A Night In January

1
A stormy night in January, but not so late in January... Christmas lights were still on houses.  Those lights would be shining if the power hadn’t been knocked out.  It had gone out before the sun had even gone down – an event that occurs around 5 o’clock this time of year- so that the people living out here in the country were subtly introduced to complete darkness.  Kind of depressing really, watching the sunlight slip away, knowing the brightest thing you’ll see all night will be the faint glow of a candle or the stinky heat of a kerosene lantern.  Your eyes become superfluous and navigating the house you’ve lived in for twenty years becomes a near impossible task – it hardly seems like your house at that point.  Even laying in bed without some sign of electricity – a whirring fan, the lit up clock on the VCR, someone watching TV in another room – seems unusual.  Electricity, our best friend.  Given enough time, the food in the fridge would spoil. You can’t take a shower, you can’t flush the toilet, you can’t wash your clothes, and unless you have some primitive means of doing so, you can’t even heat the house.  Electricity, our best friend, our fix, our vice, our pusher.  Of course, things are not s bad during the day... you can see at least, but at night you’re out of luck.  Playing a game of Monopoly by candlelight with your family when it’s so cold you can see your breath, just like the pioneers. 
         On a night like this there is no light.  What little moonlight there is only outlines the endless heaps of snow bulleting across the sky, like schools of fish.  The wind blows so hard you wonder if it might throw the planet off course, knock us into another solar system.  The ploughs don’t even bother.
But two cars do.
In a situation like this, for electricity junkies like us, the car is a quick fix.  While not completely satisfying  it can ease the nerves.  A gas powered engine, a radio, lights – those sweet unnatural lights.  The sound of whirring gears and whatever else is under that hood, blotting out the sounds of the harsh nature outside, it’s almost melodic. 
         Two cars, miles apart, moving slowing but steadily.  Not driving in these conditions for an electricity fix, but more out of necessity.  Or something like that. 
         Carl kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, or what he at least assumed to be the road.  There really was no way to tell aside from the slight dip on either side which he guessed were ditches.  He didn’t blink, the radio was off, the fuel gauge was running low.  The bit of light that seeped off of the headlights into the car illuminated his hands, white knuckled, gripping the steering wheel.  Every time his eyes veered low enough to see his hands he became nauseas.  He avoided looking down, steering the car with part peripheral vision, part intuition.  Honestly, he didn’t really care if they went into a ditch, or a tree, or off a cliff. 
In the back seat James groaned and shifted painfully on the old leather seats.  The leather responded with its own groans.  In the passenger seat Tony let out a tired sigh, resting his head on the window, clutching an awkward cloth sack to the torso, “see anything yet?”
         “Nothing yet, but there are some cabins out this way”, Carl responded without turning his head. 
         James let out another groan and Tony turned in his seat to examine him, as if a quick glance would somehow help the situation, “you alright James?”
         “No.”
         The car continued down the snow covered road.

2
         “Did you see that?”
         “Keep your eyes on the road, we’re almost there... We’ve made it this far I don’t want to crash on the homestretch...”
         “I think I saw a ditched car, the lights were on”
         “Eyes on the road”
         “They might need help, maybe we should...”
         “Eyes on the road Logan!”
         “Yeah, sorry, here it is hopefully the driveway isn’t too bad”
         Logan slowly turned the car off the road into a snow-covered driveway, barely visible.  The driveway was gravel, not paved, not that you’d be able to tell without a shovel and some patience at this point in time.  His car, a newish red Sedan hummed peacefully as it idled down the 50 meter stretch that led to a mid-sized, one story house that still had Christmas lights on it, but the lights weren’t on.  Not a single sign of life came from the house – without the car’s headlights it wouldn’t even exist.
         “Home sweet home,” Logan sighed putting his hand onto his forehead and rubbing his temples, before running it through his shaggy dark hair, greasy from not being washed since they had left the resort, nearly twelve hours ago.   
          I’m starving,” Veronica mumbled.
         “Why didn’t you eat on the plane?”
         “That food always makes me sick.”
         “Well, the power’s out so I hope you like dry-cereal, or cold-beans, or...”
         “Well.... can’t you go get the generator?”
         Logan rolled his eyes as the car approached the house and came to a stop, “I’m exhausted, you want me to go haul that thing out so you can eat a warm meal?”
         Veronica smiled a smile that said both ‘yes please’ and ‘you better’. 
         Logan groaned as he put the car into park and dipped his head back into his seat, shutting his eyes as if a five second nap might revitalize him, “let’s just leave the luggage in the back, we can unpack in the morning”.
         “Fine, but you have to go get the generator”.
         Logan opened the door and got out of the car into the stormy night without saying a word.

3
After what seemed like a hundred pulls of the rip cord, the generator kicked on.  Logan stood outside in the storm bundled in a heavy jacket, scarf, and hat.  No gloves though, it was too dark to find a pair in the house.  He looked up from behind the house and watched as a few lights came on from inside the house, as the generator hummed noisily, loud enough to overwhelm the howling wind.  Within seconds the multicoloured Christmas lights lining the houses exterior also blinked on:  a beacon of joy amidst this harsh winter night. 
“I thought I unplugged those..,” He blew his warm breath onto his stinging red hands and rubbed them together, grimacing from the pain.  “Well, my hands are going to fall off...” he sighed to himself, walking through knee high snow toward the side door of his house, his fingers numb, his back aching from leaning over the generator for the past twenty minutes.  He thought he heard a voice in the distance, but imagined it was a combination of the wind and his own exhaustion and continued into the house. 
         Logan shook the layer of snow off of his body and kicked off his boots, carelessly tossing his jacket onto the ground before walking through the cluttered garage into the kitchen, where Veronica had began cooking a can of soup, still in her jacket.  The large kitchen windows shed a little light outside, just enough to see the persistent blizzard outside.
         “Logan, I’m freezing!” she complained, shivering so much that he thought that it had to be an exaggeration. 
         “Really? Cause I was outside for twenty minutes with no gloves on and I found it really nice, you should try it out!”
         “Ah come on! Aren’t you glad that we can have something hot to eat before bed?” she grinned as she stirred the soup.  Her shoulder-length blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail and made her tan from spending the last two weeks in Bermuda that much more apparent.
         “Yeah, yeah I am actually...” Logan smiled, deciding that his angry demeanour was proving nothing and that he actually was quite hungry.  “What kind of soup are you making?”
         “Minestrone!” Veronica replied with a smile.
         “Ooh la la,” Logan mused, falling back into one of the wooden kitchen chairs.  He began to dose off, his head falling into his chest.
         “Don’t go to sleep, the soups almost done!”
         “Just resting my eyes...” Logan mumbled, his breaths growing deeper.
         Under the howl of the angry wind outside, the low rumble of the gas powered generator, and the clanking of the ladle in the soup pot, neither of them even heard the side door open again. 
         Logan flinched, feeling a draft of cold air, “is there a window open or something?” he asked quietly and calmly, his eyes still shut, his chin still resting on his chest, his arms crossed.
         Veronica didn’t respond.

4
“Wake up asshole.”
         The gruff voice was the last thing he had expected.  His eyes shot open, his body pumping with adrenaline.  The first thing he saw was Veronica, tears streaming down her face and her hands up defensively.  The soup began boiling over the top of the pot and falling on the hot element below, sputtering and hissing. 
         Logan turned to where the voice had come from, the side door was wide open and snow and cold air poured in.  A scruffy bearded man with red hair in a long black winter jacket stood in the doorway, a gun in his hand pointing towards the kitchen, not aimed directly at either of them, but that could change in a split second.  Two more men entered.  One with short dark hair in an olive military jacket, who was supporting a heavier set man with fair hair in a black jacket that seemed one size too small for him.  The heavier man who was being helped was pale, and had a look of pain on his face, not caring much about what was going on but rather tightly holding his stomach tightly.  The man helping him, who seemed to be in his late 30’s looked up momentarily.  His eyes were sunken and a faded blue, they met with Logan’s and he looked ashamed, almost apologetic.  The man with the short dark hair immediately lowered his eyes and continued to help the heavy one into the house.
         Veronica let out a whimper as the tears continued down her face.  Logan began to get up instinctively, not thinking about his actions.
         “Don’t move!” the man with the gun barked, “Don’t move a damn muscle! I’ll shoot you! Don’t think for a second that I won’t!”
         Logan sat back down quickly, his hands gripping the chair nervously, his heart beating quickly, his body covered in a cold sweat. 
         For what seemed like an eternity no one moved, they just looked at each other.  One might even forget who had the upper hand in this situation, if it were possible to ignore the gun sitting in the red haired man’s shaking hand.  Logan eyed the other two and noticed for the first time blood.  A lot of it.  Blood on the floor; on their clothes; on the walls where the bigger man had put a hand to hold himself up.  He assumed it was coming from the bigger man, who was showing obvious signs of pain.
         “What do you...,” Veronica began to speak but was cut off by another sharp bark bordering on ‘shut up’ from the one with the gun.  In the Lord of the Flies, the person with the conch shell had speaking rights. In the real world, the person with the gun had them; or anything that could be considered a weapon for that matter, or even the person with the balls to use it in that manner.  Quite down, the homicidal maniac has something he wants to say!
         Logan took a deep breath to sum up his courage, “Listen, we’ll give you whatever you want, just put the gun down, ok? Shooting us won’t get you anywhere”.
         The red haired man lunged forward and backhanded Logan across the face with the pistol with enough force to break a plank of wood in half.  The sound of steal connecting with flesh was less dynamic but more sickening than anything you’d hear in a movie.  Logan fell to the ground, his head spinning, but still conscious.  He gasped for breath as he stared at the lines of the hardwood floor coming in and out of focus.  He could feel the hot blood on his cold face, trickling down his cheek, down his nose and then spanning the gap from his nose to the floor with a gentle drop.  The pain came in short waves, split seconds apart, and with each wave he felt like he might vomit, or pass out, or die.  Like something had to give, but nothing did, he just lay on the floor panting; bleeding.  His senses slowly came back to him.  For the last few seconds (minutes? Hours)  it had just been him and the floor; an intimate occasion with his blood being the conversation topic, a common acquaintance that brought both parties together.  He had forgotten all about the world around him, his situation.  Sound faded in subtly, one decibel at a time- an evolution- monotone to stereo, to surround... the low hum of the generator, the painful bellows of the angry wind outside, the soft snow hitting the house from every angle, the hissing of the soup on the stove, sputtering on the hot element – cursing its demise.  He couldn’t smell the soup though, or anything for that matter – only blood.  He could hear Veronica crying softly – he could tell she was trying to suppress it, to swallow every whimper.  He could here the wounded man laying down slowly and painfully on the leather loveseat in the next room, and wondered if blood would ruin the leather.

5
“Carl...,” James groaned.  But Carl ignored him and walked off towards a shut door he guessed was a restroom.  He put his hand on the brass doorknob and stopped for a second glancing around briefly and discretely.  The room was too happy for three fugitives.  Christmas decorations, a well kept fireplace, expensive looking furniture (a piece of which now had a bleeding two hundred and thirty pound man dying on it).  He felt guilty, he felt ashamed.  ‘It comes with the territory’ he had told himself. ‘ We’re going to make people unhappy, that’s an unfortunate side-effect, but that’s the business we’re in’.
Carl cursed ever meeting these two men.  James an insecure thug who was all talk, Tony a wannabe gangster and part-time work release shelve stocking sociopath.  He imagined if he went through anymore rooms he’d be sick – diplomas on the wall, graduation photos, more smiling portraits.  Envious of a life he could never have or never provide.
         “Carl! Where are you?” Tony barked from the kitchen.  Carl hated Tony now. Hated his voice, hated his face, hated everything about him.  He didn’t answer him.  Instead he turned the knob and entered the restroom, flicking on the light. 
         He searched the medicine cabinet and under the sink for anything that looked corrosive, anything that would burn.  He covered his hands in Comet, peroxide, Mr. Clean, iodine. He scrubbed vigorously under the cold running water.  The blood from James’ wound came off easily, but there was more.  It had soaked in, perhaps, from hours ago.  Not like paint, more like stain.  He scrubbed until his own blood was going down the drain, swirling down that white sink along with every chemical he could find.  He scrubbed until his hands were raw and screaming with pain.
Tony called again from the kitchen.  Tony, the coward.  Tony who watched Scarface and Tarantino films every night.  Tony who would take out the .38 special he had in his dresser and wave it around in front of the mirror and try to look tough, trying to imagine himself poolside in Miami, smoking Cuban cigars and checking his Rolex just because.  And somehow, it had been Carl who pulled the trigger, and Tony had just gawked in disbelief.  He imagined James had done the same.  And Carl doubted that neither Tony nor James had factored in the other side shooting back.  James especially, but he was the easiest target -  huffing, slouching when he ran from the bank as if he had an anvil on his back : just begging to be shot.
Carl looked at himself in the mirror and the word ‘pathetic’ came to mind.  His face gaunt and beaten.  Twenty years ago he might have been able to turn his life around: work hard, go back to school, get married and live in the suburbs.  He realized that up until a few hours ago, he might have been able to salvage at least some of his life, to turn himself to the right direction.  Hindsight is always 20/20, and lines had been crossed.  His fate was sealed.  Maybe not a definite fate, but a general fate – and it wasn’t good, it wasn’t what he had wanted.  He realized he never wanted any of this, unlike James and Tony.  But it was Carl who had pulled the trigger.

6
Logan and Veronica sat in the living room on suede sofa.  Across from them, James lay bleeding on the leather loveseat.  Tony stood at the entrance to the kitchen, looking them over, his gun lowered to his side. 
         Veronica was a blubbering mess - makeup running down from her red, wet eyes.  Logan’s head bobbed from side to side, the dark blood on his face starting to dry.  His head pounded, but there were more pressing matters to be concerned with at the moment. 
         Carl came from the restroom quietly and Tony turned to look at him.  “Glad you could make it,” he spoke with a hint of hostility.
         Carl’s eyes shot a glare at Tony that could melt eyes and Tony quickly looked away as if he hadn’t seen it.
         James shifted on the loveseat, the leather groaned under his weight. 
         Tony turned to Logan and Veronica on the sofa with a smirk, waving his pistol as he spoke, “hope you don’t mind...” he looked back and forth between the couple, a cheesy grin on his face, “but we’re going to need to stay here until this storm lets up”.  They didn’t say a word.  Tony turned to Carl, “We’re going to need to do something about that car in the ditch.  We can push it out, but we’ll need some help,” he looked at Logan, “since James is useless right now, you can fill in.  Do a good job and I won’t put a bullet in you”.  His voice grew shaky with the threat.  No one would point it out, but everyone heard it.  He was no gangster.
         Carl shifted and leaned on the bathroom doorframe, “how much longer will your generator run for?”
         Logan looked at him but didn’t say anything.  Carl didn’t even mind, but Tony did.  He showed his displeasure by levelling the gun at Logan.
         “How much longer?! Answer the question!”
         “I have no idea...” Logan muttered without even a glance.  He winced as he spoke, due to the pain of moving his swelling cheek. 
         Tony searched for some hard-boiled retort but came up empty.  He lowered the gun.
         Carl motioned to James, “he’s been shot, in case you haven’t noticed Tony, we gotta do something about that...”
         Tony glanced at James, “He’ll be fine, he was shot in the stomach.  It’ll hurt like hell, but he’ll be fine until we can get to where we need to go”.
         Carl guessed that Tony had learned this helpful bit of information from the film Resevour Dogs.  If you can’t learn it from a gangster flick, it’s not worth learning. 
         Tony motioned to Logan to get up, “come on then”.  He reached behind him and drew another gun out, tossing it to James.  The gun landed with a thud on James’ blood soaked lap.  Tony glared at Veronica, “If she tries anything...”
         James nodded, trying to hold the gun as if he wasn’t a total greenhorn when it came to this task.  Tony, Carl, and Logan returned to the storm once again.

7
The ‘crime’ business, is much like ‘legit’ business.  You take risks, sometimes they pay off.  You work hard; you do well, you get promoted; you get more responsibility; you get respect.  James was a lifer, he was never going to move up.  He wasn’t respected, both because he didn’t take care of himself physically and because he was sloppy.  Any task he was given was always poorly done, botched, messy.  He was a joke and he knew it.  The people he worked with reminded him of it all the time.  Carl was nice enough to him, but Carl was no criminal.  When James began breaking the law for a living, he thought he’d move up the ranks, get the cars, the women, the whole bit.  But he didn’t. He wasn’t connected, no one was watching his back, he was an errand boy, never trusted with anything that his failure in might jeopardize too much.  He picked up dry-cleaning, he cleaned the bloodstains from car seats.  The robbery was not something ‘they’ would have allowed him to do, it was an independent gig.  To prove himself, to break free of the brutal limbo of discontent he was stuck in. 
         It felt satisfying – too hold a gun, to yell threats at cowering people.  Even when the bullet seared into him, it felt good.  Bullet wounds were major street cred. 
         As he sat in the loveseat in that nice house they had broken into, he daydreamed about what was next for him and his ‘gang’, what they might do with their hard earned cash, and most importantly, how he would retell the story of how he was shot.  Letting his guard down yet again, off in a daze, botching yet another job. 
         
8
The car was pushed out easily enough.  The entire time Tony waved the gun around as if it were a magic wand.  Carl hated Tony more and more with every second he spent in his company. 
         They drove the car back to Logan’s house to park it.  Carl drove, Tony rode shotgun, pointing the gun in Logan’s face the entire time, as if the battered and weak kid was going to make some attempt to overthrow them, or try to escape into the blizzard.  Logan hadn’t said a word the entire time.  He just pushed, and dug, and did what he was told.  Carl really felt bad for the kid, slouched in the back seat, his head bobbing as if he might pass out at any second.  He was the furthest thing from a threat. 
         They re-entered the house and Logan, walking like a zombie, couldn’t help but grimace as the two rugged men tracked snow in.
         Tony called out, “James! We’re back!”
         No answer.
         Tony’s eyes darted to Carl quickly before he broke off from the other two and ran into the living room.  There was a moment of silence followed by a scream of anger, “JESUS!”
         Carl and Logan moved to the living room to see what had caused the shout.  Tony was punching a hole in the wall swearing, James sat slouched in the loveseat, his eyes wide and bulging, his jaw slack, a large kitchen knife buried deep into his chest.  His gun was gone.  Carl starred at James and slowly realized he wasn’t at all upset that he was dead.  He was, however, concerned, that their hostage now had a gun, and the jump on them.  Tony didn’t seem to notice. 
         Tony turned and punched Logan in the gut without warning.  Logan’s knees began to shake with the force of the impact, he dropped to the floor quickly, holding his midsection. 
         Logan tried to pick himself up, his legs wobbling, and Tony booted him hard again.
         “I’m going to kill that bitch!” Tony screamed as he stormed from the living room to the kitchen. 
         The first bullet hit him in the shoulder and caused him to stagger to the side, unaware of what was happening.  He dropped his gun and goofily grabbed at the burning pain.  Carl and Logan watched from the living room, not fully comprehending what had just occurred.  They hadn’t heard a shot, but their ears were ringing.  The second bullet put Tony to the floor as it tore into his thigh.  Logan and Carl watched in awe, the event unfolding.  The third bullet buried itself deep into Tony’s chest, shutting his eyes forever.  His body shook slightly as it made impact- a quick jolt – he stirred for a momente, before his body slouched as if every muscle relaxed in an instant. 
         Carl and Logan snapped out as if the curtains had just dropped and the lights had come on.  Veronica’s sobs could be heard from the kitchen.
         Carl didn’t say a word.  He just walked out.  Out of the house, but he had the courtesy to shut the door behind him at least.  Logan got to his feet, his legs shaking.  He walked to the kitchen, passing Tony’s bloody corpse.  He went to Veronica, sobbing in the corner of the kitchen, a smoking gun by her side.  Veronica, who had just murdered two people.  Deserving people, perhaps, but she’d have these scars forever.
Carl was thinking the exact same thing as he got into the car, as the blizzard calmed and the snow began to fall more vertical than horizontal.  Those scars wouldn’t leave.  He sat in the car, a sack sitting in the seat beside him.  The sack held approximately five-hundred thousand dollars, every cent of it useless to him.  Money wouldn’t cleanse his soul, it wouldn’t take back the things he had done, wouldn’t bring people back from the dead.
Carl’s was found the next day while the ploughs cleared the roads.  His car had idled until the tank ran dry and the car sputtered and died.  His gun had fallen from his relaxed hand into the seat next to him, beside the sack of money, two bullets short.