The worst part about being killed by the Sniper is that you do not die when the bullet hits the heart; you die as it empties. There are several agonizing minutes during which all the blood seeps out of the hole in your chest, slowly but with morbid certainty. You collapse, hit the ground, some cry out for help and some fade away in silence. It is this window of time, not the gunshot itself, that had always disquieted Julie.
She still jumped at the sound, though. This one was close, and earsplittingly loud. That, along with a late autumn breeze, sent a chill down her spine. She knew that everybody in her small midwestern town had just heard the shot; there isn’t enough physical space to dissipate the sound no matter where it comes from or where you’re standing. Once every week, two weeks, month or so, a sharp percussive crack would split the air, and everyone knew that someone had been hit. No, the Sniper never missed. Not once in all of the time that Julie, or anyone else, had lived there.
She checked her watch, knowing that the time it read in this moment is what would be printed as the time of death on her neighbor’s certificate. But someone, somewhere, was still alive, if only for a few more minutes. And they know that they’ll only be alive for a few more minutes. And more likely than not, they were standing in some wide-open area where the Sniper had a clear shot at them, and they had a feeling deep in their chest that it was over before the shot rang out. Julie suspected you could feel the crosshairs more than the bullet.
But after years of living in the same town as the Sniper, you get used to hearing a shot every so often. None of the townspeople ever seemed to care about it. Plenty of people lived a full life here, being born in the town’s one hospital and dying of old age or a traffic accident, and never once encountering the Sniper. The sound of a rifle shot was sad, but not abnormal. Part of life. You go to the funeral if it’s someone you know. Forget about it tomorrow if it’s not. It was as inconsequential to most people as thunder in a distant cloud, and here, it seemed like it was always cloudy.
This shot was especially loud because Julie was outside. She had agreed to meet her classmate at the town’s promenade, the gray cobblestone walkway between the downtown storefronts and apartments, and a several-blocks-long square of thick forest. The forest was not the edge of town, but rather sat in the center of it, with houses and warehouses and other supporters of industry sprawling out away from the forest and main street. The promenade was also a part of the town’s heart, pulsing with activity from newly off-the-clock workers. The air, though bitter cold, carried a hum of conversations happening on park benches and walks. Julie walked past an old wooden sign with chipped paint that read “Keep your head down!” above a symbol of a rifle, and she continued toward the fountain in the middle of the promenade. It wasn’t running on account of the cold weather, but sitting on its ornate stone wall was Roman. She watched his head swivel as he scanned the faces of the promenade. They locked eyes. Framed by a frozen fountain and gray sky, Julie thought his soft skin and handsome features looked even more out of place than they usually do in the rough town.
He smiled when he saw her. He did so with his lips still together and his teeth not showing, a habit that other girls at their school complained about but that Julie had always thought was cute. He stood up and pulled his hands out from his jacket pockets.
He opened his arms and Julie wrapped hers around his torso. She leaned her head against his chest and felt his arms on her back. He was standing between her and the wind, and for a moment the cold air stopped fighting its way through her jacket, and instead his body heat radiated into hers. She felt like she fit perfectly here. She only wished he might feel the same way. He pulled back, and the air nipped at her pink nose and cheeks again. They started to meander side by side over the stones of the promenade.
“So what’s this big news that you just had to tell me about in person?” she asked playfully.
“You won’t even believe it. Miss Nancy invited me to her house.”
Julie stopped dead and stared at Roman with her mouth hanging open. He shifted toward her.
“You got invited to a party at Miss Nancy’s?” She made no attempt to hide the disbelief in her voice.
“Not a party,” Roman corrected. “She wants me to come over for tea.” Now his teeth cut through his grin, the corners of his mouth pinned as wide as they could go. His eyebrows were raised in a proud expression, and Julie thought he might have been holding his chest higher than normal.
“Just you?”
“Just me.”
“Shut up!” she said with an excited laugh. Even though it was her friend who was invited, not her, she was still beaming. “How did this happen?”
He saw the stars in her eyes, but he made his best attempt to keep himself collected.
“I saw her in town this morning and just struck up a conversation. We talked about whatever for a little while and then she asked me if I’d like to visit her place. She said I had charm.”
Julie agreed with Miss Nancy about the charm.
“She was so… elegant— but simple, more so than you’d guess. It was like talking to an old friend, like I’d known her my whole life.”
“When are you going over?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
Julie was stunned. They continued walking as Julie turned it over in her head. She stepped over a dirty shell casing that was tucked in a groove between stones.
“You’ll get to see the inside,” she said after a short while.
“I know, I can’t wait.”
Miss Nancy was a staple of the town as prominent as the mayor. She lived in a mansion in the dead center of town, though most people had never actually laid eyes on it. It sat buried in the middle of the forest, too many trees surrounding the building see it from anywhere outside her plot. Julie gazed at the tree line that ran against the edge of the promenade, sealing away the grandeur deep inside.
She remembered walking past the woods in her youth, stealing glances into the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of the mythical house of Miss Nancy. Like everyone else though, she never could get a good look. The closest she had ever gotten was in the middle of the night, when she had snuck out just to see if any light from the windows would break through the darkness and densely packed leaves, knowing she would not see the massive figure but hoping just to see it glow. But she did not. The trees kept the mansion hidden away. She had stood at the edge of the woods, wanting to step forward, run through and peek into the windows. She wanted to confirm the rumors that Miss Nancy had more bookshelves than the town library, or that Miss Nancy has a fireplace so big that you could stand inside it, or that Miss Nancy has three living rooms and two kitchens and four bedrooms even though she lives all by herself, or that Miss Nancy has a photograph of herself with the president or the mayor or some movie star (all speculations that Julie had heard around town). Truly, Miss Nancy herself was more like a town legend than just another one of its inhabitants. Julie imagined all of the wonderful things that must be inside. She might have even ventured into the trees, had she not noticed the silhouette of a man perched in a high branch. It was late, and maybe her eyes were playing tricks on her, but she was not willing to take that risk. She turned and ran.
Now, Roman has a real chance to go see the inside. Sit at her table or on her luxurious plush furniture and drink tea out of fancy china.
“You’ll have to tell me everything. I really mean every little thing, I want to know if it’s all true.”
“Don’t worry Jules, I will,” he said with another smile. Julie could tell that he was brimming with excitement too, like a kid on Christmas Eve, despite his subtle effort to act cool about it. “I’ll talk to you later then?”
Julie would have been perfectly happy staying longer, but she could tell that the wind was starting to get to Roman. He wouldn’t complain, but he couldn’t keep from shivering.
“Yeah, for sure.” They hugged again, and Julie felt his shivering subside for a moment. He pulled away with a sweet goodbye. “Everything!” she called again after him.
And with that, Roman started his walk back home on the sidewalk along the main drag. His gait was cheerful and relaxed, and he tilted his head back and smiled. A second later, his eyes focused in on the edge of the rooftop of an apartment building just ahead, and a pit formed in his chest. Like a bird of prey roosting in its nest, the Sniper stood overlooking the town. Watching. He stood perfectly still; Roman wasn't even sure if the Sniper was breathing. His rifle was an extension of his arms, and his sharp eyes peeked out from below a baseball cap and above a facemask. All of his clothing, unmarked and jet-black, blended together to create a flat shadow of a person in the gray evening twilight.
Roman shot his eyes back to the concrete. A bead of sweat formed on his temple. A chill went down his spine, this one not from the cold. He continued walking, hands stuffed into his pockets, eyes unblinking, feeling the cold stare of the Sniper like the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of his neck. He turned a corner into an alleyway, tight and secluded, and the feeling of the Sniper melted away as the ghost fell out of sight.
Miss Nancy’s house was breathtaking, more than Roman could have imagined. He felt as if he were sitting in another world entirely, somewhere far away from the roughness and dullness of his hometown. Every other building he had been inside of, every other house he had visited, they were all rough and bit dirty, painted predominantly with browns and grays. He had seen bullet holes punched through drywall and there was a near constant smog around the edges of town, but in Miss Nancy’s house, that all seemed lifetimes away. He sat in a plush velvet chair of the most vibrant blue he had ever laid eyes on. A dry teacup with golden accents sat on a lightly stained saucer on the coffee table in front of him. It was a deep red-brown and was carved out of one massive piece of wood with a shiny coating catching and reflecting light from the room. In fact, all of the upscale furniture seemed to glow in the warm yellow light cast by a great number of candles and lamps. Miss Nancy sat in a similar chair on the other side of the coffee table, her hands neatly folded in her lap. Roman looked at the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, creases from smiling many times over many years. He felt like he was staring at an angel.
The walls, where they weren’t covered by bookshelves or oil paintings, were painted a light pink. They were thick and made of stone, broken up intermittently by large windows giving way to picturesque views of foliage outside. Roman wondered how she could have possibly made the money for her mansion, or what she was doing in this town, but decided it would be rude to ask. Maybe she was born with it, and maybe she is simply used to living here.
As much as Roman would have liked to stay in that world forever, he was running out of reasons to stick around. Most notably, the conversation and tea had both run dry. He took one last look around the place as he offered aloud that he had best get going. He stood up slowly and took a deep breath in, as if he could somehow hold the room inside himself physically. But he knew that he had used up all the time he had, and would only get to keep the memory.
Roman stepped out of the mansion and turned around to give Miss Nancy, who was standing in the doorway, a polite goodnight. He smiled and shook her hand, which turned into a brief hug before she pulled away and waved. There had still been twilight when he had arrived, but now the sun had set completely. He stepped away and onto the stone footpath that led through the woods and out to the street. The ground was illuminated by yellow light glowing through the windows and doorway of the mansion, but as he moved father away and Miss Nancy shut the door behind him, Roman was bathed in the darkness of the night.
A different type of darkness swallows someone who stands in the center of dense trees in the middle of a city, no light able to reach him from either streetlamps or the night sky. Roman opened and shut his eyes, but it made no difference. He felt out the path with his feet, carefully steering himself away from the soft give of the grass and keeping to the hard and irregular stones. For a moment, he was nowhere. Standing in an abyss. But he continued to move and soon the moment was over, the light from a solitary streetlamp weaving its way through the trees, guiding him back out to the city.
Even outside the cover of trees, no stars could poke through the thin cloud cover and hazy light pollution of the town. The new moon hung silently in the sky. In the city, the night sky never could be a pure black, only a midnight blue at its darkest. Roman walked, staring into the emptiness above him that surrounded the earth and all of its inhabitants. Shadows of buildings cut corners into the sky, rectangular silhouettes, save for one particularly tall office space. Broken out from atop the sharp angles was one humanoid shadow of perfect black cast against the deep blue sky. It could have been a statue, but Roman knew that it was alive and its eyes were used to the night and it was staring directly at him. He stayed away from the windows in his house that night.
A few days had passed since Roman’s tea party, and once again Julie had refrained from begging him for the story over the phone (or rather, she calmed her efforts after he smoothly explained that it would be a much better story face-to-face). She decided that it would be okay to wait until they could meet again in the promenade where she could watch his eyes twinkle and lips curl as he recalled every sweet detail that she could press him for. Waiting had not been easy for her though; she had been driving herself mad with questions to ask. Wonderings about the inside of Miss Nancy’s house that Roman now knows. She only wished Roman had a photographic memory and a perfect vocabulary that could convert his memories into a flawless image of the inside. She wished that he was a reporter who brought a camera and made a documentary about his visit and gave her the tapes so that she could watch it over whenever she started to forget what the details in the crown molding looked like or what colors the books on her shelf were or how many stairs were on her staircase.
The promenade was empty and eerily quiet. Roman was alone, sitting on a bench in the plaza, doubled over and shaking. Julie hurried to him as soon as she noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
Roman lifted his head and met her worried eyes. His were red, wet trails on his cheeks. He tightened his brow and swallowed his sobs. “You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?” Julie feared the worst.
“She’s gone. Miss Nancy is gone.”
Julie stared at him in shocked silence. A cold breeze hit her back; the weak sun that trickled through the overcast sky was not enough to warm her skin or anything in the town. It felt like poor taste to ask about his visit.
Roman turned away from her and bit his bottom lip. His eyebrows were pinched together and his eyes filled up with hot tears that he fought hard to keep from falling. He breathed hard.
Julie hardly noticed her knees or her cold, pale fingers shaking. She stared through Roman, not at him. Her jaw hung slightly open, a puff of steam forming out of each shaky breath. Gone. She’s gone. Julie slowly turned and sank onto the bench, next to Roman. She wanted to grab him, wished he might wrap her arms around her and keep some of the wind away with his body. He kept his head turned away and his hands stuffed into his pockets, his teeth keeping a relentless hold on his defiant lip. Julie turned her feet inwards and slumped over so that her elbows rested on the tops of her thighs. She stared at the cold ground.
It crossed Julie’s mind that she hadn’t heard a gunshot since before Roman’s visit, and another pang shot through her chest when she realized that the one that rang out the day before he went over must have been the shot that killed her. But she dispelled that thought quickly, because if Miss Nancy was dead when he got there then he would have given her a quick and painful phone call right after. He wouldn’t have played along and kept her in suspense just to break her heart. No, he must have just found out himself, meaning he really did get to see her, and just in time.
The skies that seemed to have been barely holding together for days had finally broken open. Rain beat down on the windows of the old community center. The air was permeated by a dense gray fog, and nothing was visible through the cloudy glass panes and streaks of cold water running down them. Occasional thunder broke through the constant drumming of rain against the roof.
The mayor had put together a meeting for a small group of the town’s most celebritous figures, with one exception. The mayor was a man that was perfect for his job, always holding idyllic beliefs of what could be done to better the town. He had campaigned on the platform of populism, and during his term had enacted policies that improved quality of life for the laborers that made up the economic base of the town. He had it in his mind that with enough reform and construction, he could turn a place that out-of-towners generally avoid and consider to be depressing into a city that people might actually visit for tourism. But that would never happen. Instead, his stress wore him and his white-gold hair thin as he painted a smile on his face and put on a strong front for the people that looked up to him.
His and four other coats hung on a rack by the door, dripping freezing water onto the floor. The mayor sat at the head of a folding plastic table, and on his right-hand side sat a wealthy banker and a chef next to each other. The banker had enough money in his own accounts to move to a big city by the coast, but he also had enough influence on the mayor to keep himself in a penthouse in the town with the Sniper. He liked to put ideas for political policy in the mayor’s head while keeping himself an arm’s length away from the public eye, enjoying power without the sacrifice of criticism. When he went to bed each night, he would tell himself that a having money and control are the most important thing for him and his wife. But he would not look in the mirror while he brushed his teeth.
The chef, conversely, was the most popular man in the room. He owned the one high-end restaurant in town, the place people went for birthdays, anniversaries, or to impress a date. He made it a point to greet each of his tables personally and remember details about people and their lives. Everyone felt like they were friends with him. They had all been guests in his house, and he was a loving host. In the collective consciousness of the townspeople, he was hospitality, he was warmth. He was the man that fed you, and he did so with a smile.
On the mayor’s left-hand side sat a close friend of Miss Nancy’s, next to the room’s black sheep. The friend was a woman the same age as Miss Nancy, often spotted accompanying her to coffee or walking into or out from the forest. To her, Miss Nancy was not a legend, but a human being. One she knew well and had gone to school with. And beside her sat Roman. He felt out of place, not wealthy or influential but just a regular boy who, by sheer coincidence, had been the last person to have tea with Miss Nancy. He felt small and yet he still feared he took up too much space at this particular table.
The mayor spoke first.
“She deserves a big send-off.” His voice rolled across Roman’s ears, deep and raspy. “I’ll make arrangements for a band to play, we’ll close off the whole promenade, then everybody in town could gather and celebrate her. We could have food and drink, and I’ll make sure to have the fountain running. It’ll be perfect.”
The chef shook his head. “You’re right, she does deserve a special event, but you’re focusing on the wrong things. It should be quiet and thoughtful. The promenade could work, but we should be gathering pictures of her to put up, collecting stories people have of her. The memory is all that we have left; you don’t need to impress her.”
The mayor weighed his input quietly, then looked around the table and asked his company if they had any thoughts.
“Yeah, I’ve got a few,” said the banker. “I think this is a big waste of time. She’s gone, there’s nothing we can do about that. No need for a big sob session with the whole town, that’s depressing. You wanna do that, do it at home.”
Miss Nancy’s friend scowled at him. “That’s harsh, and you know it.” She turned to Roman and softened her expression. “What do you think?”
Roman shifted in his chair. He didn’t want to say anything, he felt like was several weight-classes below this conversation. Truly, he didn’t want a big party or an intimate service or to go home and forget anything happened. All he wanted was to go back in time. He wanted to sit in her warm living room and share hot tea with her. She had been able to melt away all of the tension that Roman constantly held with him. In the heart of a town with a Sniper, he had never felt so blissful. He felt like he was completely shielded from the danger outside, despite the huge glass windows that still couldn’t stop a bullet. It was so fresh in his mind, he could almost feel the warmth radiating from the fireplace. Almost. But in this room, the air was cold, and none of the people sitting around him were the wonderful Miss Nancy.
All of their eyes were on him though, so Roman felt compelled to say something.
“What if we did it at her house?”
The four other faces stared at him, each shocked and still as if Roman had just insulted them all personally. He felt the color drain from his face. The only sound was that of rain drumming on the roof, but Roman was sure he could also hear his own heartbeat. He held his breath, as if any slight shift of the air could cause the room to collapse in on itself.
“One thing is certain,” the friend said. “You cannot go back inside her house.”
The room was silent aside from the beating of rain on the roof. The mayor broke the silence.
“That house was hers, not ours,” he said through gritted teeth. “We have no right to party in it anymore.”
“It will never be the way it was.”
“The damn thing is empty anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
The room was silent for a moment before Miss Nancy’s friend spoke again. “We’ll do it in the promenade. Pictures are good, we’ll have lots of those.”
“Everybody in the most wide-open part of town?” The banker muttered. “Might as well let the Sniper know that he can have whoever he wants.”
“That’s final.” The mayor was firm and direct. And with that, the room was left with nothing but the ceaseless drumming of the rain and the tension between its inhabitants.
Julie’s black dress absorbed the sun’s rays, holding a pleasant heat against her skin. For once it seemed, the sky was perfectly cloudless and blue. It felt much more like a summer morning than any day in autumn. In the center of the promenade, sunlight bounced off the flowing water of the fountain. The water sparkled brighter than Julie had ever seen it.
Next to the fountain stood a painting of Miss Nancy inside an ornate golden frame which also caught the sunlight along its many curves and edges. Her mouth was curled up in a slight smile, there were wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Julie was struck by her beauty.
Bouquets of flowers framed the portrait and lay all around the fountain. All of the different reds and yellows and oranges of the petals shone vibrantly in the sun. The heads of the flowers were packed so tightly together that almost none of the stems or leaves were visible, and the stone walkway around the portrait and little stone wall of the fountain were completely buried. And surrounding the decorated centerpiece of town was every resident who knew Miss Nancy. Most of them only knew stories and rumors, but every last one of them had a special impression of her deep within their hearts.
Julie was transfixed by the portrait of Miss Nancy for a long while. Only a still picture, it would be the last image of the woman that she would take with her in memory. But the longer she looked, the less Julie saw the face of a person. Julie wasn’t looking at Miss Nancy. She was looking at brushstrokes, paint on canvas, shapes and colors that only resembled a person’s face when you put them all together deep inside.
Julie found herself lingering at the painting next to a familiar face, the best friend of Miss Nancy. She felt compelled to say something.
“She should be here.”
The friend let out a sigh. “I wish she was here too. She would love this.”
Julie felt a pang of sadness and longing with the Friend’s words. Julie only wished she could have met Miss Nancy or seen the inside of her house, but the friend had really been there. Miss Nancy had been a part of both of them, but Julie was missing an idea, while the friend was missing someone real. Julie could hardly imagine what she was feeling. Though, that’s not what she had meant when she had said ‘here.’
“I mean physically here.”
The Friend was quiet. Julie could tell by the expression on the Friend’s that she hadn’t properly clarified herself, so she continued. “They find the victim every time. As soon as the shot rings out, the time of death is written down and someone goes out to retrieve the body. Miss Nancy shouldn’t be out rotting in town somewhere; she should be right here! Dolled up and put in a nice casket, like a proper funeral.” Julie felt her face get hot. Tears started to cloud her vision. “I don’t care if there’s a big hole in her chest, her body should be here!”
Now the Friend looked completely perplexed. Julie’s brow was furrowed, her lips trembled, her throat was burning, and she was fighting for tears not to spill down her face. Looking at the Friend who didn’t seem to understand her frustration nearly broke her.
“Funeral?”
The Friend put a comforting hand on Julie’s shoulder.
“Sweetheart,” she said in a calm voice. “The Sniper didn’t kill Miss Nancy.”
Julie’s frustration turned into confusion. She was wearing a black dress. She was standing at a memorial. Miss Nancy was gone for good, and everyone knew that.
“It wasn’t the Sniper?”
The Friend smiled.
“No, honey. Miss Nancy moved away.”