CHAPTER 12
Sara suppressed her urge to tell the rest of the gang who were chatting and jeering at a low roar of her concern, for she was confident it was nothing. Jimmy, Darya, and Eddie clinked their glasses together in cheers before refilling their glasses with their third dose of champagne, neither one of them seeming in the slightest bit tipsy.
The food was gone except for the occasional stray piece of pizza crust here and there. The squad was at a larruping lazy, almost catatonic state as they slowly sipped champagne and Coke.
Everyone was beginning to slump back against his or her seats after the hearty and filling meal. Even Jimmy was slumped back, the aftermath of his extravagant posture. He quaffed his bubbly beverage.
He seemed slightly tipsy now as he said while raising his empty glass, "This shit is lovely." he laughed as he gently put down the glass. They couldn't quite tell if he was drunk yet or if he was just overly peppy this evening.
The rest of the group just sat back blankly, unfazed by Jimmy's random and likely drunken comment. A sense of collective euphoria and peace swept over the group with their stomachs full of the good stuff and their vicious appetites tamed. Tamed like a tiger that was now jumping through hoops for them. They were glad having their bellies filled with eloquent European cuisine that felt exotic yet a comfortable kind of familiar, bitter and sweet soda that brought memories of sweet and sometimes bitter childhood the group shared with each other, and Darya's fantastically satisfying champagne.
A heavy gunshot emulated from outside the house that rattled the house. It jumpstarted everyone as they drew their weapons with caution and followed Sara out of the door. Sara stopped dead in her tracks as she gazed in terror at the driveway. Kylie was stumbling forward towards the garage clutching her back. Before anyone could even think to say anything or even come close to finish processing the horror show, another bullet sailed and whistled through the air and struck Kylie in the back of her head, a cloud of red mist filled the air in the vicinity of the wound. The gunshot was followed with the quick slamming of a car door that seemed louder than the gunshot itself. Kylie fell over, face first onto the cement floor; a messy splat sound followed.
Sara cupped her hands around her mouth in a vain attempt to hold back a high pitched scream of horror as tears began to roll down her cheeks furiously like snow descending a mountain during an avalanche. She couldn't believe it, in less than twenty-four hours, she had seen both of her best friends since childhood die awful and sickening deaths. She let out a hiccup of gasps as her eyes attracted to Kylie's body in disgust, before turning her gaze away. She'd found her all right. She should've found her sooner. Before she was sprawled out on the driveway, bleeding.
The group looked towards the road as they heard the squeal of tires and a cloud of grey smoke in the darkness. The way the luminescent lights shined on everything, it made the whole scene seem like it was straight out of a black and white noir film. Only the bright colors like the red mist that spurt from Kylie's head and the piss colored yellow light that came from the car's headlights. The mysterious car was a green old fashioned car that only added to the noir feel. It had an extended hood, with protruding circular headlights that emitted a yellow beam of light that cut through the darkness, and a noticeable Chevy logo on the trunk. They could hear the powerful and stuttering rumbling of the engine and could almost taste the strong mixture of the bitter scent of cigarettes and gasoline.
They heard another squeal of tires as the car accelerated down the road, exiting the cul-de-sac and turning right, down a street that must've been a road that branched out into other streets like Darya's.
It happened all so quickly, by the time the car had exited the street; the echo of the second gunshot still lingered and just began to level out. The car had left a cleanly killed Kylie who lay face down on the cement driveway, the vicinity of driveway around her fallen body was painted from chalky grey to a grainy and gritty rust color.
For the crew, as they hurried towards Kylie, the rust spot surrounding her bloody body was growing grimly like a rising tide washing up on a beach; it all seemed too real to them. Jimmy and Eddie examined her back, there were two wounds; the gunshot wound to the lower back, right above the her tailbone and a shot almost perfectly placed in the center of the top half on the back of her head. The latter was for sure the kill shot.
The two examined the wounds, "Someone get me a spoon!" Yelled Jimmy, " A couple towels too, hurry!" Darya ran inside to retrieve what was requested of her.
Eddie looked up and met Jimmy's eyes that were filled with urgency, "She's still got a pulse," his two fingers on the side of Kylie's cold neck. "It's faint. But it's still there."
Jimmy realized he had been in this situation before, he couldn't fail this time. Darya burst through the door with three folded white towels and a small teaspoon grasped in her hand. She sat the stack of towels beside the two and gave Jimmy the spoon.
Eddie pulled the towels towards him and conformed them around the contours of her body to guage whether or not she was still bleeding. They watched as the red wine colored stain grew gradually. She was still bleeding.
Jimmy grabbed the spoon and surgically jabbed the tiny teaspoon into the wound just above the tailbone. He didn't want to risk messing with the head wound yet, too many variables to account for; too many different ways to screw up and too much of a risk of her dying. He arduously dug into the wound like a spade into the earth, until he felt the spoon come in contact with something solid. A hunch of Jimmy's said that it was metal, and perhaps used to kill people. Duh.
He was right. He maneuvered the spoon around the object, careful to avoid the walls of flesh. Jimmy popped the object out on the cement driveway. Jimmy picked it up, a .22 caliber bullet, shiny and golden in the faint moonlight that was filtered through wispy clouds overhead.
"Oh my god," Jimmy came to a realization "Eddie you were there, who took the .22?" Asked Jimmy like a detective who swore he was onto something as he rotated the bullet in front of his eyes, noticing nothing peculiar or particularly heinous.
Eddie looks down with his two fingers still on the side of Kylie's neck, trying hard to think amongst the hysteria. "Um... Ah, it was J- it was James."
The whole group fell silent and thought they had reached the climax of this Christmas Eve. And they were asking themselves one of two questions: who was in that old times car and where on god's green and great creation was James Dent?
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