20 In 5 -- Vol. III -- Knowledge And A Sound

By E.S. Wynn

Some sounds make us react so very much...

I'm reading when it happens. Tired, hanging eyes shoot wide as the frame splinters, door swinging violently open. Surprise locks with surprise, and then a coil of dark movement, a flash of blade. A man stands in the doorway, boots thick, grimy, face twisting, furious, high on the moment. My hand catches the alumni coffee cup on the arm of my chair as the immediate equalizer.

“Lilly!” I yell. The little girl in the room is my charge, more terrified than I am, shaken out of paralysis by my sudden bark. “Shotgun! Closet!” I run at the man suspended in the shattered doorframe, my eyes never leaving the sliver of knife in his hands, the snot-wipe sleeves of his sweatshirt. In the passing of an instant, we move as one, coming together in a dance that moves razor fast, my tall mug arcing in toward his hands, intent to shatter, intent to shatter anything, everything.

Lilly is a pastel blur as life slows. Cup and knife come together, loose fists already pummeling in the hail of ceramic and steel, bruised skin, grunts and struggle. Equalizers met and lost, we are only men now. We are alive, unthinking, wrapped in a reptilian grapple as Neanderthal as robbery, as crushing the skull of the man who has cultivated more wheat than you. In the primate arena of the brawl, he has me. Prison and life have hardened him, given him the strength he needs to knock loose hands, stomp and crush, shake me off and leave me lost, open, howling and scrabbling. In the moment, he is the victor. Laying prone, I am lost, dropped among the shards of a shattered equalizer, easy prey.

But still there is Lilly.

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