~چشم ها~

She heard groaning. Groaning that cut through the walls and echoed across the dark hallways of the house. Their father was groaning. Then Lisa and Erik heard the gunshot.

It was as if God himself had clapped his hands in their father's study. Lisa's head jerked backwards; her mind filled with a split second of denial shaded by confusion, the rest of the second by absolute terror. She felt her stomach wall ripple and stumbled at the power of the sound.

It sounded like the roof of the house had been blown down by a grenade.
Erik cursed just as loud as the gunshot and jumped straight out of the leather folds of the couch, the crushing force no longer holding him in chair but now herding him towards his father's study. Erik was a man possessed, scrambling across the floor on both hands, his two stumps for legs trailing behind him. Breaking out of her frozen state of shock, Lisa coughed, almost choking on the fear building in her throat, and ran after Erik.

Lisa screamed, "Dad! Dad?"

To her surprised, her demented brother on crawling on the floor got to the double doors of their father's study before her. He was already pounding on the mahogany stained wood with both hands, putting his ear to the door in between each slam of his closed fist.

"Dad! Are you in there? Can you hear me?" Erik shouted, his temple smooshing against the wood, his eyes wide in shaking fear.

"I thought you kept the damned gun!" Lisa shouted, bolstering her shoulder against the door, right above the handle. It didn't budge.

"I did!" Erik shouted back, his voice reaching a tremulous peak as high as his sister's. "I kept it in the safe just last night, and I even changed the code! I don't know what he's got in there, but I do know I did keep the gun!" Both of his hands were planted on the ground, his fingers tearing up the carpet. His eyes were frantic, and filled with fear, but Lisa could see that there was no doubt in his gaze. "I know I did!"

Lisa's head swam as she twisted her gaze back and forth around the foyer, looking for any object that she could use as a means to break down the door. Finding nothing worth using, she rushed back to the kitchen, slipping on the tiles and hardwood floor as she raced to the breakfast bar and the row of four barstools underneath it. She picked up on stool, sprinted back through the hallway and almost tripped over a hysterical Erik who was calling out to dad. Her brother's mouth was up against the spot where the door met the frame, hoping his voice would carry through the infinitesimal crack and into the study.

"GET OUT OF THE WAY, ERIK!" Lisa screamed, stepping back in three large strides, and lunged forward with all her might, the bar stool's three pronged legs facing the face of the door. The impact rattled up her hands and her bones and the sound was as deafening as the gunshot. But the door held.

Erik scrambled out of Lisa's trajectory as his sister dive-bombed the door again with the stool, this time causing a crack to appear in the solid door.

Erik shouted, "Hit it again!" just as Lisa was backing up for a third swing. She gritted her teeth and ran headlong into the door, she felt the crash travel up her arms and come to a blow at the base of her neck. Her ears were ringing. She could hear Erik shouting. Then Lisa heard the clattering of glass shards smashing onto cement. She knew instantly it was the sound of their father's study window. It had been broken. But by who? Was it a passerby, hearing the commotion and coming to help? Or was it their father, escaping? Lisa frowned, why would their father escape? And if there was any reason for him to smash the window to his own study, why was their a gunshot? And how could there have been a gunshot? Erik had said he had kept the gun himself, in the safe to which he had changed the passcode.

Lisa looked down at the singular hole that had been punched through the door by one of the legs from the barstool. The new hole in the door made by Lisa was square with curved edges. Strands of fiber and other fabrics could be seen filtering out of the hole from the door, but Lisa could see well enough into the room. The door faced the study shot gun style, entrance on one end of the room, open space, two high backed chairs, the desk, the desk behind the chair, and then the study's window. The room was cast in an eery glow from what Lisa suspected was one of the floor lamps that had been knocked over and was now laying on the floor out of her line of sight.

Her dad was nowhere to be seen.

All Lisa could see was the study window, jagged broken glass curving and spiraling and jutting away from the originating point of impact at the base of the glass. Residue of black soot coated the edges of where the window was broken, like blood soaking into the glass. An acrid smell of something being burnt lingered in the air, making Lisa cough. 

She could not see her father anywhere in the room.

After Lisa and Erik had torn down the study room's door, ten minutes had gone by. Searching the study and finding it empty, they could only surmise that their father had either escaped or been abducted by aliens. Lisa and Erik were in favor of the former theory.

"Where did he go, and why? And-and how did he get a gun?" Erik rubbed his hair as he sat in his father's desk chair, facing the broken window. They inspected the outside of the house underneath the study window and found glass covering the cement patio, confirming their doubts about their father making a break for it.

But for what? From what?

"Why did he run?" Lisa said, careful not to step on the glass shards that had been skittered onto the lawn by their father's footsteps as a trail of glass indicated a vague direction of his path out onto the lawn.

"Uh, how did he have a gun?" Erik asked, now sitting in a wheelchair. He was a few yards behind his sister who was looking at the glass alongside the house. "We still haven't answered that question, you know."

Lisa waved her hand, her eyes glued on the scene. "That doesn't matter now. What matters is where he went, we need to answer that question. We need to find him before he... he does something drastic."

Erik sighed. He fidgeted in his seat. He had been doing that for the past seven minutes. "I'll call city watch, and Donelly. He'll want to hear about this, too."

Lisa whirled around, her face pale. "If you do that, you know you're asking for them to kill dad. They'll do it, you know that Erik. If they see him with that gun they'll kill him!"

"They won't if he'll give himself to them, Lisa," Erik said, his jaw set in a determined square. "That's why we need to know how he has a gun. If worse comes to worst, then maybe we can salvage something from this accident."

Lisa flinched back as if Erik had slapped her in the face. "What? Why are you more worried about what happens to us than about dad? This is dad we're talking about!"

"He wasn't even supposed to have had that gun last night, Lisa, and you know that!" Erik was fuming, he pressed himself as high as he could go in his wheelchair seat and glared up at her sister with an even gaze. "This is why we have regulations in place, to prevent stuff like this from happening. If dad had only followed the regulations, we wouldn't be doing this. If dad-"

"If dad hadn't come home, you would've been fine with it!" Lisa shouted, her hands clenched at her sides. She stepped forward, her eyes burning in their sockets. "The regulations can burn in hell for all I care! This is dad we're talking about! You know where he stands on subjects likes this, and he firmly believes in what he says, unlike you!" Lisa's index finger jabbed mere inches away from her brother's nose. He glared through her finger and into her accusatory gaze.

"All you care about is yourself! It's all about you! Ever since you lost your legs, the whole world just had to carry you, didn't it!"

It was Erik's turn to flinch.

Lisa's lower lip trembled as she spat, "Didn't it!"

For a long second, Erik just stared at Lisa. He blinked hard at first, as if a bright light had suddenly been shown in his face and he winced away from the heat. Lisa watched her brother scowl, and begin to shake his head. He dropped his gaze and turned his wheelchair to the front door.

"I need to make a call."

"Erik."

"Lisa..." Erik said. His voice was even and low, no hint of harshness or firmness. He said her name like it was some kind of statement of fact, as if he were naming one of the chemicals in the periodic table. A simple statement.

But his eyes were filled with a dead set determination that Lisa had only seen once. A gaze so filled with anger; anger that was the offspring of fear, of fear that could only be harbored by years of regret and suppressed feelings of hate. She had been there when his eyes burned with such ferocity. That morning when Erik had woken up without legs. When Erik had discovered he was only half a man. When he had killed Lisa with his stare.

"I'm going to make that call, Lisa." Erik began, his voice just as soft when he had stated her name. "And if you stop me, I will announce you as a hindrance to the law."

Then his gaze took on a different sheen. Not a different tone, but a slight change in atmosphere in his baby blue eyes.

"This is what I have to do. For us. For the family." Erik said. "For dad."