In the Crosshairs Volume One: Don't Let Go

Chapter One

Chapter One

The unconscious man lay sprawled across the bathroom floor, cuts littering his arms, just like chewing gum litters the floor of any typical city street. The room he had taken refuge in smelt as intoxicating as Blue Stilton cheese, however Robert had definitely not been eating it. The mould infested dairy product made him nauseous just by thinking about it. The real cause of the stench came from the toilet, which he had been hurling into, and not because of any out of date dairy products. The only thing in existence that Robert knew of which can produce a smell so utterly rancid, was Blue Stilton cheese. It was clear that this thought was on Robert's mind as he slowly eased himself back into the land of the living. The expression on his face would make an observer with blocked sinuses understand how horrific the smell in the room was.

The strangely altered features of Roberts face because of this stench were even more amusing than a child's first reaction to an unusual tasting food, however, the dried blood plastering his hands, and providing an extra layer beneath his fingernails, was a complete contradiction to this innocent analogy.

Anyone gazing upon this scenario would immediately assume that Robert was homeless. His long, messy beard contained as many bits of dirt as lice in someone's infested hair. To Robert, his beard was priceless. He had never shaved it off for charity, and he wouldn't ever dream of committing such an act. Usually, he always kept his facial hair immaculately clean; however this morning, after his late night at the bar, he hadn't yet been able to groom it. Despite the image he sometimes seemed to portray, Robert was not in fact homeless. The reality was, his house used to be as organised as Barrack Obama's office. Or at least, how tidy one would assume the United States President's office would be. Back in his days of extreme tidiness, Robert would even force people to put drinks on mats, and they wouldn't ever dream of being able to set foot in the living room without taking their shoes off.

Those days however, were now long gone.

Robert always awoke to memories of those good old days. The times when he would get up early with his messy bed hair, stumble down the creaky wooden stairs to the delicious smell of scrambled eggs for breakfast. Once he had navigated his way into the kitchen through sleep crusted eyes, he would kiss his wife, Lynn, on the cheek, and accompany this gesture with a cheerful 'Good morning!'

Of course, not every day was picture-perfect. They had their argumentative moments, which would still usually end up in a humorous chat. The worst treatment he had ever gotten was the cold shoulder in the morning following a night time argument about donuts, and he would have to make his own scrambled eggs. Instead, because of Robert's sometimes lazy nature, he would usually just get a bowl of cereal out as he couldn't be bothered to cook first thing in the morning. It would never be as bad as the majority of a modern, dysfunctional family's arguments. It would never result in divorce, and court cases which degraded a long-term relationship into paperwork. Robert and Lynn would, instead of turning doughnuts into the reason for their breakup, would usually instead joke about the donuts, buy some donuts, eat some donuts, and then make an in-joke about donuts which would, subsequently, annoy their friends.

Right now, Robert would do anything for a day even like that, as long as he could see Lynn again. The last time he had seen the love of his life; her body had been separated in two at the stomach. Her severed intestines were tied around the steering wheel of the car in which they had once spent so many hours in, simply talking to each other.

This all happened simply because Lynn was driving a little too fast at night. They had been coming back from a ZZ Top concert, one of Lynn's favourite bands, and despite Robert having ridden in the car behind them; he assumed they had been engrossed in conversation because she had accidentally steered off of the road. The car had collided into a tanker used to do work on a construction site nearby and the two vehicles merged into one as they slammed into each other. No mercy was spared as Robert's wife, mother, and brother were all taken out of his life in one foul swoop. Lynn had been in the worst state. His mother, Anne, died from hitting her head too hard on the seat in front of her. She was, however, sixty-five years of age, so it came as no surprise. Robert's brother Joseph however was a mere twenty-three. He flew through the wind-shield because he had been drunk and not put on his seat belt. His body was found against a tree several metres in front of the wreckage. He broke his neck when he hit it.