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┏━━━━━━𖤐━━━━━━┓ chapter twenty: the calm before the storm ┗━━━━━━𖤐━━━━━━┛
"He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, 'Quiet! Be still!' Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples 'Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?' They were terrified and asked each other, 'Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!'"
— Mark 4:39-41
Her fingers tightened around the metal grip. It felt rough against her skin — unblemished, unsoiled, tender skin. There was a sense of...wrongness to it: to see a sword where once had been a pen. Words cut deeper than swords, they say. Well, Marley had very recently learned that you couldn't very well kill an ancient evil with a quip, however witty, so...you had to use something a little sharper.
Squinting, she took aim — that sorry can didn't stand a single chance. Even though it had got lucky about a dozen times before this Hail Mary moment. Marley'd never thought she'd suck at this quite so much. Hell, she was even a little cocky — she'd been a regular Hickok at every summer fair in Cambridge. She'd even won a glow stick bracelet that one time. No ducks were left standing.
But cans appeared to be a different beast entirely.
Marlene let out a steady breath, feeling the trigger under the pad of her index finger. A fraction of a movement that could end somebody's life. Or save Marley's. If she stopped sucking at this so much, that is. Otherwise, it might just be her downfall — she never excluded a possibility of accidentally shooting herself to death.
"Come on," a whisper fell from her chapped lips. Marlene stuck out her tongue in concentration — she always did that; a habit since she was a kid. Maddock'd made fun of it incessantly, calling it the "peak concentration" look. Marley's chest tightened at the memory. The ringing laughter of the past long assigned to oblivion. The life she used to live, surrounded by the people she loved, instead of the one she was barely scraping through.
And so she pulled the trigger.
Marley knew everything was screwed the moment she felt a tremor in her hand. The tremor that sent the bullet on a wild adventure. She squeezed her eyes shut at the blasting sound of broken glass. And then there was silence.
Marlene opened them after a few seconds and chanced a look at the can — it was staring smugly at her, untouched. A little bit farther away, though, was the unfortunate fatality: a car that was mysteriously short of a headlight. Bobby was going to kill her.
With a feral growl of a perfectionist who couldn't get something done, Marlene strolled up to the can and viciously kicked it off its wooden pedestal, "That's what you get," she hissed, pleased that she'd managed to do at least that.
