Scientists called it “auditory exclusion.” Aubrey Johnson would discover that later when she began obsessively researching. It started with Google “why wasn’t the gunshot loud” and ended with a thirty-nine-page research paper by Pilson, Myers, et al.
But all of that would come later, after she dealt with the now.
Now was limited by “visual exclusion,” another term that she would later learn was far more commonly known as “tunnel vision.” All she could see was the body on the floor. Somewhere in the back of her brain was a little voice telling her there was screaming, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
Aubrey focused her eyes on the man’s back, a surprisingly small hole in his black t-shirt. She squinted her eyes in the anemic glow coming through the window from the streetlight—itself obscured by an oak tree—to see if respiration was causing any rise and fall. The pool of blood spreading across the hardwood floor from underneath him seemed to be all the story she needed, but Aubrey had watched enough television to know better.
He could be faking.
She looked down. The blood was coming near to her bare feet, lively, yellow-painted toenails contrasting with the coppery creep of apparent death. She stepped back with a start, running into Dana.
Both of them shrieked as Aubrey dropped the gun on the floor, glancing in panic at the black-shirted stranger and scrambling to pick up the gun before he could lunge for it and murder them all.
She heard a whisper. “Mom.” A hand on her shoulder, shaking. Turning to look at Dana, Aubrey didn’t understand how her daughter looked like a scream, but sounded like a whisper. It was even lower than a whisper now. Call 9–1–1, Dana mouthed.
Aubrey turned back to the living room. The pool was spreading, which was a shame because she’d just had the original hardwood refurbished. She was halfway into her savings for the new siding, but it looked like that was going to be pushed back. She couldn’t live with blood on her floors.
“…7367 Tamiami Dr. A man broke into our house, and I think he’s dead. My mom shot him. Please hurry.”
I shot him? Aubrey thought to herself and then remembered the gun in her hand. Where did that come from?
Glass break sensor. Front door sensor. The annunciator on her phone. She burst from her bed, making it to the safe in one long step. 4–3–0–0–7. Their anniversary. The spring-loaded door smacked down as she reached inside and felt the indifferent polymer of the Glock 19. Her instructor’s voice hammered through her head, fighting for screen time with a mother’s brain.
Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.
Where is Dana?
Point the firearm in a safe direction at all times.
She opened the door with her left hand, right preparing to bring the gun up if a threat was present.
Nothing.
She swung around the open doorway into the hallway; the flashlight mounted underneath brought virtual daylight to the 2am interior.
Dana’s door is still closed. Her sleep machine is playing. Almost a sigh of relief.
Immediate and decisive action is required if you feel that your life is in danger. It won’t be fun. It won’t be natural. But you’ll be alive.
Blue eyes flashed in the light, twenty feet away. He stood just inside the door, the security lock hanging off the wall like a tether ball that had been hit too hard too many times. His face was almost a smile as he raised his knife.
“Stop! I have a gun. Don’t move or I’ll shoot!”
He laughed, just a little. “Flashlight trick? I know there’s no gun behind it. Just a scared little woman who’s going to do what I say, Aubrey.”
He made it two steps forward before she fired. Fell like someone dropped him from an airplane. No parachute.
Shoot until the threat is neutralized.
She walked closer to him, vaguely registering the bedroom door opening just behind her.
“Mom!” Dana was huddled next to her mother, trying not to look.
A discordant symphony of sirens played a crescendo as quiet red and blue lights scattered gently off the street, becoming ever more insistent until the world was two colors, and that was all.
A stranger yelled inside. “Parma Police! Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air!” Two impossibly bright flashlights—or maybe it was one, she couldn’t tell—spilled through the storm door and lit Aubrey and Dana up like they were in a studio shoot for a pajama ad.
Aubrey thought the voice sounded far too young to be a police officer. Behind the flashlights, she could just make out the red light bar of an ambulance. She wondered if they would send another for her.
Dana was pressing down on her right hand. “Put the gun down, Mom. It’s OK. The police are here.” Aubrey resisted for a moment, finally understood. She had a gun. Police didn’t want that.
“Do you want me to unload it first?” she asked.
The strange young voice was a little gentler. “No, ma’am. Please, just slowly put it on the floor and step away.”
“I don’t want him to get it. He might still be alive.” She looked at the body. In the illumination from their flashlights, the jeans were almost forest green. No blood on them, though.
“What’s your name?” the officer asked.
“Aubrey. Aubrey Johnson.”
“Ms. Johnson, you’re going to have to trust me here. We have our guns drawn and we are covering the man on the floor. If you will please step back a few feet and put your gun down, I promise you it will all work out. You can even step on it to make sure it’s secure until we come in.”
“Mom! They’re going to shoot if you don’t put it down! Please!” Dana’s face was wedding white.
Aubrey nodded. Stepped back. Slowly, slowly, put the gun on the floor. Looked at the body again, waiting for a gasp. A twitch. A groan.
Nothing.
She looked up and raised her hands.
“I’m ready.”