The sky was fighting itself. In the heavens above Oakland Airport, the white puffs and slivers reflected the last bits of light that was disappearing fast past the horizon. If I had been paying close attention to what lay above me, I would've seen my life similarly portrayed up there, with the clouds. The dark storm front threatened to block out and completely douse the last remnants of unadulterated white marshmallows, and soon, the world would be plunged into a three day torrent of crying rain and screaming wind.

But the only thing that was screaming at that moment was my bladder, and I had to hightail it to the bathroom as soon as I could. God in Heaven, who knew tagging bags and airport security, could take so darn long? Once we had gotten everything accounted for, checked that we were in fact leaving that day, and that our plane was fifteen minutes incoming, I saw that as my opportunity to take a good and lengthy piss and crap.

My uncle had been wary, and even indignant at first of the news that I had relayed to him from the Guy, but after a day of consideration and a few hours of making phone calls good ol' uncle Bernie reconsidered the offer to get the heck out of town. Me and my uncle's situation reminded me like one of those old TV westerns, in where the good guy would shout at the defeated antagonist to "Get the hell out of dodge."

I didn't really know what the word 'dodge' referred to, but at that time my mind was too focused on the flood gates to the dam down in my crotch. I managed to get into the bathroom without having to release the flow prematurely, but I couldn't say that I would want to be the janitor who would clean up after me.

So there I stood in the urinal, a full minute and thirty seconds of pure relief. I didn't tense up for the next ten seconds while washing my hands until I saw him walk through the door. It wasn't the Guy, he had told me that he would be covering our backs once we were in the airport, but he couldn't go in. No, it was someone else.

Someone I knew. But he didn't recognize me, as I washed my hands in the sink. I looked at his rock cliff eyebrows, his roughly chiseled chin, and his pooched out lips. He had been a head taller than me the last time I had saw him, but now he and I were about the same height. We made eye contact, but his gaze didn't show any flicker of remembrance. But I remembered him.

He was my grandfather's bodyguard.

I finished up washing and got the heck out of there. I didn't want to spend any second longer than I had to with the bodyguard of my dead grandfather. Whoever he was working for now was probably here to take out my uncle.

Bernie.

I walked quickly, with purpose, over to where my uncle sat. He was snoring. I flopped down onto the seat opposite from him and looked around. No one suspicious was around. At least, no one in long black trench coat, or a group of men in matching suits were visible. Only about fifty people were in the airport that night, and if I had to choose one of them to be the would-be hit man for my uncle Bernie, I would never be able to choose, because they all looked as normal and regular as everyone else. In my mind, I was thinking of all the possible places Uncle Bernie could be taken out, and I had a hunch that he was thinking about that too.

Even though his snoring was steady, I could see that underneath the bridge of his crumpled Jet's hat that his dark green irises were scanning back and forth in his small head. My uncle sure was the best faker I ever knew. You could consider him a con-man, if he were a few years younger. And even though he had admitted to me that those days of his were long past, I still had the sneaking suspicion that he was still pulling a few old stinking sheep skins over some people's heads. Maybe that's how he ended up on the list. Maybe he had pissed off the wrong guy, and that pissed off the guy he knew where in turn it became a long chain of pissed off people who just wanted my uncle dead.

Either way, there was some pissed off gentlemen who wanted Bernie's head. Tonight

Or maybe, I thought in my muddled mind, that we had actually managed to make a clean getaway. Sure, we weren't on the plane yet, but we were set for departure in about five minutes. And anyways, if the Guy had our backs-and I knew he would-he would've gotten rid of any tails before we had gotten to the airport. Maybe we didn't have anything to worry about.

"Don't kid yourself, ya idiot."

Yes, my uncle did talk like a stereotypical Italian. But he was much more than that. He was a sophisticated, often than most pissed off, Italian. And he was my uncle, who had a large red and white target on his head.

The target budged slightly when he lifted his head, pretending to come out of his 'deep slumber'. He gave me the 'you're-such-and-idiot' look that I had started to take for granted when I moved out of his house when I was eighteen. He had refined that look for the past year I was gone. Maybe he had practiced in the mirror.

"Don't act like we got away with it, kid," Uncle added.

Why did everyone insist on calling me kid in this town?

"But I don't see-" I began, but even the voice of reason inside me told me off way before my uncle's voice of harshness did.

"I knew I should've sent you off to college," Bernie said, his eyes still bouncing around from person to person that walked, talked, or sat behind me. "If I had, you would've actually gotten smarter, not that you were ever smart to begin with."

I ignored most of his slamming. It was like a wall of denial that I put up whenever certain words got out of my uncle's beer ridden, junk food infested mouth. But some snarky comments still got through, far enough to jab me in the sensitive sections of my soul.

But now was not the time for bickering amongst relatives. We could always do that on the plane.

"Look, Bernie," I began. Bernie raised his eyebrows, but the effect lost all meaning because his furry white caterpillars were hidden behind the bill of his baseball cap.

"Bernie?"

"Uncle Bernie," I added quickly, leaning forward. My gaze flitted back and forth from my uncle to the people that walked by us. "I don't care what you say to me anymore, so you could stop the wannabe disappointed dad act, okay?"

"'Disappointed dad act'?" Bernie scoffed, and I knew we were in for a major disagreement that would turn into a quarrel. He leaned forward too, imitating my position.

"Listen, kid,"

There it was again.

Bernie went on, knowing he had struck a large annoyed chord in me. "Believe it or not, I was very good in this business before your old man, raising kids and what not. I'm not putting on any act, so don't try to justify your spite by laying it down on me."

My uncle's hands gestured wildly in the air. Bernie was quite the hand talker, if I ever knew one.

"And having to deal with triplets isn't any easy life, especially when they're boys."

Bernie threw out a few curse words now and then, but I had gotten so used to his useless swearing, I had grown a filter in between my ears and my brain. It was so effective, in fact, that now I don't even notice any swear words. It just sort of flies over my head and I don't recognize it. And now that my uncle was cursing his sweet butt off, I just looked at his lips moving and his tongue waggling, but he didn't say anything.

His mouth was just... moving.

"You got that? Kid?" Bernie's face was red as a French tomato.

Whoops. Filtered too much.

"Look... uncle." I said, careful not to nudge the anthill again. "Let's just try to stay alive and-"

"Let's stay alive?!" I could hear the sound of blood vessels bursting from Bernie's vein that popped from his right temple.

It was either Bernie loved to argue (which he did) or he loved good, wholesome discussion (which he did not), but either way, that flare up of anger caused one of two good things to happen. At that moment I had had it with my uncle's short temper, and I decided to look away.

That was Good Thing Number 1.

Good Thing Number 2 was in that movement of my head, I was able to spot the two men approaching directly for me and my uncle. They weren't travelling in a straight line, but I could see the walk of Death and Destruction when I saw it.

They walked with a malevolent purpose.

I could see it in their eyes, their watchful gaze, and their precise movements of their heads. I could tell they were searching, and not heading to baggage claim. They were searching for us.

Pretty soon Good Thing Number 3 followed soon after 2 and 1. Uncle Bernie shut up. I turned away from the two quickly approaching men and saw my uncle's eyes were wide as they looked over my shoulder. I don't know what demonic spirit enveloped me, but I gave my uncle a smirk and a wink, saying,

"They're after you, not me."

I could see the confusion in his eyes for a millisecond, but he assembled his thoughts and stared at me in shock. I stood, watched him, adding a small, "Goodbye, uncle" and picked up my small carry-on. It weighed no more than twenty pounds, but it was able to knock down the first guy heading towards us, sending him reeling. At first I thought I had made the most stupidest, idiotic thing in my life.

What if that guy was actually just walking around, minding his own business? It wasn't a crime to be looking malevolent, or 'walk with purpose'. What if I had hit the wrong person and wind up ending in serious lawsuit?

But I only thought this for about two half-life's of a second, because the second guy reached into his breast pocket, underneath his suit coat and I knew that I had made the right choice.

I turned to my uncle, who was somehow still sitting there.

"Bernie!" I began. He tried to correct me, but I shouted his name again. "Bernie, it's time you got lost!"

Bernie did exactly that, running faster than a man possessed.

My mind raced as I watched the second guy pull out not a gun, but a really large knife. I recognized it as a Bowie, exactly twelve inches long and a savage curve on the edge that practically screamed, "Come to papa!"

I wanted to scream back, but not in such a menacing or terrifying tone. A lame squeak slipped out of my cheeks and I looked down at the sit next to me. Lying there was a sports magazine, and there sat my salvation. I channeled all of the inner Bourne in me and snatched it up, rolled it tight into a tube and, unceremoniously stepping over my carry-on luggage, struck the guy on the ground as hard as I could with the end of the rolled up tube. While Thug Number 1 was vainly chasing after my Olympic sprinting uncle, Thug Number 2 was reeling from my first attack.

But being the professionally trained Oakland hitman he was, he recovered quickly. Thug Number 2 reinserted his hand into his chest pocket and pulled out a derringer pistol, small enough to fit into the side of a boot. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had two more down his underpants. But I didn't have the leisure of imagining that disturbing image as I jumped onto the hitman and continued whacking the senseless crap out of him.

It wasn't until my impromptu weapon crumpled after the eighteenth stab that I realized I might go to jail for excessive force for hitting a guy with a rolled up magazine. The guy's face was already ugly enough as it was, and the already forming bruises and lacerations on his face didn't improve his complexion. My mind swirled like chocolate syrup down a drain once I stood up, and my stomach was doing the queasy dance again. Below at my feet, I heard the hitman groan loudly, blinking several times. I could hear him swearing.

"Sorry, dude." I quipped, already heading in the direction of my uncle. "I gotta go make sure that my uncle doesn't beat the crap outta your fella."

The disabled hitman was already getting up, but I wasn't there to exchange words. I hurtled past women strolling their children and men talking erratically into their phones. I bumped into and old man coming out of the bathroom when I saw it.

My uncle's green baseball cap.

I picked it up. My heart was jumping out of my chest when my fingers grazed the bill. My heart more than doing cardio exercises, it was training for a marathon. There was no time for me to waste. I pivoted on my heel, wheeling around back to the bathroom, just in time to elbow Sheppard Dell in the chest. We both yelped out each other's name; our instant surprise overlapping each other in a garbled word.

"Mary, Martha, and Joseph, Ant!" Sheep interjected, rubbing her chest. "You almost killed me!"

Even though her face was scrunched in a pained look, I could also see the pain in her eyes. Pain that hadn't come from me hitting her. A different kind of pain. Her eyes were no longer

"Anthony."

God have mercy, I had never heard Sheep use my name with the eyes she had at that moment. Her striking green flaked eyes were dull, no longer retaining that brilliant spark that I always had seen whenever we met. Her expression looked like hell frozen over, and if a spark touched it, it might flame up again. I could only brush the side of her elbow and say,

"I gotta go."

I felt Sheep's hand cinch onto my elbow.

"I swear if you go, I'll kill you."

Staring into her eyes at that moment, I could tell she wasn't lying. She wanted to say something. I could see her red lips twitching, her eyes squinting, but nothing came out of her mouth. Nothing in me wanted her to not talk, but my uncle was either dying or even dead in the bathroom directly behind me, so I had to cut loose.

"Sheep, I gotta-"

Sheep's eyes became fiery gems in their sockets, solidifying with every word that exited her mouth.

"Ant, I've been looking all over for you. I know you were recuperating from your gunshot wound, but you had your time to heal. And all this time you've been avoiding us-avoiding me-"

"Sheep." I stressed her name as hard as I could. I even tried giving her the urgent I'm-trying-to-help-my-uncle-from-getting-the-death-inducing-swirly. "I need to go."

"Whatever you're going to do can wait."

Nothing seemed to get into this woman's thick skull. Not even a simple cough. I looked all around, hoping to God that the mercenary I had gotten away from would have had the decency to take a break on the floor, right where I had left him. No, the a-hole was rushing this way. Of course. Why wouldn't he run in the other direction? I sighed. It was only a matter of seconds until he would spot me chatting up the day with Sheep and we both would be joining my uncle. Whether he was dead or not was still the question stirring in my mind.

"We need to talk, Ant." Sheep was still talking.

"You're darn right." I replied, yanking her directly into the Men's airport bathroom. Sheep saw my other hand covering her mouth; her face was that of astonishment.

"What the fu-"

Before she could finish her sentence, I slapped a hand over Sheep's mouth, her words echoing across the bathroom's walls. She tried clawed against my grip, trying to pull my hand away from her jaw, but I held it there with all my might. If Sheep so much as whispered at that moment we would've died. But I kept my arm firm like an iron gauntlet against my poor friend's mouth until I saw him. The hitman, dressed in an all suspicious black suit. It wasn't exactly hot outside, but he would've fit very well at the National Hitman Convention. I crept farther away from the gleaning eyes of the enemy and closer into the bathroom. A walnut seemed to lodge itself into my throat, managing to interfere with my bobbing Adam's apple. I could sense Sheep's eyes on me, but I didn't say a word. I just held up a single finger to my lips and slowly loosened my grip.

I glared at Sheep, giving her a wary gaze. To my surprise, she didn't scream. I let out a puff of air out of my nose in relief. She didn't make a single noise. She wasn't even looking at me. She was looking at something-someone behind me. I heard the noise before I fully turned around. A scuffing of shoes against bathroom tiles. I was still turning around, and my eyes hadn't even left Sheep's wild stare. As time began slowing down to milliseconds, at the back of my mind, I knew I was dead. I wasn't dead yet, of course, but once I would turn around, the last sound I would hear would possibly be a silenced pistol or the image of a knife lunging towards me. And if I was dead, that that meant Sheep was also dead. Pretty soon, the milliseconds were over.

I turned around and faced. . . my uncle.

His face was pale, his eyebrows knit together in pain, and his brown tufts of hair smothering every angle on his receding hairline. He was also clutching a syringe in his closed fist. I couldn't find words to explain my surprise as I rushed over to my uncle, grabbing him before he planted his head into the floor. Sheep was right behind me, taking the syringe from his hands. We both had a good moment to stare at Bernie's wild flickering eyes.

"Is anyone gonna help me here?" My uncle stammered, putting a hand on my shoulder for balance. "I was only just attacked by a guy, you know..."

"By who-where?" I heard myself respond. I was surprised that my voice was working at all. "What happened?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Bernie gave me a stupefied look. "I almost got frickin' killed!"

Sheep handed me the syringe. I almost poked myself with the needle, the way that I handled it. I noticed the syringe was empty, all of its contents ejected. Without giving a second glance, Sheep opened the stall door where my uncle had walked out from. Since I was holding my uncle and preventing him from kissing the bathroom floor, I couldn't get a real good look from the angle I was at. I looked up at Sheep. She was looking into bathroom, eyes wide, and a trembling hand over her mouth.

"Sheep? What is it?" I asked from my crouched position. Sheep just stared at me, like I was someone else. I let my uncle lie against the side of the adjacent bathroom stalls and headed over to where Sheep stood. Her face had gone completely pale under the fluorescent light, and her hand was clamped firm against her mouth. I could see a tear escape the corner of one eye. I followed the direction of her stricken gaze into the bathroom stall.

"Lord have mercy on us."

Inside the stall lay a man's body. He looked identical to the one that was still outside; all dressed in a black suit, except he was missing his glasses. He was perched over the toilet, his neck directly above the bowl. Vast amounts of blood seeped out of the gash on the side of the man's neck, the gore seeping down the sides of the toilet in crimson streams.

Sheep began gagging beside me, her hand still clamped over her mouth in a desperate attempt to conceal a scream. I could hear her muffled cries and distorted whimpering as I tried herding her away from the sight of the dead hitman. I turned my head, slowly, towards my uncle. Sheep's eyes were beginning to glaze over, he gaze still riveted at the open stall, and the man that lay within. Cold. Dead. Perched over the ceramic bowl. His eyes staring back at Sheep.

"What happened?" Although the words came out easy enough, it sounded redundant to me; the words had already bounced around in my mind thousands of times before I even spoke. I repeated my question, this time with an unwanted trembling to my voice. I cleared it away as I waited for my uncle to answer. His eyes wandered over to Sheep, to the stall, then back to me. His voice was smooth and unnatural as his words came out in a low whisper.

"Don't matter. We're gonna miss our flight."

He started to turn around, gripping his left arm with trembling fingers. Oh, no, I thought, holding up Bernie with my left hand.

"Did he... did he stick you, Bernie?" I said, my words landing hard at the back of my teeth. My uncle's eyebrows came down in shattering crash over his two beady brown eyes.

"He didn't even get close. Even after I plunged the needle into his flesh, he was still writhing like a dying fish. He pulled out a knife and I-" His eyes flicked over to Sheep, who was slouching against the bathroom wall opposite of the stall where the dead man was, her eyes set rigid in a hollow gaze. Both hands now covered her mouth, and I could see the ever so slight shimmer of a tear trickled down the side of her face. Bernie leaned in close.

"I had to stick him before he stuck me, ya know?"

Looking at my uncle, his expression was emotionless. I shook my head vigorously.

My words tumbled out fast; I couldn't hold it back anymore. "No, Bernie, you didn't just 'stick' him, you slit his throat!"

I heard Sheep let out a muffled cry. I looked back at her, not knowing what to do. Here I was, with a murderous uncle and a shocked female companion. Not to mention that the pal of the dead guy over toilet might just walk in at any moment to catch all three of us, ripe and ready to kill in a very convenient, secluded place. Or just some random person just might enter the bathroom right now, and we all would have very hard questions to answer.

"Okay, let's go." I realized after three seconds that I had just said that to myself as I looked from my uncle to Sheep, and back again. None of them responded. Someone had to be in their right mind, I thought. Pursing my lips, I clapped as hard as I could, and repeated my direction, this time taking each of them by the elbows.

"I said let's go! The plane's not going to waitfor us!"