No sound, no flash of fire, nothing, but Cross still sensed something leaving the gun. Then came an alien, sourceless force. It travelled down his arm and to his body and flung it back. His head crashed into the balcony door.

Cross blanked out. His surroundings spun like the blades of a blender churning his brain. Subconsciously, he touched the back of his head and winced. Tender to the touch, but no bleeding. It was beginning to swell slightly, though. Groaning, he put his hands on the wall and pulled himself up. His legs wobbled and everything in front of him was little more than a dark haze. The sunlight really did a number on his eyes. Still, he let it fall on his other hand, which still clutched the source of his misery.

The gun.

At first glance, it looked no… wait a minute!

Cross rubbed his eyes and looked again. The thin tentacle-like design wrapped around the gun, the reason he’d bought it in the first place, was gone, and so was the sense of life, the weight… It felt light without being light. All the sense of mystery surrounding the object had vanished, and now he held the husk, the prop, an antique that’d fit nicely in anywhere else but his hand. A sense of wrongness enveloped Cross, his heart lurching wildly all of a sudden. He lifted his arm, wanting to fling the gun away into the street below, but after a moment he let it fall back.

He couldn’t do it. Why? He didn’t know.

He lifted his head and looked around. With the current condition of his eyes, a strange glitch-like blackness covered everything in his vision. But the buildings spreading towards the horizon, the cars honking down the streets, the scant few trees planted in the space separating the roads, everything was still as bright as the midday of a summer day could be. As for the sun... It was still there, hanging as carelessly as always, with no bullet-hole or anything as far as he could see.

Cross exhaled, half in relief, half disappointment. His imagination ran quite wild for a moment there. He breathed again, trying to calm the turmoil inside his head, but the dull throbbing lump behind him wasn’t helping. He retreated from the blazing balcony and headed for the kitchen. A cup of coffee. Strong and black. That, and some rest both for his eyes and head. That was what Cross needed right now.

In less than ten minutes, holding a cup of steaming instant coffee, Cross returned to the living room. He put the gun and the cup on the glass table in front of the faded blue sofa and threw himself on it. The headache was getting worse. He could do with a pair of soft hands messaging his forehead, kneading away the pain with deft touches of skilful fingers, but he won’t be getting that again. Never Ever. Cross pressed his own fingers on his eyelids, rubbing them in a circular motion as he turned his attention to the TV remote lying hidden behind a red cushion as usual. He picked it up and turned on the TV, going through the channels mechanically until he reached one of those wild-life documentary ones. A man, astride on the back of an alligator, tried to wrestle it into submission. Cross recognized him, though he couldn’t quite recall the name. Liza would have, he was sure. She loved watching these things whenever she could make time. From what he did remember, the guy had died. Dead from the sting of a sting-ray while shooting undersea. Liza had spent an entire week chewing his ears over the news a few years back, and now she...

The noise of the TV worsened the throbbing of his head by a few degrees. Cross brought his fingers over the volume button and pressed down, letting the device roar louder and louder until it drowned every other sound, stopping only when it had no more room to grow. His neighbours... they were gonna be pissed when he met them later. If he met them later. But now, fuck them. He wanted, no, needed the noise outside now to drown the one inside, or he might not be able to breathe.

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Though that would be a better outcome, wouldn’t it?

He let the thought linger as he put down the remote and went for the cup of coffee when it started rattling against the table. Drops of hot, black liquid spilt on his outstretched hand. Cross drew it back and held the sofa. It was shaking too, and so was everything else in the apartment. The furniture began quivering, lightly at first but increasing in intensity with each passing second.

“Earthquake!” Cross jumped up from his seat and looked around. His eyes went wide. The antiques! They, too, were rattling and shaking on their shelves in the walls.

No! Those were Liza’s...

He whipped around and his little toe smashed against one of the legs of the table. The sudden burst of pain nearly took the wind out of him. He clenched his teeth, leaning on the table for the fraction of a second before bypassing it swiftly and reaching the nearest shelf. He spread his hands wide just in time as the trinkets started toppling over the edge, using his whole body to save whatever he could. Not that he could save much.

Ancient artworks made of porcelain and terracotta and glass crashed to pieces on the marbled floor, not only from this shelf but from all over the apartment. Some managed to hold on to their seats. They and those made from metal or other unbreakable materials. Those stayed intact. But save the few he stopped with his body, most of the things selected and bought, shelf by shelf decorated according to type, colour, shape, history, cleaned every day until not a speck of dust was left… Liza’s days of hard work and care lay scattered in pieces on the floor.

He couldn’t save them. He couldn’t save anything.

The shaking stopped and Cross plopped to his knees. The ones he caught, he laid down carefully, before reaching out towards the broken bits all around him. He picked up one of them. A green glass wing from an angel statue. The only piece of it still somewhat intact. They used to be a pair, a pair of cupids. Liza had bought them the day she moved in with him as a commemoration. But half a year ago one of them had already broken. He still remembered that day vividly. Of course he did.

That was an... amusing day for him, though not for Liza.

For her, it was a day full of screams and crying and throwing tantrums… and a night for her to vent all her frustration on him.

“Ouch!”

Cross frowned down at the small cut on his index finger. Blood leaked from the wound, travelling down the length of his palm until it reached his wrist, where the sleeve of his shirt soaked it up, leaving a patch of dark red on the green fabric. Lost in thought while holding a sharp piece of glass. How careless. Come to think of it, it wasn’t the first time today. Bashing his head, stubbing his toe, and now this. Still, none of them, even all of them combined, were anywhere near-fatal. They were only careless!

Useless!

Although…

He studied the broken edge of the glass wing. It was chipped and jagged, but… “sharp enough.”

Pulling the sleeve of his other hand back, he brought the glass to his wrist. The cold glass touched his skin just above the artery. TV still roared behind him, along with his heartbeat drumming in his ears. So fast that he could see the artery pulsing beneath his skin as he rubbed the edge against his skin, leaving faint white marks along the width of his wrist. Slowly, he started increasing the pressure.

And then his phone started ringing.