In the pitch-black basement, Freddy’s eyes were open wide.
He listened intently.
His girlfriend Kia stirred beside him.
“What are you—,” she tried to say.
He spun, covered her mouth with one hand, showed her the gun he was holding in the other.
“Somebody’s upstairs,” he whispered. “Stay here.”
Freddy eased out of bed and cautiously climbed the stairs from his basement apartment.
At the door leading to the first floor, he held the gun high beside his head, listening. It could’ve been his mother moving about, but those weren’t her familiar, slow sounds. As he pressed his ear to the door, he knew there were at least two people shuffling about. Then he heard men’s voices whispering.
Freddy’s heart pounded in his chest. His hands coated over with sweat. He grabbed tightly to the gun, slowly twisted the door’s knob with the other hand. He swallowed hard, then swung the door open. He saw shadows, heard a glass break, a chair skid across the kitchen floor. He saw the silhouette of a man dart through the room. Freddy leveled his gun on the figure, pulled the trigger, squeezed off three shots. Fire blew from the gun.
“Motherfucker!” someone yelled.
A shot was sent back at Freddy. He heard something whiz past his head. The wood of the door frame splintered beside him as a bullet tore through it.
A kitchen window shattered as the man dived out of it.
Freddy ran through the dark hallway, the gun pointed in front of him, into the living room, where he heard another man.
He saw a form speed past him, cloaked in shadows.
Freddy fired a single shot. The man cried out, turned, fired back at Freddy.
Freddy dived behind the living room sofa.
He heard the front door swing open, the intruder scurrying through it.
Freddy raised his head, fired two more rounds through the door. The room went silent, and Freddy stood slowly, his face covered with sweat. He hurried to the door, looked out. A dark-colored older Chevrolet roared to life, then raced away.
Freddy heard a noise behind him. He whirled around, leveled the gun again.
“Freddy, no!”
He pulled the trigger. The gun clicked on an empty chamber. Freddy gasped. He’d almost shot the girl standing there in the doorway.
“Are you okay?” his girlfriend said, shaking, crying. She stumbled toward him.
“Go back downstairs!” Freddy ordered her.
“But—,” Kia said.
“Go back downstairs. I got to check on Moms,” he said, running to the stairs, taking them two at a time, the empty gun still in his fist.
If something had happened to his mother, he thought, he would not be able to forgive himself. Never. Freddy ran down the hall to the last room, stopped at the door. Pressing the side of his face to the door, he said softly, “Moms?”
“Fred?”
Freddy forced open the door, prepared to give his life. The door slammed against the back wall. He rushed in, the gun raised, but did not see his mother in her bed.
“Moms!” Freddy yelled.
“Down here.”
Freddy followed the faint voice, saw his mother cowering on the floor beside her bed.
He set the gun on her dresser, rushed around the bed, helped his heavy, sixty-five-year-old mother from the floor. He hugged her tight, thankful she had not been hurt. Fearful tears ran down her sagging, copper-colored cheeks. “Was it another break-in?”
“Yeah,” Freddy said, desperately trying to control the rage he felt filling his body. “It was another break-in.”