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It’s probably safe to say that none of this would have happened if Tom’s wife hadn’t spilled a simple glass of water on the floor. That’s what set him off. Tom considered himself a calm, rational man, but after twenty years of putting up with Helen’s “little quirks,” as he liked to call them, he was riding that fine line between levelheaded and insane. The water spilling moved that line deep into the realm of insanity, and left Tom standing right in the middle of it.

Silly, really, now that he thought about it. Just a couple of hours ago, Tom had been fairly content in his mediocrity. Life was moving along and Tom right along with it—at one with the flow. But that all went to hell as soon as Tom grabbed Helen’s head and shoved her to her knees in front of the broken glass. The suddenness and ferocity of Tom’s action had taken her and him totally by surprise. His strength had been a little too overpowering, and Helen soon found herself face first into a nice, sharp piece of glass. Not much really, only three inches long. But those three inches penetrated her left eye and managed to push its way right up into her brain.

Helen, face in the carpet, lying in a growing pool of blood. That’s how Tom remembered her. That was the image stuck in his mind as he lay in a ditch off Old Henry’s Road.

But there was another image battling to gain Tom’s attention. Something coming right at his face. An image of something yellow and black. Yellow, black. Black, yellow. A loud crash, then silence and just black, no yellow.

Shit, Tom thought, what the hell is that? If only Tom’s neck wasn’t broken, he could turn his head and see the image that was haunting him.

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Hank Perkins had been thinking about his monthly fishing trip to Simmons’ Creek this weekend when he saw Tom’s car scream out of its driveway. Hank saw the face of the driver, and didn’t like it one bit. Hank had known Tom for twenty-something years—thought he knew him pretty well, in fact. But for that one brief moment as Tom’s face was frozen in the glow of the streetlight, Hank got the feeling that he didn’t really know Tom at all. And he was damn sure he didn’t want to know why he suddenly felt this way. But when he looked across the street at his best friend’s house he knew he’d soon find out.

Hank walked across the street to Tom and Helen’s house, then hesitantly pushed the already open front door to Tom and Helen’s living room and stepped onto the carpet, memories of decades gone by flashed in Hank’s mind. Bodies, twisted and broken, missing pieces, burnt beyond recognition—Death. All came back to him in a wave of horror. But as hard as that had been, it was nothing compared to the scene before now. Those deaths before were distant, people he didn’t know or barely knew. It was war after all. It all sucked, but he felt he had come through it pretty well after all these years. Yet, here he was again, face to face with death, but this time it was different. Helen’s body lay in a heap on the floor, a dark pool of blood spread out from under her head. And a little voice said to Hank immediately, so much for your safe, suburban life, Hank Perkins. You’re fucked.

The fucked was followed with a call to the police and topped off with a fleeting thought about a fishing trip that wouldn’t be. Hank sat on the steps of his neighbor’s porch and let out an exasperated, “Shit.”

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