It happened after Paul was asleep, under the influence of some of the sleeping pills from the hospital John had crushed and mixed into a cup of tea as a powder.
“No, I don’t want any more of that sleeping stuff,” Paul said, pushing away the glass of water, and the brightly colored assortment of circles, and ovals, big or small, gel-filled, shiny, or rough and grainy, in a rainbow of artificial greens and reds.
“Your shoulder will be hurting,” John said, coaxing the glass slightly closer, but Paul pushed his hand back.
His face was set in that certain stubborn expression.
“How about a cuppa, then. To soothe you.”
“No, I—“
“Trust me,” John said, boring his eyes into Paul’s.
The light flickered and John frowned, looking up from his book. The lamp next to his bed seemed to have some kind of loose part, because whenever he moved in the slightest, the tall lamp swayed and the light faltered. John reached out the steady it, and the pale orange glow stilled.
He reached blindly under the lampshade and drew his hand back out quickly, burnt from the heat. John waved his hand and the lamp leaned backwards, off-balance again.
Lennon stood up suddenly, raking a hand through his hair and lumbering out of his room. Of course the insomnia would continue. Yoko had given up on trying to have him sleep and he was always the one to leave their room in the middle of the night to be in the living room, rustling old pages of music, wide-eyed and unthinkingly.
She’d come find him sometimes, wrapping a robe around herself, her with puffy, bleary eyes, and him looking down at songs that didn’t quite have a melody yet, surprised at her apparition like he’d forgotten where exactly he was.
Sean would come find him too sometimes, when the monsters or a dream would scare him, and he’d crawl into John’s lap, and those were the rare times when he could coax stories out of him, of Aunt Mimi and Julia and Stuart and Brian Epstein, stories that made John acquire that wistful look in his eyes, like they were old dusty characters in a forgotten play; but only when John didn’t tell Sean to go back to sleep.
Paul was asleep like a baby in his crib.
A drugged baby in his crib, John corrected himself, and he chuckled at the mental image.
Mussing his hair with his free hand, John trailed the other along the walls to guide him in the semidarkness of the sleepy house and its long, trailing shadows. These shadows were welcome after the unnatural, permanent brightness of the hospital that, after a while, made you lose track of time, but they weren’t quite the familiar shadows of his flat he’d learned by heart.
He was reminiscing too much.
“Stop reminiscing,” John muttered for his own benefit, trying to see past the gloom and the hazy, fuzzy shapes his eyes were straining to provide without his glasses there to correct his vision.
He’d reached the kitchen, which was beside the front door—he was beginning to learn where everything was after all—and flicked on the light.
An odd noise reached his strained, nervous ears.
It was a sort of combination thump and shuffling, like something was trudging through shrubbery in somewhat of a hurry.
John listened but it was all gone, and he began to open cupboards for anything like booze. He flung open a cupboard: rice, noodles, sugar, salt. Then a drawer: spoons, silverware, and an extensive array of cutlery in varying degrees of overuse. The drawer that followed held only toothpicks and linen napkins.
John was picking up a monogrammed one and wondering which poor sap could have the initials “PUS” when a crash rang through the living room.
John fumbled into the main room only to be confronted with a shower of crystals everywhere, flying like confetti, as something landed inside with a dull, heavy sound, accompanied by a grunt.
He was back inside the kitchen before his rational mind could do anything, and the silverware drawer was being opened by feverish fingers almost like magic. He selected the sharpest and biggest knife without thinking, and once back out the door of the kitchen, John looked around wildly for the intruder.
He wasn’t there.
The pieces of glass were crunching under his bare feet and John registered pain and blood and shards as almost disconnected facts he needed to file away, and he put them under “not important,” to think about later, because now he needed to run to Paul’s room.
The door was open already and John flicked on the switch, the light flooding the small square that was Paul’s room, and the other one was stooped over the bed, and John brandished the knife, and let out a strangled shout, anything to stop whatever was happening, even if he hadn’t quite processed it yet.
He turned and he caught sight of sunken eyes behind aviator glasses, a crooked mouth set into a pudgy face, before the gun was pointing at John.
“Mr. Lennon,” he said, revealing an American accent.
John’s kitchen knife with its dulled serrated blade seemed to shrink as the barrel of the gun stared him down.
“Why,” John managed, hating his voice for its hoarseness. He took a deep, steadying breath, with all the steeliness he could muster. “Why are you here?” he asked, this time with more strength.
A strange glint lit up the American’s eyes. John backed into the corner. He knew there was a hotline button somewhere, if he could only reach it…
“My name, Mr. Lennon, is Mark David Chapman.”
John nodded, his heart beating out of his chest but his head oddly clear. Under the table that was right behind him. He shuffled backwards all while extending a hand towards the table, his eyes fixed on Chapman’s.
“I’m here to kill you.”
“Oh, I was really wondering what you planned to do with that gun.”
John regretted his sarcastic retort almost immediately, but took the moment of surprise to reach under the table and pretend to grip it, all while pressing down on the button affixed to the bottom of the table.
“You,” the other spat, “are so arrogant.”
John watched soundlessly as the slight shake in Chapman’s head was making his hair fall slightly out of place.
“You pretend to care, but you don’t. Oh, of course you don’t. Bigger than Jesus. Well, someone needs to tell you. I’m here to show you that you can’t be bigger than Jesus, John.”
“What about Paul though? Why attack him?” John asked.
A strange expression went through Chapman’s face, an oddly serene one. “I had to. That was—“
Noise ripped through the air and so did a bullet that streaked through Chapman’s head. The room was filled with uniformed officers and red was splattered on the wall in front of which Chapman had stood.