By Noah Maranto
The whole world except Jeffery and Rhal drops into an artistic soft focus. It does this in order to bring their conflict to the foreground of the scene. Then the soft focus takes on a red tint. This is to symbolize the danger Jeffery is in. Or so he thinks. Then Jeffery drops out of focus.
A look of surprise passes over his face, but no one can notice it because he’s traded focus with Carrie who doesn’t perceive time and space quickly enough to even know she and Rhal are now the only two in Focus.
All Jeffery can really do is watch from behind the thin vale of focus as Rhal hisses, raises the Desert Eagle up over the seat in an agonizingly slow arch that happens blazingly fast, and holds it level with Carrie’s chest.
Then the flashes and crashes begin.
It’s like Hiroshima and Nagasaki on each breast.
It’s like D-Day in Carrie’s torso.
Blitzkrieg in Carrie’s belly.
It’s like a dozen shells slamming into her body, tearing their way through flesh, blood and bone till they reach the soft upholstery. And then they tear some more.
It’s like shell casings, spiraling through the air like they’re winning passes in the Super Bowl. Go Rhal, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can!
The passes fall short, but it doesn’t matter because round three is entering Carrie’s pretty little chest, the heart exploding under the weight of hot, accelerated lead. Blood paints the windows. Blood paints Claire. Blood paints Jeffery.
Everything is back in sharp focus now.
The car is complete silence like the dead of space except for the gush of blood and the gasps for air that can’t enter the lungs because there aren’t any lungs left. And even that sound won’t last much longer.
Jeffery holding an empty torso and head in his arms, blood seeping through his fingers and staining his already stained clothes.
Carrie looking with longing eyes, and mouthing words that Jeffery can hear in his head.
Claire too shocked to look away from the bloody remains in her lap.
Alex hasn’t even looked back from the driver’s seat.
Rhal is still staring, with the amusement of a boy who burns ants under a magnifying glass.
Please Jeffery. Please don’t let me die, that pleading mouth moves slowly, smoothly, not even a whisper coming from them.
Jeffery can hear it like a tortured wail in his brain.
Not now, please, not after everything we’ve been through, please, not like this, not here, not with these people, please, not now, she’s softly mouthing, her lips slowing down with each word.
Jeffery just looks.
The focus drops out again, with a softer blue color to the tint. It’s not danger this time. It’s calm, and understanding, and that’s the look that passes between them while they’re alone in their out of focus wonderland. It’s blue like the ribbon in her hair.
Blue like the color Jeffery always liked her in.
And there’s quiet for that eternity that passes between them. They exchange a look, and they exchange memories of a lifetime and a half spent together.
There’s complete understanding in the look, and it’s backed by the memories.
Carrie knows why he can’t save her.
She understands why he wanted to leave her behind in America.
She sees the fate he wants to save her from.
She doesn’t agree, but she understands.
Carrie sees the future through Jeffery’s eyes as a bleak expanse of personal torture where every figure in the corner of his eye is a monster, looming tall and terrifying over him. A lanky, angled beast with claws as long as he is tall.
She sees Jeffery as he sees himself: The world’s shit.
He’s a slave to the Tremere.
He’s a slave to Claire.
He’s a slave to Rhal.
He’s a slave to the Sabbat.
And she dies. There’s no drama in that. She ceases to be anything more than a wrinkle in the brain of Jeffery Alexander.
Everything drops back into sharp focus and it’s all blood and bone and bits of upholstery soaking up the blood from the ruined torso of Carrie.
The Desert Eagle still leaks smoke, curling slowly from the tip of the barrel as it dangles in Rhal’s hand.
Jeffery turns his head, slowly towards Rhal. Rhal’s eyes gleam with hellfire like the roaring flare of the Desert Eagle.
Jeffery’s eyes are calm Alice in Wonderland blue, forgiving and gentle.
That’s when the gleaming, serrated, 18-inch blade knife appears in Jeffery’s hand and cuts forward through the air with a calm focus. Rhal doesn’t even flinch as the blade approaches his face.
Alex looks up then.