Page 37 of Shatter

Colin Dufresne's face is waiting behind them.

The small, neat hole in his forehead, and his eyes still open, still surprised.

My eyes snap open again.

The stairwell light hums overhead.

Somewhere below, a door opens, and Vail's voice floats up, telling somebody the girl's asleep and to keep it down.

The girl.

I killed a man for her, and I don't even know her fucking name.

My fist hits the cinderblock before I decide to swing it.

Pain explodes up my arm, bright and sharp, and the skin splits across two knuckles.

I stand there breathing, looking at the red smear on the gray wall.

It helps, but it shouldn't.

In the shower, the water runs pink.

I stand under it with both palms braced against the tile and watch her blood slide off my forearms and swirl down the drain, and then his, darker, from my hands where I knelt in it.

The hot water pounds the back of my neck.

Bile surges up my throat without warning.

I turn and throw up into the drain, nothing but coffee and acid, and the shower washes it away before I've finished.

I stay bent over, hands on my knees, water streaming off my hair into my eyes.

Walt used to say the first person you pull out of a burning house stays with you forever.

He was talking about his brother, the fireman.

I don't think this is what he meant.

When the water finally runs clear, I turn it off, and I stand in the steam until my hands stop shaking enough to hold a towel.

Then I go back to my room.

To her.

She's still asleep at eight, her face turned toward the window I didn't stop her from opening.

I take my cut off the dresser and carry it down to the shop.

The bay doors are still shut, and the air inside is cool and dim and smells like oil and rubber.

I flip on the light over the workbench and lay the leather out flat.

Her blood has soaked into the left front panel and dried nearly black, stiff as cardboard, and it's worked its way into the stitching around my prospect patch.

I fill a bucket with warm water.

I find the saddle soap in the cabinet under the bench, the tin dented and half used, and I work it into a lather on a rag.