Free Worlds Apart by Daniel Kelley

it rippled below his eyebrow. Kurt again swiped at his face, but he was losing momentum, and the asshole was about to get away!
    The guy had the front door open, and Kurt could see him in the faint moonlight, a swarthy pocked face with small eyes in a puny head. He’d seen him before! Where, where? It didn’t matter right now, he just needed to get him, he needed to bring him down!
    But Kurt had forgotten about the floor runner in the front hall, and as he cornered to follow the trespasser outside, he slid, overshot, and crashed into the open front door. He heard a hollow crunch followed by the sound of falling residue as the inner door handle demolished the wall plaster.
    Kurt howled in anger, and the thief, for he was indeed a thief, toting a dark satchel full of Kurt’s belongings, turned briefly to glance back at the house he had just robbed, at the man he had somehow bested.
    “I know who you are!” Kurt bellowed. He stood as straight as he could, angrily aware that he was unable to give chase just now, infuriated that the guy was actually getting away from him. “I’m going to find you, I’m going to kill you!” he shouted. “You’re dead!”
    But the man with the satchel had already turned. He was three houses away now, four, and as Kurt again wiped the blood from his eye, a pocket of shadow swallowed both the man and his bag of stolen items.
    Kurt steadied himself in the doorway, gazing down the street at the empty front porches and blank windows facing him. Only in America, he thought, only in a country like America could something like this happen, and not a single neighbor would hear a thing, not a soul would be even remotely aware that a crime had been committed right next door. The neighborhood was as impassive as the snow on Kurt’s lawn, though he could see the remains of the man’s hurried footprints on the walkway he had just shoveled clear that afternoon.
    His head hurt. And he needed to call the police. Why wasn’t Elyse out here anyway, damn it! She might have recognized the guy, too.
    Oh! But Kurt suddenly knew where he’d seen him. The day before, when he and Elyse had gone with Sonya to identify Reginald’s body. Sonya had refused to go inside, clinging instead to a chair in the lobby. Elyse had stayed with her while Kurt viewed the remains and signed papers. This guy had been using a push broom, and he’d been moving chairs about, sweeping underneath them.
    How would –
    How could –
    “Elyse!” Kurt called. He moved toward their bedroom. “Elyse!” Sonya had spent a few minutes in the bathroom, and the guy must have overheard Kurt telling Elyse they would spend the night at Sonya’s place. Sonya had refused their suggestions outside, but if he’d assumed Kurt and Elyse weren’t home, and Kurt’s name and address were on all the forms he’d just signed…
    “Elyse!!”
    Kurt gasped as he flipped on the bedroom light. He was suddenly faint, and the world of pain he’d experienced with the loss of his grandson was immediately trebled, quadrupled. The bedroom became its own kaleidoscope as Kurt tried to understand what he was seeing.
    Elyse lay still on the bed, her head on the pillow, her nightgown-clad body outside of the covers except for her legs. One arm was flung backwards at an unnatural angle, and both of her eyes were wide open. In the center of her forehead was a hole, a welt, a small red dot with a single jagged line of blood meandering from there into her hairline.
    Kurt couldn’t breathe. Kurt couldn’t think. What did it matter that he knew who the thief was? What did anything matter now?
    “Elyse, Elyse,” he moaned, afraid to approach her, paralyzed at the thought that what he was seeing might actually be true.
    But Kurt knew it was true. The damned Luger must have gone off as he tossed it away from him. How the HELL it had hit Elyse with a dead-on shot like that he’d never know!
    He closed his eyes and sank slowly to his knees. And Kurt began to bawl.