THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: INVOLUNTARY (Patreon)

We drove in the rain tonight. A long time. Got the word that it was on. Ev sat silently next to me, all normal, hand on her temple, watching the rain come down as the car floated in the dark. 

And I said a prayer then, that whatever had happened, I was still sitting next to Evelyn.  

Let me tell you something children, mankind is not hard-wired to kill humans. Boy. Understatement time.

I learned this the first time four months out of academy, when a meth-skinny kid pulled a gravity knife on me outside of a QFC in Idaho. He spun like a top, losing his Misfits vest like some white-trash magic trick, and was free from me. My fault, my fault. The knife was blackened with carbon, but I still noted it dropping into his hand. The training took over. We were less than five feet apart and I was already backing up, and my pistol was in my hand like a film cut. I had him square, and perhaps a second before he could close and although I didn’t know it yet, I thought maybe my footing wasn’t great. 

I could have ended him three times over, but something in me stopped me. My finger didn’t even find the trigger. 

In any case, the kid didn’t have it in him either and I’m alive. I lost my footing and slid and the kid flew over me waving the knife around like some mystical talisman, and then kept on running. He ran so fast he lost his shoe and the knife along the way. They caught him later sleeping in a Starbucks toilet. 

I could have shot him six ways to Sunday while he was running away, too. I didn’t. It’s hard to work that kind of courage up. The ghost of instructor McDaniels shouted at me from the dark of the lot as I lay panting on the cement: “FAIL Linkel. That’s a big fucking F. I’m even going to circle it. Circle F.”

Now I’m sitting with Evelyn at the hospital cafeteria, a pastel ghost-town complete with pudding, I feel like I did in that lot nine years ago. Psychiatric is two floors up behind card key cage-doors. Attendants are waiting. The papers have been signed and are ready. A needle is on a tray somewhere up there, loaded with haldol, neatly labeled MEARS, EVELYN K. I wonder if Polaski told them to double the dose?

Evelyn is carrying more than a gravity knife. We are about three feet apart. Our cellphones are out on the table. I can’t see her pistol. I can't see whatever else is going on. 

“When did they say they were going to get here?” She sounds exasperated and I take that as a good thing.

“Two. Uh. Two-thirty.”

She looks at her phone. 2:17 AM it says. 

She laughs suddenly. A bubbly, unusual sound. She suppresses a tense looking smirk. 

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m good.”

The time spins out. 

“Ev, let’s go over it again,” and I see the panic in her eyes which she attempts to bury. A moment later it’s gone, she’s just Evelyn. 

“OK. Clary and I went in to the compound. I took the book from the…uh…church?”

“And then?”

From my seat, I can see the glass of the double doors at Ev’s back. In the reflection, I see two orderlies talking to Polaski back in the hall, but they’re mutes, chattering away in silence. 10 minutes. Polaski is probably saying “trained Federal agent,” “extremely dangerous,” “armed,” what else? Inhabited? Occupied?

Possessed. 

I stifle a bizarre urge to laugh which rises in me like a soap bubble. Instead I cough. When I do, I pick up my phone from the table.  

“I told you all. I don’t know. The book was gone and I was at…uh…home. It just vanished. And Clary was gone too.”

“You don’t know what happened to Clary or the book, is that right?” I put my phone in the belt holder, and when I do, I unbutton my pistol clasp. Her face is turned up to the ceiling, looking at the lights which draw curved lines on her glasses.

“Yeah. Don’t know.”

I’m up and my gun is out. Center mass. The chair skids back on rubber feet, skitters and then rights itself with a clunk. Ev doesn’t move. 

Silence is slowly filled in by the clack of the industrial clock. I try to pretend It doesn’t sound like a countdown.

“Ev. Listen. We found the book in your house and…we found…Clary.”

She sits there for what feels like a long time and I wish the orderlies would come in. Upside down, her phone reads 02:26 AM.

Evelyn smiles. The smile is calm and inviting and moving. She’s not even breathing fast. This time, my finger finds the trigger. 

“Shoot, Katie,” Ev says quietly. Her voice is bored and small and flat. 

Her lips purse in an odd way and her cheeks rise. They pull back until I can hear tendons creak in her face. Her lips split in multiple places and blood runs fast down her face and chin. Her eyes turn up, glasses askew on her face. The eyes find me and they are flat. A bees' eyes. Geometric and empty. 

“Shoot me and see what happens.”

Evelyn straightens, not standing, but stretching. Her spine pops—one, two, three—as her neck seems to rise even as her shoulders flatten and spread down and to the sides. She’s—it—is preening. Flexing. Preparing. 

Lesson two: shooting something not human is much easier, thankfully.