Robbers

thirty - six

Jackson's body was exactly as it had been when she had left. Ella shut the apartment door behind herself and unscrewed the cap of the gasoline can, the scent of fuel unfurling from inside the container and burning her nose. She started in the living room, tilting the can downwards and allowing the clear gasoline to spill out onto the carpet. It spattered against the back of Jackson's dress shirt, droplets soaking through to reveal the pale skin beneath.

She moved slowly through the apartment, concentrating the spills against curtains, carpet, and furniture. Ella led a trail of the liquid through Jackson's bedroom, scarcely seeing the bear skin throw spread across the wide mattress. In the kitchen, there were packaged bags of cocaine and what could only be heroin waiting on the scratched counter. Ella upturned the container at the edge of the kitchen, before the entrance to the living room, and whatever gas that was left sloshed to the linoleum below.

When she dropped the gas canister, it skipped against the slick flooring and clattered to a halt beside the counter's cabinets. Ella looked around herself and reached one hand into the pocket of her jacket. The cool metal siding of Ryan's lighter slipped against her fingers.

Ella was pulling out the lighter when she heard it.

The sound was so subtle and nearly silent that she could have missed it entirely. If the apartment hadn't been so completely drowned in silence, there was no way Ella's damaged ears would have picked up on it. But she froze at the tiniest sound of a scuffle, maybe the slip of a shoe against wet carpet. It had come from the living room just around the corner.

Ella forgot the lighter and withdrew the pistol from her pocket. Her heart had dropped into the bottom of her gut, where it beat furiously in increasing speed, heating her blood with fear. She clutched the handle of the gun with both hands, keeping the black metal object still, as she held it straight before her. Ignoring the erratic pulse that jumped within her veins, Ella stepped around the kitchen's corner into the living room.

Jackson was gone. The carpet where his body had been was now empty, only tiny splatters of blood darkening in color against the blue-grey fibers. Ella held her breath and twisted sideways to look behind her, the gun in her hands slashing through the air in a panic. The kitchen was still empty.

Her heart was tumbling into overdrive as the silence of the apartment pressed against her ears; she couldn't even hear the breaths escaping from his lungs. She had seen the blood. She had seen the blood and he had been dead. Hadn't he?

Ella had to fight the instinct to sprint for the apartment's exit. She forced herself to step forward slowly, deeper into the empty living room, her eyes sweeping over every corner and darkened shadow in the room. The pistol shook her in hands now, no longer steady or cool and collected.

This wasn't supposed to have happened. Jackson was supposed to be dead.

She crept through the deserted living room, the air so thick with heavy silence that it felt difficult to move. The blood-smeared carpet passed on her left, and Ella stepped carefully to avoid the crimson stained area. There was a fierce ringing in both ears as Ella left the living room behind and started for the bedroom down the short hallway.

She had been so focused on the blood that she hadn't bothered to glance at the glass coffee table. She hadn't bothered to notice the black pistol was missing.

The room's scratched white door was half-open at the end of the hallway, swung inwards and revealing only the bottom corner of the double bed. Gasoline's acrid scent burned at her nostrils, but Ella had completely forgotten about setting the apartment alight with fire. Fear had clouded her mind beyond repair with the disappearance of Jackson's body.