I’m not sure how long I slept. When I wake up, I take a quick look around and, not seeing anyone out and about on the street, I open the door and get out of the car. The sun is high, but I don’t think it’s noon yet. I shut the door quietly and shove it closed with my hip. No need to tempt fate by making a lot of noise.

  I feel bad for sleeping in the guy’s car, but it wasn’t like I’d planned it. After helping him, I was just so tired I couldn’t resist when the idea struck. Honestly, I’d never felt so exhausted in my life and when he left the door unlocked…. Well, now that I’ve gotten maybe a few hours of sleep, I feel better.

  I hurry away as quickly as a casual walk can take me.

  Last night’s dinner at the bar was an eon ago, and now I’m so hungry that I’m shaky and lightheaded. Nick’s got to be freaking out, wondering what happened to me. Did anybody else see what went on in the bar? Would the woman in the sweater be able to tell anybody anything? And what is going on with me? The strange house with two kitchens and two living rooms didn’t look so strange or large enough for all that. Something beyond weird is up, and I don't mean just the light and dark swirls that are perking up and moving around now that I’m up and moving again.

  That was my apartment, right? I mean, it isn't now, I know. It's the lady’s in the towel, but my key opened the door. My fob let me into the building. My card kept by the ATM. I can't explain any of that, but none of it seemed to be affected by my luck or whatever it is.

  The kidnapper lady did something to me before the Beard killed her, and then he did something else. He said something too. “Goddamn malocchio.” After that, I’ve had a string of disasters I barely lived through and some extraordinary luck that got me out of them and now I’m walking around with a ten-thousand-dollar lottery ticket I have no idea what to do with. It’s a lot of money, but right now I can’t get a meal at McDonald’s. It's very frustrating.

  I don’t know anything about anything right now. I do know that I need to eat and have a place to sleep and that once I have those things and get some rest, I’ll be able to think and figure things out, however weird they are.

  The lottery ticket has a QR code on it. There’s a website listed, and an app advertised there, saying I can use those to get the money, or I can go to a local Ohio Lottery Regional Office, but there’s no address listed and I have no way to look it up. I suppose I can go to the public library, but even if my library card works, it’s on the other side of town.

  The bank is closer, and they’d know, right? It’s money or has to do with money. Plus, I can check to see if I do have an account there still or if whatever’s happening has happened to that too, and it's gone. And it’s just a few blocks away.

  It’s warm enough I don’t need the coat, but who knows what tomorrow’s temperature will be or what my circumstances will amount to then, so I don’t want to throw it away. It’s black, so in the dark it was harder to see how messed up it was. Now, in the stark light of day, the places where the chains tore out and the back split and the oversized girly buttons, well, it all kind of sticks out.

  I’m walking on a service road behind the rows of businesses that line one of the major streets of town. There’s one of those wooden fences that surrounds a dumpster back here. I walk over and peer into the enclosure. The fence is in poor repair and there’s a rusty nail sticking out. I hang the coat on it, half expecting it to fall, but the nail holds, so I leave it there, silently thanking it for its commitment to saving my life and being a blanket this morning. I can safely say I’ve never had a more satisfying experience wearing women’s clothing. Not that I’ve ever done that before or ever will again. So far as anybody knows. Still, the day is young.

  My polo shirt is also black, which is a good thing. If it were white, it’d look a lot dingier after last night’s adventures. I should probably get cleaned up the best I can before I go to the bank, or I'll probably get stopped at the door. There’s a fast food place on the next block and I go inside.

  I avoid eye contact with anybody working there and head straight to the bathroom.

  My hair’s more asymmetrical than usual, lopsided where my head rested on the seat of the car this morning. With curly hair like mine, symmetry must be the goal. It’s a light brown and doesn’t look dirty though I usually wash it every morning. If I do that before bed, by morning I’m lucky if I don’t look like Albert Einstein on a bender. I straighten it up just fine with a little water and my fingers, and then I take off my shirt and examine it. There are a few odd streaks that I scrub off, and I decide just to wash the pits with hand soap and water. Yeah, it’ll be damp when I put it back on, but better that than stink, which it surely does. It’s true that fear sweat is worse than the regular kind.

  After I finish with the shirt, I take a look at my jeans. No way I’m taking them off in a public restroom at a sink. Not with the luck I’m having. A Girl Scout troop would march in or something. The denim seems fine. No tears or holes. No horrible stains. Somehow.

  I wash my face and armpits as best I can and dry myself and my shirt as best I can with the air dryer. When I’m all dressed, I look as respectable as I always do after a rough night.

  I’m able to leave the restaurant without catching anybody’s eye. I feel awkward not buying anything and resolve to once I’m done at the bank, if I’m able to get any money, that is.

  The bank isn’t busy. I can hardly remember the last time I was in one. Most people, I guess, do it all online. I would too if I had the option.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  There’s one teller open with another one dedicated to the drive thru. A manager sits with two men, one of them in a college jacket, in one of those glassed-in offices they have off to the side. The vault is right there, open. The big round metal disk on the inside of the door always reminds me of a hobbit hole.

  There’s an old fellow in front of me in a ball cap and flannel. He’s got his checkbook in his hand while the teller finishes up with the heavy-set African American woman.

  A woman comes in behind me with a stroller. She’s only a few years older than I am, blonde, wearing a cardigan over a pretty yellow blouse with a cherry pattern and beige slacks. The baby’s got a rattle she’s enjoying the Hell out of, swinging it around like a tiny Conan the Barbarian attacking flying monkeys or something. As I watch, she lets it go flying over into a corner and then fusses. Thwarted and vexed by the consequences of her own actions? Welcome to the human condition, tiny.

  Her mom was looking in her purse for something and didn’t see. When her kid complains, mom squats down looking concerned. “Now, where’s your rattle?” she says.

  “I got it,” I tell her, and smile as I go off to where it landed by the water cooler and coffee machine.

  I’m bending down for it when the front door opens with a crash and three armed men come in yelling.

  Because of course they do.

  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

  I’d been doing so well. Almost half an hour conscious and nothing. Now I’m crouched beside the little cabinet the bank uses for its coffee stuff with a baby’s rattle in my hand, hoping to go unnoticed or, failing that, unshot.

  I’m terrified. I don’t know what to expect because of what’s been going on with me, and this is so much worse than the convenience store. There are people here. Women and children. Did I do this somehow? I feel sick.

  Three men, one with a huge shotgun, one with an AR-style something or other, and the last with a MAC-10 submachine gun, are telling everybody that this is a robbery, and no one is going to get hurt. They gather everybody but one teller out into the lobby where we’re all made to sit on our hands.

  Shotgun stays by the door, watching us. AR slings his weapon onto a shoulder and pulls out a pistol to deal with the teller while MAC paces between his partners, looking at everyone and everything, his eyes wide and crazed.

  Do people even rob banks anymore? I didn’t know.

  The baby starts crying.

  Her rattle is a plain white plastic thing with a round bit up top with beads inside. I think about tossing it to the kid, but any kind of sudden motion is probably a bad idea.

  The colors in my vision are really swirling now and growing darker by the second. I Push a little, trying to keep things on the lighter side.

  I’m managing it. Wherever I see a dark blotch forming, I kind of shove in that direction and it recedes, but it’s getting a bit whack-a-moleish. Honestly, I don’t see why that should be. If this is a straight-up robbery, it shouldn’t be a problem. Give them the money and let them go, right?

  But the baby is crying, and people don’t like that. I think it’s worse because there’s danger. There’s something primal in us about babies. We’re biologically engineered to help them. When we can’t, it annoys us, and we get impatient for someone to do something that’ll help. In our minds we phrase it like, ‘Will someone shut that kid up?’ but I think it’s because we’re supposed to help and can’t. Now, when there’s danger? That’s all dialed up to eleven.

  I see movement and notice that the young man in the college jacket has shifted his weight. He’s big. Athletic. I realize it’s a letterman’s jacket he’s wearing. Nobody does that at college except for football players. He’s looking intent, watching the robbers. MAC passes close by him on his route between the man at the door and his buddy stuffing money into the gym bag at the counter. There’s a point where MAC lines up perfectly between Johnny Football and AR.

  Oh shit. I can see his plan.

  He’s going to tackle the one into the other and count on getting a gun away from one of them before Shotgun can do a thing.

  He doesn’t see that Shotgun is on to him, watching him, his eyes narrowing.

  The baby is screaming now, and mom is getting frantic. She sits on her hands like she was told, but she’s struggling not to touch and soothe her child. She's doing the best she can, singing to her in a quavering, sweet voice.

  The screams last longer than seems possible, with the red-faced infant squeezing every last bit of air out in a ragged, shuddering wail that grates every nerve before sucking in another breath to do it again.

  The darkness is getting away from me however frantically I Push, and I know things are about to come to a head. Johnny Football is about to do something, and people will start dying.

  I have to do something, but what? I’ve got nothing on me except this fucking toy! Well, that and my wallet.

  I pocket the rattle. Setting it on the dirty floor seems wrong. I Push a little harder and I’m able to get to my back pocket without Shotgun or MAC noticing. So, here’s my beat up brown leather wallet that used to be my dad’s, and there’s nothing inside but the usual stuff. I don’t know why I’m even bothering to look. It’s not like I keep an uzi or an icepick in here or could. What am I doing?

  Wait a second. Maybe I don’t need a nuclear weapon or anything. I just need to be a distraction. Something to diffuse the situation. I need to be a pinprick. A mote in the eye. More than anything else, I need to try or I’ll never forgive myself.

  My library card is sturdy, slick plastic. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, Push, and fling it at MAC’s feet as he walks away from me.

  The card zips under MAC’s heel just as his foot comes down. His leg flings out from under him with a yelp and he’s doing a split he’s not flexible enough to pull off. He’s falling over.

  His gun goes off, amazingly loud in the confines of the small bank, stitching bullets into the counter, the man with AR, and then the ceiling. AR goes down like somebody cut his strings.

  Shotgun has aimed his weapon at Johnny Football, but sees me coming and tries to swing it around on me.

  I catch the barrel with my left and the stock with my right to keep the gun off me. I’m still Pushing as much light into the situation as I can and the shotgun bucks in my hand with a roar. MAC catches the blast in the throat just as he points his gun at me. The MAC-10 goes off twice more and Shotgun falls away, leaving me holding his weapon.

  I blink down at it.

  Movement from my right. Outside.

  A man is running up to the bank from a car, its driver's door open, a rifle of some sort in his hand. Of course. There’s got to be a getaway driver, right?

  I move to the side of the entrance. The bank has two-way mirrors for the front wall. Probably a security feature for something just like this. The shotgun is a pump. I ratchet it down, hoping I’m doing it right. My plan is to put it to the guy’s head and tell him to drop his gun, then hold him for the police.

  He bursts into the bank and sees his friends there, dead on the floor. As damaged as my ears are, I still hear him flick off the safety and raise the weapon.

  Feeling sick, I pull my trigger first, not having said a word, and his head comes apart in front of me.