do what Shawna Harrison does. She sat and pondered and idea she'd been working on in the weeks leading up to Steven's death.

It dealt with the notion of making something out of nothing. When the waitress asked, "Can I get you something?" and Shawna replied by telling her you can't make something out of nothing, she added, "I was thinking of an omelet, but you're out of white cheddar cheese."

It was that last part that caught Shawna. She had no way of knowing whether or not the restaurant had the required cheese, but it was not a simple assumption. It was somehow a known statement of fact. And just how did she know it to be factual? Simply because she had SAID it.

And when the waitress admitted that they'd had white cheddar cheese until just minutes ago, Shawna knew the answers to questions she hadn't even known to ask. Until now.

She sprinted back to her studio apartment.


* * *


Shawna Harrison stared at the laptop screen, reading a short story she'd once written about a man named Jeff Williams. The name was a dead-on match with the name reported in the Boston Globe --- the name reported to be that of the man who had screamed on and on about how she cannot be allowed to cut people off on the freeway. The man who didn't even TRY to reason with her husband. The man who fled the scene after shooting him. The man she had created in a short story three years ago. A search through the archives of the Globe, the Herald, MetroWest Daily News, Worcester Gazette, and Providence Sun revealed something horrible. Jeff Williams had been on-scene at twelve other murders like Steven's, all involving shootings and all with the same caliber weapon. He had fled the scene every time. Shawna wondered how it was that the media knew his name when he never stuck around long enough to offer it, but then, contained in the first article from the Globe, she read a quote of his. So THAT'S how they got his name. He'd said something about secret societies and upper echelon Presidential cabinet members ordering hits on unsuspecting victims. It was exactly the kind of thing Jack Blood uncovered on such a consistent basis that it earned him iconic status all across the Internet.

There were hundreds of listings of men with the name of Jeff Williams in the Boston metropolitan area phone book, and Shawna was in no mood to call each and every one of them. But she didn't have to. After all, she'd written about him, and in her story he lived in Atlantic City, New Jersey and, she assumed, at a residence that had been built within the past three years. She dialed the number she had given him in the story and was shocked to hear another woman's voice on the other end. The woman said Jeff was not home.

"He's been gone all day," she said. Her tone was that of suspicion. "I'm Gina, can I ask who you are?"

"I'm Shawna. I know Jeff from way back."

"Hmmm, sounds familiar. Anyhow, Jeff went out early this morning and I have no idea when he'll be back."

"You don't happen to know where he went, do you?"

"He does a lot of fishing down at the marina, and when he leaves as early as he did today, that's usually where he goes. Are you calling about something important? I mean, can I leave him a message?"

"I actually need to speak to him in person."

"All I can tell you is to try looking out at the north end of the island, across from Brigantine. That's usually where he is. That is, if he's fishing. If not, then I don't know where he is."

"Okay, I think I have an idea where he'll be then."

"If you run into him, could you let him know I have to work tonight, so I won't be home when he gets here?"

"Will do, and thank you."

She had no intention of relaying any message, but she hadn't lied about anything else. When she drove to Atlantic City and asked other fishermen about him, they all said they hadn't seen or heard of him. She should've known he would not be there, and deep down she supposed she did. That was when she remembered that in the story, she had written about how much he had enjoyed hanging around at the mall in Mays Landing, a ten minute drive from Atlantic City.

After two hours of driving around like an idiot, she found a teenage boy at a baseball field on Parkerville Road called Edison Adams Field, hitting a bucketful of baseballs as far as he could to no one, then fetching them so he could hit them again. Shawna interrupted batting practice to ask him about Jeff.

"Oh, Jeff Williams?" the boy said. He was sixteen at the most, wearing fatigue Army pants, and had the aura of a boy she had known from her childhood. VERY familiar. "He and a girl named Lisa were hanging out over there by the bleachers. That was last week sometime. I've seen him down at Borders Books and a couple of other places around here. Guy's a damn perv or something. Always hitting on teenage girls when he thinks no one's around."

"When he THINKS no one's around?"

"Someone's always around in a shitty little town like Mays Landing. Always someone breathing down your damn neck. That's why I'm joining the Army when I turn seventeen, so I can get the hell outta here and away from all the government snoops." Shawna surprised herself by recalling the exact age at which Steven had enlisted in the Army too --- seventeen.

She wanted to warn him about the dangers of joining the Army these days, with wars still raging in Iraq and Afghanistan and more looming on the horizon in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Venezuela. But she kept quiet. People have to be allowed to make up their own minds, she knew that. What she did manage to say was, "You wouldn't happen to know where Jeff lives, would you?"

"I see his car in front of that big white house on Highland Street quite a little bit, but I don't know that he actually lives there. It's got New York plates, so I'm not sure. You a cop or something?"

Shawna paused. "I'm not a cop. I guess you could call me just another snoop."

The boy displayed a smile that, for a moment, made him look years more mature and so much like her husband that she felt at ease speaking to him. "Well, you're the hottest lookin' snoop we've had around here in a long time. If I was just a little older I'd ask you to go down to Sparky's Ice Cream shop across from the mall for a milkshake and who knows what."

AND WHO KNOWS WHAT.

Steven used to say that all the time.

Shawna walked back to her car, sure that the boy's eyes were practically glued to her ass as it swayed back and forth. She turned her head to see if her suspicions were correct. They were. So she smiled at him.

She drove to Highland Street, turned left, and found Jeff's car right in front of the big white house. When she peeked around the side of the house, she saw him sitting on a lounge chair, watching a baseball game on a small TV.

Every one of his features was exactly how she had described him in the story. From the street, twenty yards away, he looked like any man on the cover of any romance novel.

"Excuse me," Shawna said, inviting herself onto the property.

His head turned to her, his face devoid of expression. He did not speak.

"I'm sorry to bother you like this," she said. "I'm looking for my dog and, um, I was told he might have come up the street here. You haven't seen him, have you? He's all black, looks like a wolf-hybrid."

Jeff almost seemed to look through her.

"I need to find him before he gets in a fight with one of the other neighborhood dogs," Shawna said. "My name's Grace, by the way. Are you Jeff?"

"I ain't seen no damn dog. How'd you know my name?"

"A young girl down at Edison Adams Field told me, said I should introduce myself to you."

"What girl?"

"I think her name was Lisa."

"So you're not here about a lost dog at all then."

"Actually, no. I was talking to Lisa and she said if I wanted to meet a really cool guy I should look for you. She said you're hot, which I can see you are."

"And you always talk that way to total strangers?"

"Me? No, I normally don't even talk to people I don't know, but I've been lonely for a while now and I'm ready to meet someone new."

"I'm pretty sure you're lying to me."

"Excuse me?"

"Couldn't just come right out and introduce yourself, huh? You had to throw in a lost dog? Then you pretend to be shy and lonely? Whadya want, lady?"

"Other than to meet you? Nothing."

"Please, do you take me for some kind of fuckin' idiot?"

"Either you want to talk to me or you don't, but I'm not treating you like an idiot."

"Look, I'm flattered, but I'm still suspicious. It's not every day a woman with tits as nice as yours invites herself right onto my lawn and throws herself at me."

"All I wanted was to meet you. I've been alone for far too long and I ---"

"So you've met me. Now what?"

"I don't suppose you'd wanna go out for a burger or something, would you?"

"Did Lisa tell you to ask me that?"

Shawna didn't know what to say. She had not thought this far ahead.

"She told you what we did in the tunnel under the railroad tracks. That's it, huh?"

"I don't know what you mean," Shawna said. "I was just ---"

"You're that whore's mother. Aren't you . . ."

"No, I'm Grace ---"

"What do you want?"

"I wanted to meet you. I thought we could hang out together and who knows what." God, she HATED saying that.

"Why?" He eyed her breasts.

"I heard you were . . . forceful."

Jeff stood, still gazing at her breasts.

"I dig forceful guys," Shawna said, fighting the urge to vomit.

"Really. Well, then . . ."

"Yeah, you seem like a guy who can really make a woman moan."

When Jeff raised his gaze to meet hers, she thought she might have made a mistake in coming here. For a moment, seeing his devious smirk, she was afraid.


* * *


Shawna was sure he would be all hands if she let him get too close, which she did not. They went in the house and sat in the living room, where she did not see any pictures of another woman. In fact, except for the New York plates on his car, one would never know he did not live there full-time. Once inside, away from the snoops, Jeff rattled on and on about being from New York and how much he liked living in Mays Landing, and was particularly open about his having been at the scene of countless shooting murders over the years.

"They're always called murders," Jeff said. "but that's not really an accurate term for them."

Some people called them contract killings. Others called them hit jobs. But the real term for them, Jeff explained, was assassination. And he'd been responsible for thousands of them.

Jeff continued describing the murders, but Shawna did not need to know about all of them to confirm her suspicion. They'd been made something out of nothing. Though it was impossible, they'd all happened.

"Why do murders happen like that?" Shawna asked.

"Because people need to be taught a lesson every now and then," Jeff said. "It's the only way some people learn to keep their goddamn mouths shut."

"What?" she asked. "Learn what?"

For a moment Shawna thought he wasn't going to tell her what he meant. He did not HAVE to tell her for her to know, but it would cement her suspicion if he did.

"The problem with some people nowadays is that they don't know to shut the hell up when they've seen something they shouldn't have," Jeff said. "If you find a juicy little tidbit of information no one else in the world has, it's almost always a good idea to keep your fuckin' mouth shut. Some people found out a few things about something they shouldn't have, and just the mere fact that they DID is reason enough to kill them. And not just the ones who went out actively LOOKING for the information, either. I mean the ones who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are a handful of people who happened to be places where very sensitive information made its way outside official channels, they picked up on it, and THAT'S why they were eliminated. The information they discovered, even if it WAS by accident, cannot be seen or heard by anyone outside those official channels, so the people who stumbled on it had to go. That's it. Plain and simple."

"What the hell could be so important that finding it out would be reason to be murdered?" Shawna asked. She knew he was talking about Steven, and that was what really got to her the most. But if he realized that she knew what he was talking about, he'd hid it well up to now. "I mean, when I was nine I found out what my grandmother put in her cookie mix that made it taste so good, but it was hardly something for her to MURDER me over."

"I ain't talking about some damn cookie recipe here. I mean highly secretive plans involving evidence of what really happened on Septemb . . ." Then he trailed off without finishing the sentence. He glanced at Shawna and then out the living room window. Shawna imagined he was making sure no one had heard what he said.

She HATED him for what he had done to her husband. She wanted to kill him right where he stood, but realized she was in no position to do so, secluded from the rest of humanity in his house, fifty pounds lighter than her opponent, and unarmed. Still, she would have killed him in a flash, if only she did not need to hear him admit what he had done to Steven.

Dammit.

"How are people supposed to know to keep quiet about what they know if they end up too dead to know what they're not supposed to open their mouths about?" she asked.

"Well, they ain't around to repeat what they heard," Jeff said, "so what the fuck do I care that they don't know they're supposed to keep quiet?"

Just then, the boy from the ballpark stood out in the middle of Highland Street. He stared through the living room window. Jeff stared back, mentioning something about how much a nuisance the boy was. Then Jeff glanced at the mantle over the fireplace, on which lay a Colt .45 pistol, and Shawna knew what would happen next.

She bolted out the front door. A few weightless strides later, she bowled him over like an NFL linebacker, slamming him into the grass across the street just as shots rang out and punched three perfect holes in the cement foundation of the church across the street.

"Sweet merciful CRAP!" The boy lie flat on his back, safe but bruised, which beat the alternative. "If you weren't here today I'd be dead now!"

That was when Shawna watched Jeff's car dart down the street and fishtail onto Parkerville Road, which led straight to the Atlantic City Expressway . . . his escape route.

Stuck under the windshield wiper on her car was a note that read: "You take me for an idiot, don't you, Shawna Harrison? For shame, thinking you could outsmart me, like I wouldn't remember YOU! I didn't mean to just shoot your husband that day, you know. I also meant to kill YOU, too. And don't act all naïve either, you know why you should've been next. You KNOW things. Things you're not supposed to know. Things about September 11, 2001 that cannot be repeated to anyone. For that reason, you will be the next one to die. Always remember the term Angel Is Next."


* * *


Shawna read through the short story eight times before she convinced herself it was real and happening right then, not just words on a laptop screen.

She had written Jeff Williams into Grace Period as a government assassin, creating something out of nothing. That wasn't the hardest part to believe. As a professional writer it was something she did all the time. What was nearly impossible to believe was that she had somehow created MATTER out of nothing, and turned that matter into a real, living, breathing man. It was an impossible feat, but she had personally seen him with her own eyes, twice now. Something from nothing. And there was only one way to get rid of crap like that, like him. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

How he knew that she knew the absolute truth about who was really behind the September 11, 2001 attacks and was about to release a book about her findings was a mystery to her, though she assumed he probably knew because he thought the thoughts she gave him to think. And that was what made him more dangerous than REAL government assassins. He would soon be coming after her. She knew what she had to do.

She drove back to Atlantic City, where she found him at his other house. It looked just like the one she had created for him in the story. When he saw her in the driveway, Jeff flung open the door and started for the back of the house, where his car was. She could not let him get away.

Shawna trotted up the driveway and rounded the corner to the back of the house, where Jeff tried in vain to open the driver's door.

"It's not going to open," Shawna said, holding a PDA Palm Pilot in her right hand and a hammer in the other. "And it won't start, either. I changed the story around a little. I think you'll find you don't have quite the same amount of control over reality now."

Jeff let go of the door handle and turned to face her. For a moment, once again, she felt as if he was looking through her instead of at her.

"You think just because you created me that I OWE you something?" Jeff asked. "Little lady, I'm here to tell you you're dead wrong. YOU owe ME, not the other way around. I thought you'd thank me, you know, for getting rid of your competitors. Remember that nun I told you about that day in Mays Landing? You may not know this, but she was trying to lead a crusade against all your books. She's not trying anymore, though. And the guy from New York, the marketing director who almost succeeded in talking the publisher into not publishing your first novel? ALMOST succeeded, mind you. Three rounds to the back of the head put a stop to that, though. That event manager in Nashua, New Hampshire who wanted to pay you less than half what they paid you for the first stop on your maiden book tour . . . and your husband? Well, that was just part of the job, sweetheart. The point is, YOU owe ME! You'd be NOTHING without what I've done for you. So in a tawdry way, I created YOU!"

Shawna held out the PDA.

Jeff Williams wore a constipated expression. He clearly was confused.

"What the fuck you think you're gonna do with that, email me to death?" he asked. "Whatever you're planning, you won't do it. You need me."

"Now that my husband is gone, I don't need anything," Shawna said. "You're part of the New World Order, something the world needs to be rid of once and for all. You were the first assassin I ever wrote about, and yeah you did do a world of good in Grace Period. You killed off a bunch of people who really deserved it. But then you started getting greedy. Selfish. And sloppy. I have no doubt of your abilities, and I also have no doubt that if I let you live, you'll eventually come after me, and I can't have that. So here's the deal. I've got all of Grace Period on my Palm Pilot here. Of course, I could just delete the whole story and you'd be destroyed. But I thought of something better all the way around. See, since you killed my husband, I have no reason to live any longer. So, I put my identity in here too, so if I go, so do you."

Shawna displayed the hammer.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he shouted.

"I created you out of nothing. That car, this house, your position within the New World Order, all of it. You don't exist if I erase the story from this PDA. I programmed a story involving me in real life and fed it in here too. So if I go through with this, you and I, we're both gone."

Jeff's eyes widened. "You don't have the guts, you ungrateful bitch!"

"This is my husband," Shawna said as she set the PDA on the ground, "the civil one who would let you pick that up and stop me. He is the one without whom I am nothing. It is his civility that stopped me from killing you that day in Mays Landing. It was his suggestion that prompted me to write that first story about you. It is YOU who owes HIM."

Jeff made no move toward the PDA.

"Like I said, this is my husband, the one who would give you a chance to stop me." Shawna swung the hammer high above her head. "And this is me, a woman willing to stamp herself out of existence just to stop YOU!"

Then Shawna swung the hammer down.

And she and Jeff Williams and his house and his car and his life --- and hers --- flickered out of existence.

Perhaps Shawna and Steven are together now, somewhere else, some TIME else, having milkshakes and who knows what.

Copyright © 2006 Charles Copeland and CharlesCopeland.com All Rights Reserved

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