Bobby was already blinded from the head butt, but now as everything became fainter, as his breathing halted and his body crumpled, he heard the underwater echoes of yells around him, the voices warping. He feebly tried to fight off the hands on his throat. He raked his long fingernails against them, but everything only tightened. He was fading. The sharp pains in his groin and stomach disappeared, all the sensations lapsed except for the distant feeling of descent, and this, too, seemed to edge away as he thought of his jewelry and cash and everything he had worked for that would be gone when he awoke. He would no longer be able to buy a motor home and drive up to Seattle to flaunt it to his mother and tell her, See, I’m not what you think. And then Bobby heard his brother laughing at him, saying, At least I went down fighting. Bobby tried to curse him, the acid burning through his thoughts, and the last thing that flashed through him in the last glimmer of consciousness was an image of Kevin covered with bullet holes and blood with a cat in his arms, and then Bobby died.