-x-
Impinge
-x-
Rocky drops him off early Wednesday evening, when the air is still a dusky red and while Nina McMurray is away at the customary first-Wednesday-of-the-month supper at church. Freckle pushes the car door closed with both hands, leaning in through the open window to tell Rocky "Good night" and "See you tomorrow" and then watching from the porch until the car turns out of sight onto Lawrence Street. There is one lamp on in the sitting room and the rest of the house is dark.
Freckle finds a plate of sandwiches waiting for him on the kitchen table, with a note from his mother,
You shouldn't have missed the supper.
But Freckle doesn't mind eating sandwiches, and he certainly doesn't mind missing Wednesday night Church. It's almost a relief - he feels guilty enough for going and sitting and trying to pay attention on Sundays because he has firmly assured himself that he is already going to Hell, anyway, and no amount of Hail Mary's, however sincere, is going to change that.
Not wanting to dwell on this, Freckle stuffs a sandwich in his mouth and goes to take a shower. He returns to the kitchen in record time, pajama-clad, hunger burning his stomach as he thinks of the elaborate, home-cooked meal and desserts being enjoyed at church. It's little reassuring to know that his mother will probably cook a good breakfast to make up for the meager supper. Some of that guilt starts seeping in again, and Freckle quickly decides that the washing-room door has been hanging loosely for too long, swallows another sandwich, and goes upstairs for his tool box.
He is on the fourth step from the top when he hears it, and pauses to listen: loud, rough voices from downstairs, the patio door rattling and swinging noisily open.
"Ha! 'S unlocked," echoes through the empty house and up the stairs, "Amateurs."
"Shut up, idiot," another one snaps. The door is left open. "This's the crazy one. You saw what he did to Frank, I -"
"Crazy my hat, y'get up there and grab 'im."
"You go if you ain't scared of 'im, I'll make sure the place is empty."
"We know the place is empty, we saw the other one drop him off, there ain't nobody here but us and he's out numbered, y'sorry, lazy, sonoffa..." The grumbling continues, and there are heavy footsteps across the kitchen floor.
Freckle lurches suddenly, silently, up the three remaining stairs and steps sideways into his room. He grabs the wooden baseball bat propped against his dresser and stands in the doorway, out of sight of the stairs as they groan under the intruder's weight. There isn't a thought in Freckle's head. He isn't scared. He isn't excited. He's waiting. And his heart isn't beating quickly, but it is beating hard and slow, as if it's four times bigger than normal, pounding determinedly against the back of his ribs and then back between his shoulder blades.
He can feel it in his throat and in his ears, and for three seconds it's the only thing he can hear. The topmost stair creaks, the intruder is silhouetted in the door, but is peering around the loft and not into the dark, open doorway to his left.
There isn't enough room to swing the bat.
Freckle rugby tackles him when he turns, his shoulder catching the bigger man between the ribs and knocking him against the wall across the loft. There's a grunt of pain - something clatters across the floor in the dark and Freckle looks at it, knows it's a gun. His hand loosens on the bat. The intruder stumbles upright and punches him in the face, and the force of the blow throws Freckle off his feet. He hits the floor hard on his stomach, and a knee in his back knocks the breath out of him.
A voice shouts from the kitchen, "What're you doing! Did you get 'im?"
"Yeah, I got 'im," growls the one pinning Freckle against the floor, "Squirmy little - where's my -"
His weight shifts, looking for his gun, and Freckle twists around, brings his knee up, and throws his attacker off with a well-placed shove. Freckle rolls to his feet, raising the first thing that comes to hand as the intruder laboriously stands again. His companion is climbing the stairs - Freckle hears it clearly over the thumping in his ears and swings the bat with all his strength and no remorse, catching the intruder in the side of the head.
The wood splinters.
The intruder staggers sideways through wooden chips and the blood in his ears, across his face, and he disappears down the steps. The other one shouts, scrambling out of the way; Freckle throws the mangled handle aside and follows the crashes and bangs of the body down the stairs. The bottom banister rail breaks, and the bigger man doesn't move, his limbs twisted. Freckles runs across his back, bounding off the small landing and into the kitchen. The other one screams at the sight of him and bolts. Not through the washing room, not out the open patio door and into the night - he bolts into the hallway, deeper into the house, and Freckle is right behind him.
He's smaller, and he's faster, and he grabs the other one with both hands by the back of his coat before he can hardly pass the parlor. Freckle turns, pulls, and swings the other man face-first into the door frame. His nose breaks. Somehow, through the haze of pain, the man remembers his gun and he fumbles for it, elbowing Freckle in the gut to escape his furious grip. Freckle staggers backward, upsets a small table and sends several picture frames careening to the floor.
He grabs the vase and throws it, but misses. The other man dodges it, barely, shouting again as it smashes the wall by his ear. He panics, terrified, drops his gun when Freckle rushes him instead of just pulling the trigger and tears back down the hall. He barely reaches the kitchen first, and trips over a chair. Freckle snatches the gun from the floor, grinning, his hands itching, a chuckle bubbling in his throat, and there isn't any hint of that persistent thought in the back of his mind that should tell him the neighbors will hear gunfire, or his mother will spot a stray bullet hole in her unperturbed wallpaper.
He puts a bullet in the back of the man's head and he drops like his comrade, squelching on the neat tiles of Nina's kitchen floor.
Freckle stands over him, panting.
It's probably the blood spreading slowly, nonchalantly out across the tile that brings him back to his senses; he stares at it, lowering the gun, his heart thumping. His amber eyes dart to the foot of the stairs, the broken railing, and the other one; to the stove, directly in front of him, and the counter that is all splattered with crimson; the clock on the wall, reading half past eight and ticking merrily onward; and the pool forming under his feet. Stepping back, Freckle sets the gun down on the kitchen table beside his plate of sandwiches, rights the chair, and leaves the kitchen.
His hands are steady when he picks up the phone and dials, but he is so relieved that someone is still sitting in the Cafe and answering the phone that his quiet voice momentarily leaves him.
"I need to talk to Rocky," he says, and he hopes - really hopes - that his mother will linger later than usual at Church, because St. Louis is a thirty minute drive from St. Charles and it will take him much longer than that to scrub the kitchen clean.
-x-
(A/n) I don't know if Catholics have Wednesday Church suppers, I think was raised in a… in a Baptist church? Fffff, I don't know. Nuance. Catholics like food, too. Done in the spirit of the Lackadaisy forum contest; abuse of the prompt, but not submitted to the contest. I assumed wrong in thinking it was set up to stir up more fanfiction and since I'm the only one writing it, it would erase any anonymity that's part of the point of the contest. xD In any case, the prompts still get those brains churning, and I guess that's all that matters.
I hope you enjoyed this action-y mess, I've been wanting to write sweet, quiet Freckle going ape-shit crazy on some poor fool for a while, now.
-Motcn