I came around by the waterfront. I was dazed and confused. I was still on my feet, though swaying on the spot. I glanced down at myself and saw blood all over me. I wasn’t sure whose blood it was, since I couldn’t feel anything, no pain.

I blinked and the blood was gone. I frowned.

I felt a hand on my arm and looked up into a familiar face. It wore a sad expression. “Are you okay, honey?”

My sister. It was my sister, Cindy. “What are you doing here? Where’s…where’s the…?”

“You just seemed to zone out for a moment there,” she said, her voice gentle.

“Are you okay?” I asked her in turn, and it seemed right. She didn’t seem surprised. I had a feeling that everybody here had been through some terrible ordeal, including myself. But I couldn’t remember what it had been. I just knew that my heart was terribly heavy. All I could remember was endless gunfire and blood all over me.

“I’m doing okay,” Cindy said softly. “I’m more worried about you.”

“Don’t be,” I heard myself say, though I knew she should be. I was far from okay.

“Hey, Laura,” someone else said, and I turned again. This time I was facing someone I knew was a friend. Someone whose name I couldn’t remember. “I was wondering where Danny got to; I wanted to have a little chat with him about sail boating.”

I frowned, and went to say I didn’t know where he was. I hadn’t seen Danny in a while, or so it seemed. But before I could speak screams broke out behind me, and I turned hastily on my heel.

I saw a little boy crouching a few metres away, a boy with my eyes and mouth, and Danny’s nose. My son. Our son. He was crouched over a fallen body, trying desperately to roll it over. I realised after an instant of nothing that it was Danny, my husband, there on the ground. Not moving but for my son’s ministrations. My son looked frantic and distraught, sharpening my fear as I hurried over and crouched at Danny’s other side.

Lying down beside my husband I stared into his face and asked if he was all right. His eyes were closed in pain and his jaw was clenched. I felt around on his stomach, trying to find a bullet wound. He shook his head faintly and I wondered if he was trying to tell me I was looking in the wrong spot. He seemed to be trying to comfort me. Comfort me!

I struggled fiercely between my resolve to stay strong and calm for my son and lose my wits completely over my dying husband. Sometimes I’d start to cry, before reining myself in savagely. It all got too much and my sanity began to cave in under the pressure. I heard myself moaning as I managed to turn Danny over, wincing at the sounds of pain that issued from him. I sat by him and my son sat with me, and we feared for his life together. I had eyes only for Danny, and wasn’t even aware of my sister crouching down nearby, speaking with my son.

Danny’s face grew paler. Blood still seeped out. I pursed my lips against the emotional pain and reached out to take his hand. “I love you,” I whispered as I lifted his hand and saw him wince. I saw the reason why almost immediately – a great, gaping wound in his side, where a bullet had torn through. I couldn’t help myself; I screamed. Screamed and cried. And soon I became aware that my screams were being echoed. My son was screaming too.

Oh, bloody hell. What have I done? I thought frantically as I savagely drew myself together, regathering control. Stop being a fuck wit and think of your son. I recalled what I’d told a girlfriend of mine when she’d asked me about motherhood: “It’s not like a husband or boyfriend, or whatever. If you lose one of them, you can love again, you know? Romantically. But you can’t replace your kids. They’re irreplaceable. You can’t even imagine being without them. That’s what my boy means to me.”

Danny was grunting. I leaned closer, closing my eyes in an attempt to concentrate hard enough. What was he saying? I couldn’t make it out. I discerned one word: “…Never…” but on its own it meant nothing. I felt tears slip down my cheeks, tears of frustration, fear, and grief.

Danny mustered strength to remove his hand from mine, making it quite a deliberate action. I stared dumbly at my now empty hand, bloodied and small-looking. Then I looked again at my husband, and saw him staring at the sky. A moment of panic was quelled when I saw he was still breathing. But only just. And as I watched, he began to rise into the air. His Trick. He was using his Trick.

I’d never seen him do it before, but I’d heard about the only time he had – he’d described it in acute detail, and the wonder had been thick in his voice. Now I knew why. It was an immense Feat, one that surely would kill him if the bullet wound wasn’t already. He was so weak, yet he was lifting himself into the air! He rose upward and upward, until I was craning my neck to keep an eye on him. My jaw had dropped and I had no strength to get to my feet or move backward. I could only watch and wait.

I heard him muttering, usually incoherently, but I heard snatches of his speech. “…I’m…happy now… I can…I can go… I’ll be at peace. Peace…” My heart squeezed so painfully to hear this that I gasped and clutched at my chest. “No,” I whispered to myself, sobbing. “No!” But Danny wasn’t listening, and nor was anybody else. You can’t leave me, I told him, but he was high in the air and didn’t respond. Didn’t read my mind.

I began to wonder if he’d keep going up forever. He reached a height of about three metres above ground, and then hovered for a moment. He then began descending once again. Slowly, steadily, with astounding control of his movements, he came once again to rest upon the ground, lying in the cooling pool of blood he’d first left behind.

I wept mostly silently as I studied the prone figure of my beloved, noted how his breathing slowed. It was inevitable now – I knew he’d die – but I still couldn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t quite believe that his life was expiring before my very eyes. I had forgotten entirely about my son, didn’t even know where he was. Later, in hindsight, I’d be horrified by my irresponsibility, but at the time I seemed to have no self-control. Particularly when I saw my husband take a deep, shuddering breath and lie still. No more breaths came. It was over. He was dead.

In the days of old, an ambulance would have arrived long ago, and perhaps the paramedics could’ve saved my husband. But those were days of old, days we only dreamed about now. The world had changed in many ways, not always for the better. And so my husband died, and I went insane.

I found myself running down the pier, screaming at the top of my lungs. My throat quickly grew raw and I couldn’t scream properly anymore. I ended up howling instead. I clutched something in my hand and looked down to find a picture of Danny, now half torn in two. I wailed to see the damage I’d done to the image. It seemed somehow as if I’d killed my husband all over again. “Oh, God!” I shrieked, in spite of knowing that there was no God. Patrons stared at me with varying expressions from the restaurant I had halted in front of. Some looked sympathetic, horrified…others looked annoyed that I was disturbing their peace.

“What peace? You want peace? How can you ever have it?” I yelled, accusing them all of crimes they had no awareness of. Crimes that somebody had to pay for.

Somebody was standing beside me, gripping my arm, babbling to me. I continued to yell and scream and then more people surrounded me, and more hands touched me, gripped me. More people tried to calm me down. It didn’t work at first, but then I felt a sharp pain in one of my forearms and felt the numbness creeping through me. The drugs were astoundingly quick to take effect.

I sank down into the darkness, forgetting even the soreness in my heart.

The End