~mắt~

Lisa lifted her hands, palms out and eye level. She stepped in front of Jack. Her voice came out in a tangled mess, weaving in and out of her vocal chords, squeaking and rising and falling. "Dad? It's me, Lisa. Your daughter. I forgive you for last night, if you even remember that-I do, I really do-but now I need you to put down the gun! It's me! Lisa?"

Lisa felt her heart begin to sink in her chest watching her father's eyes stare at her with a blank expression. His pair of ocne ocean blue eyes were now sizzling blue balls of flame breaching his corneas and spiraling in a dizzying circle that Lisa could only recognize as the same mad look from the night before. Madness.

"Lisa." Jack's hands moved her away and behind him, pushing Lisa out of the line of fire. "Behind me."

"Dad! It's me! Lisa!" Lisa said, then louder, maintaining eye contact with her father's blank stare over Jack's shoulder. "Lisa? Your daughter? Dad, what's wrong with you?"

First Lieutenant Don Travers stared expressionless at Lisa. The lieutenant's hand flexed and unflexed on the handle of the strange weapon. In the fading evening light, two slits on each sides of the pistol's barrel glowed a mellow marine blue. Lisa swallowed, looking at the gun and then at her father's stone face. She felt the tide welling up inside of her again, threatening to break through and swallow her whole.

Lieutenant Travers said nothing. The gun remained pointed at Jack's head.

"Dad." Her voice was disconsolate now, flat and low. Lisa's heart sank deeper in her chest along with her lungs. "Don't you know who I am?"

"He can't remember why he ran out here." Jack said under his breath to Lisa over his shoulder. "He's manic and highly volatile so I suggest you get out of here while you can. Right now, he's confused and currently isn't aware of having any relations with anybody. Even an old friend." Jack grunted. "Isn't that right, Don? You don't remember me, either. Last year of highschool. Your best man? I was there when you needed me, Don, when you told me your wife got cancer."

Lisa's father frowned, but then his face snapped back to his expression of quarry granite.

"You don't scare me. None of you do. I've been through... through..."

"Get out of here, Ms. Travers, now. There is back up on the way now and I don't want you here when they come." Jack said, his hand behind his back, herding Lisa away from the silent first lieutenant. But Lisa stepped around and snaked away from Jack's hand and moved around him, only to be stopped by the small bore hole of the strange glowing gun pointed at her chest. She stared her father in the eyes, willing her last reserves of strength to remain with her.

"You loved to play soccer with me." Lisa began, her soft voice breaking. "Before you went overseas, we went out for ice cream. I tripped and got ice cream all over my new dress while crossing the street and we both laughed so hard that you dropped yours too, remember? Remember dad?"

Shaking his head slowly, the first lieutenant rubbed his eyes. 

"I don't. . . I. . . soccer?" 

Lisa nodded feverishly. "Yes! Yes, remember when I tripped and twisted my ankle and you ran onto the field cursing and swearing at the coach? Remember that?"

For a moment, Lisa thought she saw the faintest glimmer of a smile spring at the corner of his lips. A very, almost infinitesimal tug at the dimples of his cheeks that made Lisa's heart rise just as slowly. She exhaled slowly, then she took a step forward. She was three feet away from the her father's extended hand. Three feet away from being blasted into nothing.

The Jack chimed in. "Think about your life before hell froze over. Before the war. Don-" Looking into his eyes, Jack held out his hand. He approached with caution as well, but the first lieutenant jerked his gun at Jack.

"Get away from me!" the first lieutenant shouted, spittle coating his lips and flying into the air. Lisa could feel the some of the spray land on her outstretched hands. Lisa saw that his finger was tightening on the trigger.

Her heart rose in her throat.

Her mind tightened into a knot, and then loosened just as fast.

She stuttered, trying to say something, anything to prevent her father from pulling that trigger. But nothing came. She was distracted by his eyes.

Then Jack said, "Remember Karen, Don. Your wife?"

First Lieutenant Don Travers blinked hard, drool coating the half side of his slack jaw. 

"Karen." He whispered. Lisa saw that his eyes became vacant. Lost. The same expression a puppy dog makes when he realizes he isn't at home. And in that second, Jack sprung forward, gripped the gun's muzzle, twisted it away from Lisa and tried to yank it away. But Jack had been too far away from Don, so the first lieutenant saw the move coming. Lisa's father's eyes bulged wide open as he pulled the gun back, and in doing so, pulled the trigger.

The ground shook first, then the thunderous noise split the air, and lastly the searing white hot beam of light engulfed the air molecules in it's ten foot long conic path. Lisa could feel her hair standing up from the electrifying round the gun had spat out. After recovering from the spine tingling shock wave, she looked down to see Jack wrestling her father to the ground. He already had the lieutenant in a rear naked choke hold, Don's veins popping out on his head. Lisa didn't know what to do, whether to help Jack or wrestle her father out of his grip. Her ears were ringing as if someone had plopped a tin trash can over her head and beat it with a ball peen hammer. She scratched at her eyes and coughed from the dryness that inhabited her throat as she screamed just for the sake for screaming.

Lisa's hearing began to return a bit when she heard Jack's muted grunting and the noises of her father's arms and legs flopping up and down on the wet grass of the graveyard.

"Dad!" Lisa shouted, then again and again getting louder and growing in intensity as she knelt down. Jack had done his work properly. Lisa's father crumpled in his arms, and she screamed, "Stop it! You're killing him! No!" Jack released his hold, and just as he did, Lisa watched her father's eyelids close, his head as red a beat. He slid to the ground, his face in lying in the dirt while Jack leaned back and breathed hard, gasping for breath. Lisa noticed his mouth was as parched as hers was the way he was hacking and coughing.

Then Lisa put her hands on her father, one on his shoulder the other positioned on the side of his chest. "Dad? Dad! Are you okay?"

"He's passed out, that's all." Jack said, sitting up from the soggy ground, grunting as he did so. He padded across the quagmire of grass and onto the pathway, dirt besmearing every part of his body. All except his face was spared from the mud.

"Pray that he'll stay out for a while. Don't want him to wake up and go crazy again."

Tanned wrinkles underneath his brown eyes squeezed and tighten as he wrung his hands and popped his knuckles. He had a wide brow and forehead that seemed to contort and shape most of the percentage of all of his emotions. Lisa positioned her father's back on her knees and held his head in her arms. She looked down at the cobwebbing of stress lines at the edges of his eyes and the deep grooves underneath his cheekbones. He looked like a starving skeleton.

"I swear, if he dies. . ." Lisa's voice was drowned out by the sound of a helicopter whirring overhead. "Trust me, he'll be fine." Jack squinted up along with Lisa, both of them staring at the oncoming silhouette of the chopper. It had sleek, sloped edges and a dull red body. The neon yellow stripes down the sides shimmered, and a single spotlight mounted on the undercarriage shone its blinding beam onto Jack and then on Lisa and her unconscious father. Lisa shielded her eyes with one free hand; she felt the faint current from the downdraft of the helicopter's blades.

Jack unzipped his corduroy jacket and pulled out a gray colored bag the size of a bread loaf from an inside pocket. Lisa noticed it wasn't transparent like most zip lock bags. She watched as Jack leaned down in the ankle high grass and used the folds of the dark colored bag to pick up the glowing firearm. He juggled it inside the confines of the bag and zipped it close with his thumb and forefinger. He sighed.

"That's it." He said, more to himself than to Lisa.

"What is?" Lisa asked, raising her voice over the noise of the now deafening noise of the overhead helicopter's blades. "What did my dad have? Why does he have it?"

Walking closer to Lisa, he stopped just a few yards short of her and Lieutenant Travers. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, looking like a giant goldfish as he did so. Then he shook his head, thin wisps of his bleached hair swirling around his head. Dust, grit, mud, and wind invaded Lisa's eyes but she still stared in wide expectation at the man in the corduroy jacket. The spotlight didn't help; it shined directly over head, right into her eyes as she looked up at the rugged faced man before her. She urged to him to speak without saying anything. She let her gaze speak for herself. Jack saw it, responding with a trained, steely stare that Lisa guessed he was used to giving many people like her. So many secrets hidden behind those eyes Lisa guessed. So many lies spoken.

"What is it?" Lisa shouted again, her jaw quivering in the harsh wind. She could hear the loud thoom thoom thoom of the intense pounding breeze coming from the helicopter's blades, she felt the power of them ebbing inside her gut. Jack stayed quiet and looked into Lisa's face and shook his head. Then Lisa saw his gaze shift from a noticeable stone faced expression into a pained stare. The change wasn't obvious, but Lisa could see the difference thanks to the spotlight beaming down on them. She could see every line and wrinkle and imperfection on his face turn upside down and inside out. Jack no longer looked calm and collected. His stare made Lisa uncomfortable; his eyes were no longer subtle and soothing. Instead his gaze skewered Lisa like two giant mining drills burrowing into a mountain side.

"I was afraid of this." Jack said. Lisa could barely hear his soft, plain voice. "I'm sorry that you'll never know. I don't either. You seemed like such a good girl, considering all that you've done for your father tonight." Then Lisa watched as Jack closed his eyes.

In that instant after Jack's words were out of his mouth, the spotlight that had been shining so bright upon the three of them disappeared, whisked away in another direction, as if someone operating the beam up in the helicopter had just fumbled with the handles of the search light. Lisa's brain had only a split second to calculate and recognize that she was in imminent danger, so in that second the light switched away across the graveyard, Lisa leapt out from her kneeling position underneath her father and backwards into the wet grass, away from Jack. And just as her back hit the ground, she felt the air rip open once again all around her. She heard the ear splitting roar and the explosive light that was there one second and gone the next. Lisa thought she was dead, but the cold embrace of water soaking the back of her shirt let her know that she was still alive.

She now realized why Jack had closed his eyes.

He knew the beam of light would be taken off him, leaving a second or two of time that would force his eyes to adjust from the sudden change from light to dark. Jack had intended to skip that part and open his eyes after the beam was gone and shoot Lisa. But Lisa had been a quarter of second ahead of him. Lisa had seen his eyes. And now she was recovering from the melding heat from the gun's blast radius. The overhead spotlight faked a searching path through the graveyard's path, making it seem as if if had lost sight of the three people on the ground. But Lisa knew that was not the case. Lisa and her father were never going to be saved. Jack had other intentions.

"Lisa?"

His silky voice now felt sinister and cold in Lisa's ringing ears. She guessed he hadn't suffered much from the blast of the gun, and that she was feeling the worst of it. Her insides felt like gelatin, swashing around from every movement she made in her effort to stand.

She cried out to the darkness. "Why are you doing this? Who are you?"

"Which one do you want me to answer, because I can only answer one." Jack's voice grew louder as Lisa regained her hearing. "You won't be around to hear the rest."

"Why?" Lisa shouted, blinking hard, willing her eyesight to adjust to the darkness. She couldn't know if Jack was just standing there, as temporarily blind as she was; or whether he was relishing the moment as he stood there holding the weapon in his hand. Considering that she was still there gave Lisa hope.

"Your father came home with an unsanctioned firearm. Experimental, and from the enemy, nonetheless." Jack said, and Lisa thought she heard a high pitched whining at the edge of her hearing. He continued, as Lisa staggered and made a show that she was weaker than she actually felt. "Unknown weapon, sudden violent seizures after coming home, and a domestic incident all in 24 hours. Calls for a little cleaning, doesn't it?"

"What is that thing?" Lisa said, her voice cracking from the stress mounting in her voice. Jack looked down at it, an imperceptible glow from the side rails of the pistol lighted the underside of his face with a dark blue sheen.

He shrugged. "I have no idea. Not a clue. But I do know it's based off of very dangerous and highly illegal quantum ray particle theory, and somewhere in some foreign North Korean ledger has money that can trace this back to homeland banks. But of course, there's no reason to trace anything back if there's nothing to begin with, right? Reason enough to kill you?"

Lisa shook her head, gesticulating in wild gestures with both of her hands.

"But-but why are you doing this? Why?"

Jack coughed, sniffing. "I've said enough, not that it matters to you anyway; you won't be around long enough to process much. I'm sure you've seen enough TV to fill in the blanks."

Lisa advanced slowly, testing the waters.

"Don't."

Jack's voice stopped her dead still, and inside Lisa's mind she cursed to herself. "You're perfectly fine right where you are. It'll save me the trouble of having to fire two rounds instead of one."

Too late, Lisa's eyes sight returned. It was still dark, the spotlight now tens of yards away, still acting lost and befuddled. She could see only the slightest hints of Jack's face and was surprised to see a regular deadpan expression.

No wicked smile.

No overdramatic smirk.

Just thin lips and a determined brow carved into Jack's face. She could see into his eyes and saw there would be no negotiating. He had done this before. Many times.

"That's right," Jack said. Even though Lisa wasn't looking at his hands, she could see in Jack's eyes his finger pulling the trigger. The air was ripped open for the third time that night, but it was different. The blast echoed through the graves of the dead, rattling every bone inside every coffin in the graveyard. But there was a distinct smell that permeated the air.

It rose into the night sky.

It was the smell of singed hair and burnt flesh.