It was cluttered and the light was muddled. There was a pile of garbage bags stacked just inside that appeared full of clothes. A cardboard box overflowing with random detritus—coffee mugs, phone chargers, unopened bills, water-damaged magazines—sat in a doorway, blocking entrance to whatever room lay beyond. There were coats strewn over the backs of folding chairs. A framed Die Hard poster hung on the wall, crooked. There was an odor like unwashed dishes and spoiled food.

Benno let the door thwat closed behind him. He stood in the hall, surveying the house’s musky interior. He’d walked past this house thousands of times—twice a day, every day, for seven years—yet had never really bothered wondering what it might look like on the inside. Now that he was here, it turned out he hadn’t needed to wonder: it looked exactly as it seemed it would from the outside.

It was quiet, no sign of Asher or Jason. Benno stepped into a room off the hall, what appeared to be—or to have been—a dining room, full of additional clutter: Boxes piled in a corner, a long, scuffed table pushed against a wall and buried under shopping bags, a rolled up beige carpet leaning precariously in a corner. The meager light that managed to wrest inside around the edges of the blinds exposed whorling dust.

On the far end of the room, his hands at his sides and his hood still pulled snuggly over his head, Asher stood watching Benno from his one open eye.

Benno stood in the dinge. “I’ll take you somewhere safe,” he said, extending his hand.

Asher’s eye flickered to the space over Benno’s shoulder, and there was the sound of a gun racking.

Benno turned slowly to face the muzzle of Jason’s pistol. Jason scowled down the length of his arm, his red, vascular hands gripping the pistol tightly. The muzzle trembled.

“Guess you wanna die,” Jason seethed, his dark eyes glistening.

Benno sidled a half-inch to his right, drawing the pistol’s bearing away from Asher.

“You can’t kill me,” Benno said, his voice measured.

“Ever hear of stand your ground, motherfucker?”

Benno stood his ground.

“Now pay attention, boy,” Jason said to Asher without taking his eyes off Benno. “This is how a real man acts. This is how a real man protects his property.”

“Please don’t,” Asher said so quietly that Benno was certain Jason hadn’t heard him—though it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had.

“Fuck you, creep.” Jason gritted his teeth, and then fired.

The muzzle flashed. Benno felt the bullet against his forehead. There was a BANG followed by a pair of soft clinks—one casing and one flattened bullet—hitting the floor.

Then silence.

Jason’s eyes narrowed, searching for the bullet hole that must—certainly—have opened in Benno’s face.

Benno snatched the pistol’s barrel. Jason recoiled, tugging the gun, desperate to keep Benno from taking it from him.

But Benno did not want the gun; he stepped forward, planting the muzzle firmly against his own forehead. “Do it again,” he said, fury dripping from his voice.

Jason did not hesitate. He pulled the trigger. There was another flash, another BANG, and another pair of clinks.

“Again,” Benno said, his grip on the barrel tightening.

Jason pulled the trigger again.

BANG.

Clink-clink.

“Again.”

BANG.

Clink-clink

“Again.”

Jason’s face twisted into terror, and his finger drifted off the trigger. “Wha… wha…” he stammered.

Benno released the barrel, and Jason stumbled back. “I told you,” Benno said. “You can’t kill me. You can’t hurt me.” He took a step forward, and Jason stepped backward. “No matter what you do, I will not die. This might bother you, but I promise it bothers me more.”

Jason’s back came up against the wall. He raised the pistol over his head, as if about to strike Benno with it, but then thought better.

Benno loomed mere inches from the other man’s face.

“But that’s not your problem,” Benno said. “Your problem is this: Finally, after all these years, you’re about to learn what it feels like when someone you can’t stop decides to hurt you. Do you understand why this is an important lesson? Can you think of any reason why this matters?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Jason’s wide eyes searched, and his lips trembled.

“Answer me!” Benno roared.

Jason shook his head. “No…” His voice was an octave higher than usual. “No I… I can’t think of any reason…”

Benno nodded. “That’s because you’re stupid. A stupid, weak man. You’re supposed to protect him. But instead… and there’s nothing he can do. He can’t protect himself. To him, you’re unstoppable. But now look at you. Now you’re the one who needs protection. And there’s nothing you can do.”

Tears leaked from Jason’s eyes, his skin as red as hot coals. “I… I… I know it’s not okay anymore,” he stuttered. “I get that now. But his mother, she pushes all my buttons. The two of them… They team… they team up on me… But I know… I know… I won’t hit him anymore. I promise. I’ll never lay a hand on him again.”

“No.” Benno yanked the gun from Jason’s grip and dropped it on the floor. “You won’t.”

#

Jason’s bloodied body lay crumpled on the floor. Benno stood over him, breathing heavily, his knuckles stained with blood. There was a ringing in his ears, like a teapot boiling in another room, and his vision tapered inward, shutting out everything but the broken bones and macerated flesh where Jason Rogers’ face used to be.

Was he dead? It was hard to say. Did it matter? Maybe. Benno wasn’t sure yet. If he survived, the asshole would likely never breathe right through his nose again, and he’d be lucky if he didn’t lose his vision. His left eye in particular was a pulpy mess, the lid already swelling shut around it like a fist. His lips were split open in deep gashes, and his teeth were loose or missing. One of his ears was torn at the lobe, and dangled off his head. His foot jerked minutely, the only indication that he might still be alive.

Benno focused on steadying his breathing. Slowly, his vision opened. He wiped his knuckles on his jeans and rolled his neck, feeling it crack. He turned away from Jason, pulled the bottle of whiskey from his coat pocket, and took a long swig.

“You’re safe now,” he said when he’d finished drinking. “You don’t have to worry about him hurting you any…”

But Asher was gone.

Benno walked slowly across the room and turned the corner into the kitchen.

The boy cowered in the corner below the counter, shaking and crying. He held a cordless phone to his ear. When he saw Benno, he shrunk.

“Please…” he said into the phone. “Please help… The man is hurting my daddy…”

Benno could hear the muffled voice of the police operator through the phone, trying to keep Asher calm, to keep him on the line.

“Please…” Asher’s little body lurched with sobs. “Please help…”

Benno wobbled as he backed out of the kitchen. The ringing in his ears persisted, so loudly that at first he didn’t notice there was someone screaming directly behind him.

“No!!!”

Benno’s vision blurred as he turned, as if underwater.

Kathy Rogers stood just inside the dining room, clutching at her stained t-shirt in both hands, gawping at her husband’s broken body. She had dark bags under her eyes, her cheeks sunken, her hair a tangled nest.

“What did you do!?!” Her bloodshot eyes were wild. “What did you do!?!”

Benno’s mouth opened—as if there was something to say— but his feet carried him swiftly toward the front door. He felt Kathy Rogers’ fists beating his shoulders as he went, and her high-pitched screams to “Get out!!! Get out of here!!!” but it all felt faraway. It felt almost as if it was happening to someone else.

The snow had picked up. Benno hurried up the dirt road toward his trailer. Bile bubbled up his esophagus as a list cobbled together in his numb, racing mind: His wife and son. The people on that train. The Forrorians. The Rogers family. We are what we repeatedly do. Everywhere he went, death followed—but always biding a cruel distance from Benno himself. His wife and son. The people on that train. The Forrorians. The Rogers family. He was no better than Edda or Isaac. He was no better than Jason Rogers. He was no better than the driver who had struck his family’s car.

His wife and son.

The people on that train.

The Forrorians.

The Rogers family.

Behind him, still in the distance, the sound of sirens approached.

#

He washed the blood from his knuckles, then put the revolver and the remaining bullets in an old plastic shopping bag. He figured he didn’t need the gun—it was useless to begin with—but packing gave him something to do while he worked up the courage to do what came next.

He peeked through the blinds at the dirt road. The snow had worsened to the point that he could hardly see more than a hundred feet from the trailer, but faintly, refracting through the pall of icy white, he could make out the blue and red flashing lights speeding from the Rogers’ house toward his trailer.

Benno owned very few sentimental possessions. In fact, other than the two items in the bedside drawer he needed most, he struggled to think of anything else to bring. He settled on tossing his toothbrush—which he acknowledged, eyeing its bent, wiry bristles, he hadn’t used in months—into the shopping bag with the revolver. Then he sat on the narrow twin bed, opened the drawer beside it, and removed the Gemstoke and his old, dead phone.

Many years ago, he and his wife and son had gone to see a play at the local theater. Into the Woods, a musical that combined a bunch of classic fairy tales into a comedic homage. For days afterward, his wife and son had walked around the house singing together the catchier tunes from the play. At the time, Benno recalled, he’d been irritated by the incessant singing, the same twee songs over and over in two untrained voices. He had memories of leaving the room when they started singing, or manufacturing an errand to run. But now, with the bleating screech of sirens outside his trailer, the ceaseless ringing in his ears, and the stark absence of his family from his life, he missed it so terribly that he started to cry.

“Police!” A gruff voice shouted from outside the trailer’s door. “Open up!”

Benno wiped his eyes and placed the phone into his pocket. He took one more look around his trailer.

“Open this door!”

A cockroach crawled from the crack beneath the window frame, scurried down the wall, and disappeared beneath a pile of dirty clothes.

“Open it now!”

Benno pressed his thumb to the Gemstoke’s flat surface. He could almost hear his wife’s voice, its earnest lilt, trying to track down harmonies to their son’s small, pitchy notes. He could almost hear their laughter. He could almost see them dancing.

INPUT REQUEST…

A loud THUD shook the trailer’s door, bending its hinges. A second THUD broke it open.

Benno closed his eyes. His wife and son used to dance together. She loved him more than Benno knew anyone could love anything. He could almost see them dancing… Almost…

“On the floor! Now! Now!!!”

“Something in his hand!”

“Get on the fucking floor!”

“Gemma,” Benno said under his breath, cold air rushing in through the open door and ruffling his hair. “Take me back to the Inn.”