Raw Deal by Les Standiford

him, wondered what she had felt when the blast took her. There was another strike from the cat, a rough jolt sending him completely under, as the pain from the first blow finally erupted. It would have been much quicker for her, or at least that is what he prayed.
    He felt liquid fill his throat. There was a third blow then, and a fourth. The water boiled now with scavenging lungfish come to join the harvest. He thought of Marielena once again, imagined the flash of hatred she must have felt for him…for she must have known how he had betrayed her.…
    And soon enough he could not think at all.

Chapter 6
    The television was a tiny black-and-white, which made it worse somehow, the black and white. Why was that, Tommy wondered momentarily, then forgot he had wondered.
    Stand at the window of the apartment—surrounded by the damp heat of a South Florida August night, palmetto bugs whispering past your ears like tiny bats to bang against the screen, tree frogs cranking it out like no tomorrow—look in, you’d think you were peeping on an ordinary guy: a Nike T-shirt, khaki shorts, and beach flops, popcorn in a supermarket bag in his lap as he stared at the tiny screen.
    Slender guy, but well built, nice-looking, hair trimmed neatly, almost too short, but even that in style these days. A friendly face, unlined from a distance. You’d have to get up close to see that he was fifty, maybe fifty-five. Tanned as he was, that easy smile, short fluff of hair falling across his forehead, he might pass for thirty-five. Nice guy, Tommy. Everybody likes Tommy. Harmless old Tommy, get your finger out of your nose.
    “Tommy…”
    He hears his name called, looks up at the window in surprise, but of course there’s no one there. He’s used to that. Used to the phantoms who come calling, though they never hang around for long.
    He turns back to the set. It happens every night, if he doesn’t remember to get away in time. Right after all the programs go off.
    The song…the…
star-spangled something
…comes on, big hairy band whoomping it out, the flag flapping in some made-up breeze somewhere, and then the pictures they beam along. The nice ones at first. It always starts out nice:
    Kids swimming in a creek, a panorama of some mountains, a seacoast with cliffs and waves, somebody’s grandma pulling a pie out of an oven, an old man with his arm around a kid’s shoulders, big sunset in the background. Tommy feels an arm around
his
shoulders, reaches up to pat the hand that’s never there.
    It won’t stay nice like this, he knows it. But it’s like being caught in a bad dream. Too late to do anything about it. He can’t get up. Can’t go turn off the set. He just can’t.
    Maybe if he had one of those kind of TVs with a button in your hand…he could just push it and wink it out. But no, he wouldn’t be able to stop it even then.
    “Tommy?” The voice all sweetness and light. “Look, Tommy.”
    He doesn’t want to look, but he can’t help it. This is the part, the part where it starts. Rockets. Red. Glare. What words are those? Where from? Nobody’s singing.
    On the screen are the soldiers. The jungle. They are slogging through water. That guy is tired. Tommy closes his eyes. Sees him step on something. Something sharp, up through his foot, or is it the exploding thing, the guy going up in the air like a doll some kid tore and tore, and tossed away?
    He opens his eyes and the soldier is still slogging through water, of course. He just doesn’t know yet. There are people on shore watching. Little people in pajamas. One man smiling, all his teeth rotting away.
    If he could just get up and go to bed, Tommy thinks. But he sees the little pajama man turned upside down now, dangling from the end of a rope, the rope tied to a bent-over tree limb and someone pulling the limb down and the little man’s head goes down in the water where something is thrashing and the water turns red.
    Bursting. In. Air.
    No little man on screen at