This piece is called Dead of Night.
Content warning: Explicit language, violence
From the second story window, we see a man get stood up at gunpoint by a woman in front of our house. We know the man will be dead soon, but we don't lament it. We don't have time. Because the woman with the gun, all angles, with the palest skin and the darkest hair that blends into the sky behind her, looks up and spots us, as if she sensed we were watching her. I make eye contact with her dead, cold eyes. My brother and I quickly duck under the sill of the window, out of view. Shit. We can't be seen. She can't know we saw what she did. If she does, we might be in big trouble. I pray they don't come after us. The Night People do not take kindly to interlopers.
The next day, I go downstairs. Our front door is open. Same with the windows. A breeze ruffles the curtains and caresses my cheeks. Before I have a chance to think how that could have happened, I see our cat run out the door, orange stripes disappearing into the street beyond. I want to run after him, to scoop him up and keep him safe. But outside is dangerous. We can't go outside, especially after what we witnessed last night. So I have to watch forlornly as our beloved pet walks away from our house, farther and farther away from safety.
I turn around to close the windows.
I stare into the barrel of a gun, held by the pale woman we saw last night, icy eyes eliciting shivers down my spine.
"Take your brother and run," she says.
I clutch my little brother to my side, throwing a large jacket over his head so that he can't see, even if he wanted to open his eyes to peek. I will not let him see what is about to happen, to live with that vision seared into his memory forever.
With him clutching both hands around my waist, eyes closed under the jacket with only my body to lead him, we stumble out of the house together. The danger outside is no longer as bad as the danger that has found its way into our home.
I glance behind me to see more men enter our house. I hear my mom shriek from inside, pleading for her life. "Please!" she screams. It is the shriek of someone not ready to die, someone defenseless with only words at their disposal, desperate. Desperate to live. Yet violence has come for my parents because of us, and there is nothing they can do but yell and scream into the abyss. No one will come save them. Not even their children. Because we will be dead too if we step foot in that house again.
All I want to do is stop time. To pause the inevitable. To make people stop this senseless killing. I want to pause time and convince people to stop stop stop. I want to stop time to stop the gunshot, the inevitable gunshot that cannot be undone, before it rings out to silence the pleas forever.