Twenty Two
Hunting
The alley had a wet sheen.
Hadn’t been raining.
Motor oil maybe?
Jefferson Tanta inched toward the dumpster, a third fear, the fear of slipping, in his head now.
He never wanted a basement apartment.
He thought he could afford a nicer part of the city.
He had never shot a gun, shouldn’t even own one but his cousin insisted.
His first fear was that someone would see him with the gun and shoot him first.
His second fear was that he would get in trouble. You can’t just randomly discharge a gun in the city limits, right?
Now he was fearing slipping and falling and soiling the nice winter coat Grandma Gylar had sent him for Christmas a month early.
Jefferson Tanta had once wanted to make faux business cards that simply said “Jefferson W. Tanta Insomniac”
He felt like that might explain his sometimes erratic behavior.
Right now, he didn’t feel like standing in an alley with a .22 he’d never shot was erratic.
After two weeks of long shadows being cast through his basement window, scurrying, scratching, and a sound he thought might be gnawing on plaster, Jefferson Tanta promised himself he would shoot a rat.
He knew that one dead rat would not eradicate the rat issue.
But in his mind, his often erratic mind, his sleep deprived and dissatisfied mind, he would then have power over all rats.
He hadn’t seen a single rat or dropping in his apartment. But the shadows they cast from the light of the gas station sign obliterated his dental floss thin chance to sleep.
One rat.
That’s all he needed.
He wasn’t sure if he’d been standing in the alley for eight minutes or eighteen when a rat paused at the edge of the dumpster, facing out, lengthwise.
Jefferson Tanta raised the gun to his face to aim, like many amateurs do at first, trying to get what they think is a proper sight.
He slipped his finger on the trigger.This he did flawlessly but quite by accident.
One rat, then he would run back into his apartment and sleep.
Conquer one rat, conquer them all.
He could explain to any frightened neighbor that he was simply trying to—
Lights lit the alley like an explosion, a silent but brutally white explosion, a joyless, colorless firework.
Jefferson Tanta let go of the gun with his trigger hand. It dangled awkwardly, barrel up, hanging from his weaker left.
“I’m just shooting rats!” He yelled, voice breaking so that he sounded like a poorly tuned radio.
“Rats got more of a right to be in this neighborhood than you do.”
The voice was deep, came from above his head, and didn’t suffer from any fear.
“I just—“ Jefferson started, his voice thin, panicky.
“Just go back in your place. We don’t need gunfire in this alley late at night.”
Jefferson looked around for the origin of the voice.
He saw no one.
The floodlights went back off.
“I just have to shoot one rat so I can sleep,” Jefferson said.
“I’ve felt that way before,” the voice said “but the rat was metaphorical.”
“Just one,” Jefferson said, asked, he wasn’t sure which. He grabbed the gun with both hands again.
“Go to bed,” the voice said.
“That’s the problem, I can’t. I need to shoot a rat because—“
“Go back in 9G and go to bed, fella. Alright?”
Jefferson twisted looking toward every window he could, the two parked cars in the slots nearest the street, behind the dumpster where no one could have fit.
“Who are you? How do you know where I live?”
Bo Effran didn’t want to be rude and tell the newest neighbor why he stood out, why it was easy to know which apartment he lived in.
The answer to who he was should have been easy: The building superintendent is the only one with the key to the exterior lights.
“Who are you?” Jefferson Tanta asked again. “Who are you to tell me to go to bed?”
Bo Effran looked down from his second floor apartment, directly above Jefferson’s head.
“I’m you,” Bo said, and had no idea how terribly cruel that was.
***
Eerie. Good read.
We…both know what he was…looking for…