fractured

‘You just looked at her. I saw the way you looked at her! I can’t take it anymore!’ Arlo burst out.

‘What? I just wanted to say hi..’ Fred replied, his voice trembling. The tone of the conversation changed dramatically. I looked at Arlo, terrified. It wasn’t the first time that his attitude had switched in my presence, and I learned how to cope with it. I knew how to calm him down, but only when we were alone. Just the two of us. This is different.

‘She is mine, do you understand? Do you fucking understand that?’ Arlo started getting even more enraged.

‘Okay, bro, relax. I don’t want trouble.’ Fred started walking back towards the door. I could tell he had never seen Arlo like this before.

Arlo stormed at him and pressed him to the wall, looking straight at him with his angry eyes. Fred’s whole body started shaking.

‘Telling me to relax? Me?’ Arlo hissed, pressing Fred hard against the wall with one hand, and his other hand started opening the wardrobe next to the front door.

‘Maybe you should relax? Trying something with my girlfriend every time you see her.’ His hand reached something inside the wardrobe. I was standing too far away to see what he grabbed. Fred’s eyes were wide, glassy with fear, as he tried to wrench himself out of his attacker’s grasp. And then I saw it, what Arlo had pulled from the wardrobe. An air rifle.

‘Relax!’ Arlo yelled, laughing hysterically to himself.

My heart began to race, panic surging through me. My hands turned clammy, my breath catching in my throat as fear gripped every part of me. But I wasn’t afraid for myself. The panic rising in my chest had nothing to do with me. I was afraid for Fred.

I had seen Arlo like this before. Not like this, never with a weapon, never threatening anyone, but I knew that version of him. I’d always believed I could calm him down. I clung to that thought like it was something solid, something true. But now, watching him with Fred, the way his grip tightened, the way something in his eyes didn’t quite belong to him anymore.

‘Arlo! Let him go! Please!’ I screamed, the words tearing out of me before I even knew where they came from, my voice raw with desperation. I just needed Fred to get out. If he could leave, maybe I could still calm Arlo down.

‘Shut up!’ Arlo shouted, turning his head slightly without even looking at me, still pressing Fred into the wall.

I watched as, with his free hand, he slowly brought the air rifle down, pressing it against Fred’s knee. Fred’s eyes darted wildly, frantic with fear. His lips trembled uncontrollably. It was as if he could not see Arlo anymore, not really. There was no recognition in his eyes, no trace of the friend he once knew.

‘Okay, Arlo. He didn’t do anything.’ I said, forcing my voice to stay calm as I edged closer and gently put my hand on his arm.

I barely finished speaking when the first shot went off.

Then Fred screamed.

It tore out of him as his knee gave way beneath him, his body buckling. His eyes filled instantly, tears spilling over, pain and fear blurring into one.

For a moment, it didn’t register. My mind lagged behind what my eyes were seeing, like it was trying to refuse it.

Fred slid down the wall, his body dragging against it before collapsing onto the floor. He tried to push himself up, but his leg wouldn’t hold him.

Something inside me shifted then, quietly, but completely.

This wasn’t Arlo. Not anymore. Not the person I knew, not the one I had built in my head, the one I thought I loved. That version of him felt distant now, almost unreal. Like something I had imagined. My thoughts scattered, to many to hold onto, slipping through me, but one stayed. Clear. Insistent.

Run.

The front door was blocked, Fred’s body in the way, unmoving except for the tremors of pain. I turned without thinking and moved toward the bathroom. I don’t remember crossing the distance. One second I was there, the next my hand was on the handle.

I slammed the door shut. Locked it. I dropped to the floor.

No tears came. Just a hollow, suffocating pressure in my chest. My hands moved on their own, clamping over my ears, like that could erase Arlo’s voice, Fred’s broken, uneven cries. But the sound seeped through anyway.

It always does.