Opinion of the winning entry in our Silent Character Contest was performed under the musical influence of The Wire soundtrack.

Lucky Day
Derek Cockey

“You gots nowhere to run, Porky!” A spray of automatic gunfire perforates the cinderblock wall like a rimshot for his half joke. Chunks of manmade rock and flakes of paint drizzle down and form a puddle not far from where I’ve hunkered. His maniac friends laugh, demons comfortable in Hell. I pray for deliverance. (This opening paragraph doesn’t just hit the ground running, it explodes! Gunfire, cinderblocks and maniacal laughs! If these aren’t enough to sufficiently hook the reader, there's also that silver-tongued Voice.)

He’s right, though. There are seven of him and his between me and freedom, (I had to read this twice to understand it, but that sometimes happens with a unique Voice.) and I’ve only got six of my own little glistening friends with which to clear a path. There is no back-up, a fool’s chance of a passing good Samaritan, and very little hope. (This sentence not only sings, it builds tension by revealing his slim odds. Conflict. If he gets out of this, he knows, it’ll be a miracle. But he’s decided the effort is worth the risk. We hunker down, beside him.) I think of my loved ones (all seem to be former holders of that title), which doesn’t take long.

Above the ugliness of the wall’s bullet holes and graffiti, a dusty mirror spans the width and half the height of the room. (We meet the necessary element of this contest: a mirror.) She is my ally, telling me the secrets of my enemies’ number, and sporadic hints of their movements among the dead industrial machinery that crowds most of her composition. She is the flirtatious wink of a benevolent goddess. (The mirror does nothing but hang from the wall, yet its mere position provides him with life-saving information. It has become an essential character, his goddess. Brilliant!)

Another burst of gunfire interrupts us, and a portion of wall closer to me crumbles. Erratic lead ricochets off a nearby unidentifiable hunk of rusty metal and wiring, coming out of retirement to find use again in protecting my hide. (Even in these dire circumstances, he manages to find humor around him. More character revealed: this person is resilient, intelligent, strong. Not the type who goes down easily.)

“You ain’t doin’ yo’self no favors makin’ us wait to kill you. Trust me!” My noble enforcer of justice (Although we aren’t sure, up to this point, which side of the law our character stands, this sounds like cop talk.) feels cold and steady in my hands, eager to pop its virginal cap.

My goddess winks again, and whispers in my ear that a fiend approaches from my left. I pivot, take quick aim, and squeeze the trigger. My goddess roars in ecstasy as the enemy demon falls.

Accompanying the tinkling sound of blood and other skull fluids on the cement, I hear a partner enemy whimper, then the slap of plasticky rubber shoes coming after me. (Heart pounding.) More automatic fire pierces the tortured wall. My lady stands hushed, watching, confident. (Mirrors do that so well.) Already I can tell he’s coming down the aisle to my right.

I press my feet to the left wall and kick off, my back sliding on the slick, red floor like a bowling ball towards the gutter. The gunfire slows, his gait becomes hesitant, and his wails lost in the vacuum of my concentration. (Violent eloquence.)

In the brief span of time eclipsing the aisle, my hands unsteady, I take a shot at center mass. Three feet south, his kneecap explodes like a bone-chip piñata (Cringe-worthy.) before I skid to a temporary sanctuary. I rest my back against the cold metal skin of another useless behemoth.

“Take ’im! Take ’im now!” the rally cry sounds. Three, Four and Five rush down respective aisles, dropping shell casings like absent-minded flower girls. (Startling, captivating imagery. Flower girls are the last thing you’d expect to see here. Yet the imagination instantly understands the comparison and offers up a shot of pure clarity.)

Leaning to the left, I take out Five, the easiest of the trio. Wet life coughs out of his new stoma. Now to the right, my sluttish revolver switches hands, experimenting with the left. Her sights bounce around, and the hairs Four’s missing me by grow thinner and thinner. I force my lungs still, and launch a sloppy bullet at him. A dark stain pools on his chest as I spin back to my hallowed roost.

Before I can get comfortable, I hear the last footstep as Three crosses his aisle’s finish line. He turns to me, his trophy, eager to collect. We raise our weapons in unison, offering a fatal handshake. Our hands each grip tight, and speeding bits of lead sail past each other. Three falls, a dead fish, and I get the pierced ear my dad said I could never have. (Violent eloquence.)

My ear burns like the devil is talking about me, but I hear another spray of bullets and my goddess screaming. I gaze up in time to see her go all to pieces. Her parts tumble to the ground from Olympus, shattering more as they crash onto mortal earth. (Our essential character has been killed. Now what will our lead character do?)

“Now you’re mine, Peeping Tom!” Six laughs. My goddess is dead.

I check the rounds in the revolver, finding one unspent. I can almost hear it say, “Don’t look at me; I have no idea what you’re gonna do.” (Don’t you just hate sassy bullets?)

I mourn for my lady’s lost secrets. Six and Seven approach with stealth and cunning, traits that helped them outlive their peers. With a clumsy grip on my gun and ear blood running down my sleeve, I take hold of the rusting carcass who’s been shielding me and pull myself up. (Aggressive. Determined.) My palms burn on the fresh bullet holes.

Atop my new post, the aisles spread beneath me like naked valleys. Seven turns a corner, gun aimed with care, smirk saturated with pomp. (Now that's a killer phrase.) His bullet whizzes just by me. Mine breaks two teeth and one brainstem. (Which goes to show that pomp can kill you.)

Six’s five fingers wrench around my ankle and pull me crashing down to the machine, then to the mirror-strewn cement. Breath abandons me. The back of every body part bleeds. Six kicks the gun from my hand, not caring if I fired six bullets, or just five. (Lovely homage to Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry.)

Forgoing the insults or taunts, he trains his black kill machine on my face as I push a shard of my divine lady’s cadaver through the back of his thigh. Distracted bullets pockmark the floor near my head, splitting some mirror pieces into even smaller ones. (More violent eloquence. This scene, particularly the bullets that “pockmark the floor,” is as perceptible as a movie on my screen. I see it! I hear it!) Blood douses his jeans.

Six leans down, fondling the loose meat of his right leg. (Wince, shiver.) His relentless grip on the gun forbids my capturing it, so another sliver of goddess severs his jugular, ruining his entire wardrobe.

I rise to depart, my footsteps quickening as his heartbeat lags. My savior will watch over them until back-up can be summoned. (More cop talk.) The rim of the exit door burns bright against the dim interior. A welcome promise of exodus from this boneyard of dispatched hellions. (A miracle, to be sure! Our lead character will escape after all! Now, go! Run like a jacked-up cheetah before someone else rears his ugly head!)

A flash, and the world grows darker; even the rim fades. (No.) I spin around collapsing, catching a glimpse of a smoking gun, a yellow half smile, and a disassembled knee cap before the blackness encapsulates us all. (So close, and yet…)

OVERVIEW

Whew! What a Voice! There’s nothing more alluring than an authoritative storyteller who shows, from the very first line, that nobody's going to do or say anything in his fictional world without his prior knowledge. He's tight yet comfortable, raw yet articulate, and always very much aware of the audience. Between the lines, he seems to whisper, Stick with me and I promise, I won't waste your time.

And the mirror! How many times do we pass a hanging mirror and stop to truly notice its positioning? What do we see, beyond our own reflection? In this story, the lead character does the exact opposite: he notices everything but his reflection. This humble perspective allows the mirror to help him fend off the bad guys, simply by doing what it does naturally, reflecting the outer world. And if we dig deeper, we just might see the mirror as a symbol of his loneliness. It fills a void. It becomes a partner, a protector.  

By this, he elevates an inanimate object to the level of other great silent characters, such as the jewel-encrusted statuette in the Maltese Falcon, the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby, even the steamship in Titanic. All items that had no dialogue, no heartbeat, but played a vital role in the story.

This is an excellent example of edge-of-the-seat pacing, thick with conflict, character and focus. The action is intense and sanguine, but its authenticity, I dare say, kept even the squeamish reader around to the last word.

Well done, Derek.

 Elizabeth Guy