I don't remember why I wrote this

There was a longer story idea, something I intended to make longer. I forgot what the idea was.

The scene:

She walked from the carnage, backlit movielike, a pistol in each hand. Smoke drifted across the scene behind her, flames rose, and around her head was a red aura, maybe her own, maybe an illumination from the smoke and flames. Her aura was red at times, blue at times; never envy-green. Her hair was tight curls, long and dark, past her shoulders, a few strands across her face. She stopped when a couple of steps away. I saw then the slides of her pistols were locked back.

“You depleted?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said and she pushed the magazine release button on each Colt. Two long magazines fell onto the dusty ground. “You?”

“No.” I pulled two full magazines from a cargo pocket.

“Good,” she said.

I took her righthand pistol, put in the magazine and released the lock. The slide rammed home with that satisfying “Chunk.” I put the safety on, handed the pistol to her and then reloaded the other.

I said, “They’re seven-shot.”

She smiled as she put the pistols into open holsters on her belt. “They’ll do.” When I bent over and picked up the two empty magazines, she said, “You think we’ll need those?”

“Never can tell.” I put the magazines in a lower pocket on my tunic. “I apologize for not getting here sooner.”

“You’re here now.”

“Yeah.”

“I figured you had some trouble on the way.”

“Some.”

“I had to start without you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I don’t like starting without you.”

“I know. It’s a good thing you had the long mags, huh.”

“I would have taken their weapons,” she said. “They were using nine-mils for the most part. And …” she drew out the word. “A couple of shoulder-fired somethings I’d never seen before.”

“Death beams or ray guns?”

“Yes. Tech support will sort everything out.”

“They usually do.”

We stepped forward at the same time. She said, “You get the kids off to school?”

“That’s why I’m late. I’ve told the dumb … foxtrots not to keep you at the office, but …”

“They don’t listen.”

“No, they don’t.”

“That’s why they’re dumb foxtrots.”

“Yes,” I said. “Naomi has band practice after school today. Joab and Gideon have baseball practice. We’ll get back in time to get cleaned up and pick them up.”

“Maybe we’ll have time for a nap?”

“We’ll make time, ‘cause this old man gets cranky …”

“You think I don’t know?”

We held hands as we walked to the french doors that led to the stone patio and marble balustrade and the rose garden.

“Nice drawing room,” she said.

“Too bad it’s going up.”

“Not really,” she said.

“No.” I opened a door.

“Thank you.”

“Maybe the house doesn’t take on the evil aspects of its owner, but …”

She said, “Why take the chance?”

“They say you can tell a man and a woman have been married a long time if they finish each other’s sentences.”

“Somebody said ‘too long.’”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Neither do I.”

The house went up when we were halfway down the one-hundred-meter-long gravel walkway. In keeping with her status and mine, not a single brick battered us, not a shard of glass got near. We felt only the heat from the flames.

She said, “I guess the techs won’t get to study the ray guns.”