Nolie.

Nolie had gone numb. She'd gone numb sometime in the car, with Eva shaking on her shoulder. Nolie'd gone numb when she heard the gunfire from far away. She'd watched, silent, as Adam and Eva argued and Carlos fought (losing) some patriarchal figure. It was easier, shutting herself down and becoming a puppet, her strings looped in her friends' fingers. It was easier to carve herself away in order to survive. Go with it, follow, keep the peace. Calm down. Just listen to him. Everything passive, because she couldn't afford to think for herself. It wasn't worth her life. But she couldn't, anymore.

Not after Adam shot the gun. Not after Eva cussed and ran toward the man he'd shot, when the people morphed around the fight that had spilled out in front of them. Nolie had spun around toward Adam. He was shaking. He was always shaking. The gun trembled in his hands, still pointed at the man bleeding out and Carlos's snarling. He'd never set it down.

"Adam," she said. "Give that to me. You need to run away."

He shook his head. And she couldn't take it anymore. Being without acting, letting the hell unfurl around her. Like she was standing in a meadow doused in kerosene and her friends were taking turns lighting matches, tempting their demise. She threw herself on him, and letting out a sound of shock, his little growl, Adam fell softly into the grass. He let go of the gun, and she saw how instinctive it was. Saw it in the way his eyes widened when he looked at it lying in the grass, like it was a poisonous thing he'd somehow let himself hold. She grabbed it, let its deadly weight settle in her hands. "RUN! OR I SWEAR TO CHRIST—" 

Nolie swung the gun toward him.

 Unless you were Carlos, that was the only way to make him do anything. You had to threaten him, coerce him.  What a mule. And what a piece of shit for making her do that to him.

The gun felt awkward, the big theatricality of her shouted words adding to it strangness all. She saw heads swivel toward her. Fifty or so people must've turned to look at her, and the house they came from put a pit in her stomach. It looked too small, too prim, to have fit the rustling crowd of people standing in shock all around them. Adam eyed the gun, eyed the people, and with an angry spit, he ran. Ran faster than she had ever seen a man move before, and for a second, she was transfixed by his lithe body, so apparent as it flowed through the empty pastures. He was running toward a little brown house in the distance and the nearby little copse of trees.

Shakily, she aimed a little above his shoulder, and shot. BANG. The recoil of the little gun rippled through her, the sound brought stabbing needles to her ears. She felt like someone had filled her head with pure sound; she was ringing.

"He's gone," she said, though she wasn't sure if anyone was listening. But she knew they were watching, even if only a few shifty eyes. Carlos's brother had pulled Carlos off the man Adam had shot, and there was so much blood. Spurting out of the man's calf. Bubbling from Carlos's nose. It was all over Carlos's face, all the way down his throat and chest. His gasping breaths came out of him in angry, bloody bubbles. Eva was already wrapping the man's bleeding leg in her light tee shirt. prudish, elegant friend, down to jeans and a bra in the blazing sun. Nolie watched it, shaking, trying to bargain with God. Please, I'll be such a good person, let this be a dream, let this be a dream...

Carlos coughed and blood dribbled out of his mouth. "Let's go inside."

"We need to call the police! We need to get him medical care!" someone in the crowd shouted. 

Nolie squeezed the gun, aware of all the frantic eyes trained on it, on her. She brought it down to her side, still squeezing it tight tight tight in her fists. Her fingers, a blistery white. Breath burning in her chest. Everything was different. Solar flares. Interrupted satellites, that's what she had heard. "Phone's won't work," she said, and all those eyes looking at her narrowed. She squeezed hers shut, her heart burning hot in her chest.

"Let's go inside," Carlos said, louder this time. He was still bleeding, horribly bleeding. "Eva, you don't need to do that. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Mutters flitted through the crowd. Carlos fixed the people in his steely gaze. "Let's go. Leonard?"
The big man with Carlos's big blue eyes raised an eyebrow, looking helplessly down at the man bleeding. "Help me," Eva hissed. "I need water, aspirin. Go get it!"

Leo ducked into the house.

"I had a vision," Carlos said. A lie through his grit teeth. "I knew I needed to come back to help." He wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve, and it was still horrific. The calm, helpful words from the blood-splattered, broken face. "I need you to show me how to do that."

A chorus of voices broke out, shouts and whispers. "Killer!" someone said.

"A sign?" said another.

"Of course it's the devil child!"

"He's come to help."

And slowly, slowly, groups began the crawl up the stairs, onto the porch. They congealed at the door like a human clot closing that black, gaping wound of an entrance. And as Carlos drifted inside, shouting, "Nolie! Eva! Come in!" Eva never looked up from that gun wound. The man had been hissing in agony, and now he lay there, limp in front of her. Nolie looked at her, at the man, at the group starting to form around her, and Nolie trailed up to Eva with the gun still trembling in her fist. 

"What can I do to help?"

"Nothing, nothing." Eva's slender shoulders quaked as she held down on the wound. She pushed and she pushed and Nolie rested her own shaking hand on her friend's shoulder, anything to give her any comfort. The nurse in training gripped her blood sopped shirt and her breath came in heavy, heaving gasps. The people eyed her, suspicious. Whispered, spoke histories of the old dying man. Some prayed. Some pounded fruitlessly at their phones. Some leaned over Eva and inspected the wound for her. They whispered.

"Bless his heart," a woman said, but she was choking on the very words. Looking away. Shaking her head. Murmuring.

"The-the boy did the Lord's work. Someone had to do it," a man offered with a shrug before disappearing into the house. The mutterings from the crowd became uncomfortable after that. And she realized, with a thud in her chest, that maybe no one minded. That he was dying. That maybe Adam had never needed to run. She squeezed Eva's shoulders as the man's breathing became more and more labored, but the bleeding slowed. Slowed. He twitched even.

"Let's get him into a bed," a man with an angel's voice said to Eva. And people swarmed, grabbing limbs, hoisting the dying patriarch up. Eva flinched at the movement, Nolie saw, and she held her friend even tighter. Eva's hands were soaked in blood.

"Eva?" Nolie asked. Eva's breath shuddered against her chest.

"This is hell." She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears shook on her eyelashes, like dew on a trembling leaf. The world was spinning. Nolie ground her teeth, bit her lip. She wanted to ask herself how she got here, but she knew, she knew. Every second, from the moment she sat down in the coffeeshop, would be burned into her.

"Come on, let's go inside."

Eva shook her head. "I want to go home."

"I'm sorry." Nolie swallowed. "I'm sorry I brought you here."

Eva looked at the ground. Nolie grabbed her friend's hand and let blood smear over her palm. Let it drip down her fingertips. "I just want to go home!"

Nolie stood up, pulling Eva with her. Eva slumped, her hands still dripping. She coughed and let her feet drag as Nolie guided her toward the house. And Nolie wasn't the passive one, the one getting dragged like a puppet by her strings. It was Eva. Shivering. Gasping like something dying.

"I'm sorry," Nolie said again.

"No, you're not." Eva turned her head away, a meak show of resistance. "You're not and he's gonna die."

Nolie swallowed hard and brought her friend through the cool, open door, away from the light of the blazing sun and into the dark, coolness of what she could only imagine was the underworld.