Schrödinger's Gun (4 page)

—Kitty Rivers—

—Vincent Quine—

—a blunt-nosed pocket pistol underneath a staircase—

My thoughts ran through the same tired grooves. Who shot Johnny Rivers? Was his death simply a part of the grim business of Chicago—a hit put out by a rival gang and executed by a thug who'd killed before and gotten away with it—or was it a crime of the heart, an act of revenge by the woman he had pushed too far?

I think I started dreaming. Vincent Quine oozed past me, stretching and distorting like he was in a house of mirrors. Kitty Rivers showed me her bruised cheek and started crying, turning into Sarah when I tried to comfort her. For a moment I saw all of Chicago as a mist of endless possibilities. Bullets flew from guns, hit, missed, ricocheted; bodies fell, crumpled, folded, flew, sank, rolled, were discovered or kept secret; revenge was or wasn't or was almost taken. A million stories hovered in the smoke.

I woke to the sound of a door slamming shut.

It took me a moment to work out which reality I was in. West 23
rd
Street was chill and bleak and someone had just got out of a car. It was too dark to see them clearly. They opened the trapdoor to the basement and disappeared inside.

I followed, reaching into my pocket. My gun was freezing to the touch. I trod stealthily over to the trapdoor and crouched beside it. The light had been switched on inside, but at this angle I could see almost nothing of the room below. I stood up and stepped over to the stairs.

Apart from Johnny's body having been cleared away, the crime scene was exactly as I had left it. Distillery equipment glinted dully in the half-light. When I reached the bottom of the steps I drew my gun from my coat and stepped forwards, squinting furiously as my eyes adjusted. I heard a scuff behind me and spun around.

“Chicago Police,” I said to the shadow underneath the stairs. “Step out slowly, hands on your head.”

The figure moved into the light.

My heisen roared. It was impossible. What I was looking at was impossible. I felt my gun drift downwards as my arms lost strength.

They stood there, overlapping, like two different movies projected onto the same screen; a fault line between two universes. A perfect quantum tightrope. I was looking at the cat inside the box, alive and dead at the same time, and I had seconds left to choose which possibility remained when the lid came off. I couldn't speak. For a moment, two versions of myself stood inside of each other, our hearts beating different rhythms.

The figure that had stepped out from the shadows was both Vincent Quine and Kitty Rivers.

 

Copyright © 2015 by Ray Wood

Art copyright © 2015 by Richie Pope