Before I start, I'm gonna explain the italics at the start. Someone on a forum I visit asked 'what can you do in one second?' and that was my answer, causing my muse to go into overtime and produce this little gem. It started as one second, then ten, then a New York minute because I love The Eagles & was listening to their song of the same name at the time. The italics at the end are from that song.
Nothing but the italics at the start belongs to me; sadly. However, if anyone would like to grant ownership of... well... any of the cast, to me, you would be forever loved.
With thanks to Becs and Laura for the beta huggles and Laney for the amusement can't you just fatally injure her!
Oh yeah, there's some pretty major character death goin' on around here. Ain't your thing? You know where the back button is.
You can take a breath and sustain life...
or you could pull a trigger and end one.
It only takes one second.
New York MinuteA second is all it takes. To flinch, to duck, to scream. For her suspect to pull the trigger. Another second and the bullet has cut through the air, through the flesh of her shoulder and lodged itself into the bone.
The third second, she takes another laboured breath. Everything's happening in slow motion. Her partner's frantic yells are long, drawn out, his feet move like he's running through water. In the fourth second, the second bullet is fired: from her own gun; and in the fifth, she wonders how the hell she managed it. The sixth second sees the perpetrator wounded, and the seventh sees the third gunshot slicing through the air, missing her by mere inches and shattering the glass of a car window behind her.
Seconds number eight and nine and her brain finally tells her legs to move and in the tenth second, she's running. The eleventh second brings release; a single second free of shouts and gunfire – the only sound she can hear is the blood dripping from her shoulder. In the twelfth second, another blood drop hits the ground, a perfect circle because she's standing still, behind the wall – silent, so silent, but the gunfire rings in her ears as guns are pointed this way and that and the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth – sixteenth - seventeenth seconds see more gunfire; bullets slicing left and flying right, cracking windows and coming to abrupt halts in tree trunks.
Seconds pass – eighteen, nineteen, twenty – twenty one – twenty two, her breathing becomes more laboured and by the twenty third, she finds herself standing in a pool of her own blood. Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. 'All good people go to heaven'. In the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth and thirtieth seconds, she wonders whether all the good she's done in serving her country and bringing justice to victims of brutal crimes is enough to combat her somewhat wayward teenage years.
Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two – more than a little dizzy from blood loss and she's jumping out in an error of judgement, gun poised between fists and a steely glare in her eyes. Thirty three, thirty four – she pulls twice on the trigger: two shots, two bullets, two holes in the wall as her assailant dodges out of the way in a display of athletic skill. Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven – three more shots. One from her partner, one from another officer and one from her assailant's gun; heading straight for her. Before her partner can sail through the air and throw her out of the bullet's path, it's caught her – this time in her stomach.
The thirty eighth second brings her crashing to the ground amid frantic firing of more guns – she can no longer tell who's firing which shots or who's dodging which bullet. Somewhere between the thirty-ninth and fiftieth seconds, she's vaguely aware of him kneeling over her, a pained look on his face. She can't stand to see him like that – it's the same look he wore when the sky fell down in a flurry of orange flames and black smoke, the same look he wore when his wife died. Fifty one seconds after the whole adventure began and he tells her that they've apprehended their suspect, another officer shot him and disarmed him long enough to slap the cuffs on him and inform him that he'll be going down for a very long time.
Fifty-two – she can barely see his face through almost closed eyelids, fifty-three and his voice is beginning to drive her crazy. The fifty fourth second brings with it the peripheral awareness that he's clutching her hand and stroking her hair and by the fifty fifth, she's pretty sure he's begging and pleading with her to hang on in there. Fifty six and fifty seven pass by so quickly she's not even sure they even existed, but by fifty eight there's another face and two more voices, none of which strike her as being familiar. They insist on being able to reach her – she assumes they're paramedics in the fifty ninth second, and with a pain cough she manages to splutter a message to him – he's still clutching her hand and she's almost certain he's crying, she can feel his tears on her face. She chokes out three words, barely audible but he knows anyway and he repeats the message to her while her eyelids flutter closed silently. She almost looks peaceful as one last breath shakes her whole body and she shudders to a halt – shutters closed on her life.
'Curtain's down' he thinks silently through tears. She'd always loved the theatre, even after only one visit. It was at that moment that he vowed to visit the theatre more often – for her. His Stella; his star.
: in a new york minute, everything can change; in a new york minute, things can get pretty strange :