Re: [capital pawnshop: hannah & david]
The plan, clearly, had been to knock her flat so Henry had an opening to run. She would fall, her knight in shining armor would check to be sure she was alright, and he would have time to make for the back door. To start screaming. Anything.
She didn't fall, though. She should have fallen, with the weight of his swing behind the blow, but she only stumbled and stayed upright, and that gave David all the time he needed to grasp the haft of the shovel, lightning quick, too fast, and jab the handle into the soft place below Henry's chin.
Henry fell back, choking, grasping at the flattened cartilage of his esophagus sucking in breaths through a now straw-sized gap in his constricted throat. The ghost knelt down, holding up a hand for her to grasp to stay upright. No broken bones, but she would be bruised. "I'm sorry," he said. He looked up at her, still kneeling beside the shallowly shoveled grave and the choking man. "He doesn't want help. He wants to live. He wants to keep creating death. Homo homini lupus."
Henry had rolled over, face down in the narrow hole. He hadn't dug deep, but already there was black plastic showing through the loose dirt, smooth and shiny.
David stood, hand still outstretched to offer her support. There was something more to all of this, wasn't there? She wasn't just a figment, or a random passer-by. He didn't know what she was, but she was here for a purpose. She was lily white, red, and bruised, and she reacted to human violence as if it were a cool novelty.
She knew why she was here. He pulled up the shovel and planted it deep, deep into the ground, so it stood neatly upright, like a stake.
"If you stay," he said, gently, "You'll see him die." She would be a witness, and she would see death firsthand. But she was dead - or was she alive? Or was she neither? His skin was cold, but she was warm, and she bled and bruised. She understood what had happened here, and so she could decide for herself whether it was time to be gone.