Page 110 of The Triangle

Lars pushes Christine in his direction and yells, “Go!” The young guy drags her along. She resists initially, but then Lars yells at her, “Christine! Go!” And she does. Confusion plastered all over her face.

“Solomon!” Alec shouts. The young kid dragging Christine along looks back. He hesitates. He looks torn about what he should do.

They know each other. Alec knows him. One of his men. Or one of what Alec thought was his men.

Christine set us up? Christine set us up. She and Lars. Why? And why did she—?

“Solomon!” Alec screams it now, holding his own weapon up and aiming it. But he doesn’t pull the trigger. He doesn’t shoot. He just holds it there, screaming the kid’s name over and over again.

Fuck it. If he’s not going to shoot somebody, I will. But before I can, a fresh round of bullets has both me and Alec darting for cover. Lars again. Reloaded. Our uncharacteristic hesitancy has us pinned down once more.

“Lars!” Alec bellows.

Lars doesn’t respond. Just keeps firing at the tree behind which Alec has hidden himself. I poke my head around the side of my own sorry excuse for cover, seeing if I can get a shot. But Lars is backing up, firing wildly, and then he turns and starts running in the direction of the kid and Christine.

I could nail him. Could shoot him right in the back. But I don’t. Because when I look at him, I see Alec. I mean I see Alec reflected in him, but I also literally see Alec. He’s crouched down, hugging his body and rocking back and forth. I’ve never seen him like this.

“Fok!” he lets out, still rocking back and forth. “Fok, fok, fok!”

And so I hesitate. I don’t fire. Just one more mistake to add to the long list I’m writing. Because I want to go after Christine. I want to save her. Be her knight. Be her hero.

And I can’t. Because…

Because Alec.

I want to save him too. Be his hero.

And by the time I sort that all out, everyone is gone.

Christine is gone. Lars is gone. Alec is holding his head in his hands and I’m not sure if he was hit, or he’s just as confused as I am.

Dead bodies are scattered around us.

We are in the middle of nowhere, miles and miles from hope.

I’m left alone with Alec. Alec who I was going to betray.

Lars has Christine. Christine, who may have betrayed us both.

We are not a triangle. If we ever were. I don’t know anything anymore. Except that we are not joined in some deep way. Not now. Now, we are just three broken lines scattered by the fucking wind. As helpless and lost as the fallen leaves blowing in aimlessly through the shattered glass of the shelter where just moments before, Christine, Alec and I thought we had maybe found a home.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - ALEC

In a semi-meditative state, the world slows. In a semi-meditative state, events become clearer, less confusing, more precise. In a semi-meditative state, one maintains control even as life spins out.

I am not in a semi-meditative state.

The events whirl around me in a stumbling jumble. We are nowhere. Everywhere is somewhere, but in a much more significant way, we are nowhere right now.

Lars…

I’ve never known my younger brother all that well. I was already well on my way to becoming the sociopathic deviant I pride myself on being when Lars was born. I was eight. It always struck me that Lars wasn’t actually an accident. I think Mom and Dad looked into my eyes, saw a terrible goddamn mistake and figured, “Let’s try again.”

Lars was thirteen when they died. I was twenty-one. I didn’t know shit about how to raise a child. I was proper stunned when I discovered that I had been left as Lars’ legal guardian. I have to assume it was some paperwork mistake that never got sorted.

I did my best. I made sure that he stayed in school. Made sure he had caretakers looking after him. Made sure that I saw him at least once a year, on Christmas. But I had no idea who he was becoming. Who he was turning into.

Some would call it selfish, yeah? I suppose. I might argue in return that because I saw no place for him in the world that was mine, Danny’s, and Christine’s, that I was being righteous by keeping him at a distance.