Chandler's Law

"When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand."
--Raymond Chandler

* * *

They were in his bedroom, swimming in rumpled green beddings, feeling the air cool down around them.

"Sing it for me again."

"I just sang it for you."

"So sing it again. Please?" Lyla peered up at Tom with deep, soulful eyes that hadn't been quite so soulful a second ago. Tom didn't know how she could turn it on and off like that, but it got him every time.

Tom rolled his eyes playfully. "Alright," he said with exaggerated resignation. "Last time." Lyla smiled, resting her head on his chest and closing her eyes. She liked the feeling of his voice rumbling in his ribs, liked the warmth that came with it. She felt the first tickling pangs as Tom hummed, finding his key. He coughed. She shuddered, giggled.

"So," Tom began. "So you think you can tell--"

The door exploded inward. Splinters sprayed everywhere and the broken lock clanged noisily to the floor. The heavy boot that had kicked the door in hit the floor with a thud as its owner stepped into the room. He was black-clad, his features sharp and severe. He leveled a gun at Tom and Lyla with a steady hand.

Lyla screamed, drawing the covers up like some kind of shield. In spite of himself, Tom's first thought was how shiny the gun looked.

"Please don't hurt us!" Lyla yelled, voice shaking and shrill. "Take what you want and go!"

"I ain't gonna take anything, lady," the gunman said gruffly, but he didn't lower his weapon.

"What do you want?" Tom asked carefully, hands coming up alongside his head. The gunman shrugged.

"I'm not sure. All I know is, your story got boring, so I was supposed to come through this door with a gun."

"Boring?" Tom echoed. He turned to Lyla. "We weren't boring, were we?"

"I didn't think so," she replied earnestly.

"Well someone did, or I'd've been sent to another room full of boring people," the gunman said, annoyed. There was an uncomfortable silence.

"So..." Tom ventured after a few moments. "What happens now? Which of us do you shoot?" Lyla turned to him, horrified. "I'm just asking!" Tom said defensively. "I'm assuming he shoots one of us, and then the other would take to the avenging part of this story."

The gunman gave this a moment of thought. "Well, which one of you is the protagonist?" he asked.

"I am," Lyla and Tom chorused. They turned to each other.

"I thought I was," Lyla said. "You didn't come into the story until that day I met you at the diner. I was around before that."

"So was I," Tom argued.

"Well, I didn't see you," Lyla said.

"Lyla, I hate to break it to you, but I'm the protag here," Tom said. "You're a really great girl. You're beautiful, and whimsical, and funny, and basically the wet dream of every lonely writer out there."

"So?"

"So, considering how I'm lonely, introverted, and emotional, doesn't that tell you something about the kind of person that's writing this story?" Lyla considered this. Horror creeped onto her face slowly before completely blossoming like a mushroom cloud of sickening realization.

"Oh my god," she breathed. She turned to the gunman again, desperation in her eyes. "You can't kill me!" she pleaded. "I could live on! I could have development! Maybe I'm the beginning of a trope that's about to be subverted!"

The gunman thought again for a moment. "What if neither of you's the protagonist?" he asked. "What if I'm supposed to kill both of you so the real hero of the story can get involved and solve your murders?"

"Would we get to come back as ghosts to help him solve the case?" Tom asked. The gunman shrugged.

"Dunno. Weirder shit's happened on my beat." There was another uncomfortable lull as the room's three occupants mulled over the confusion.

"You know," said Lyla, "we've been talking for a long time." The gunman's eyes went wide.

"Oh, no--" he began. The closet door slid open. With a yell, a dark man rolled out of the closet adroitly, coming up on one knee with a gun in each hand. He leveled a piece at the first gunman, and another at the two lovers in bed.

"This story has become seriously boring," the second gunman said in a gravelly, no-nonsense voice. "I'm here to fix that."

"I'm on it, buddy," Gunman One said. "Back the hell off." Two shook his head.

"You're part of the problem," he accused. "You're a plot point that's not going anywhere." He paused for effect. "Except Hell," he added, pulling back his gun's hammer for further emphasis.

"Wait! Stop!" Tom yelled. "This is my room! Everybody calm down!" Both gunmen shot Tom dangerous looks, but were nonetheless quiet. "So let me get this straight," Tom said, trying very hard to bring all these meta things down to a level he could understand. "If nothing else happens, more gunmen will just keep showing up in my house?"

"Until something does happen," One said. Two nodded in agreement, making sure to look as taciturn as possible while doing so. Tom thought a moment, then grabbed his glasses off his nightstand. He put them on, flipped on his lamp, and then grabbed a thick book from his bedside table. A dictionary.

"What are you doing?" Two asked, confused, as Tom opened the book.

"Have a seat," Tom said as his eyes fell upon the word "aardvark." "I want to try something."

* * *

Over the next hour, gunmen had come in through the window, up from the floorboards, and even under the bed. One of them, a sniper in the high rise across the street, had his rifle trained on the room as his voice crackled through on Tom's speakerphone. All told, fifteen gunmen and a rather ominous tiny red dot crowded Tom's already cramped bedroom, pointing weapons every which way.

"I think you can stop now," said Nine, a Chinese man brandishing an ornate sword. Tom, who was just finishing up the multiple definitions of "Aztec," trailed off in his dictionary reading.

"But I'm not sure what to do now," Tom confessed. "I didn't think this far ahead. I just figured one of you would get impatient and start shooting." Nine raised an eyebrow. "Or stabbing," Tom amended.

"Tom," Lyla whispered urgently. "If you stop, we'll die." Tom would have made a rejoinder at that point, but Tom was quite suddenly not there at all. "Tom...?" Lyla said slowly, panic pitching her voice up as she looked around frantically, seeing only gleaming gun barrels. The gunmen all exchanged knowing nods.

"Delete key," Three said.

"The powers that be decided your boyfriend was a bad idea," One said sympathetically. "But at least now you know you're the prot--" he trailed off. Lyla was gone, too. The room was now merely full of gunmen itching to kill things, and no obvious target for their ordnance.

"What now?" Eight asked irritably.

"Not sure," Two said with a shrug. "But there can't be too many more of us in the pipeline. How many more could he possibly send?"

Two was right. There would be no additional gunmen, no matter how boring the story got. But the large number of grizzly bears that had just appeared in the hall outside suggested that this had become an entirely new type of story, and one that would not be boring.

* * *

My first stab at metafiction. This is the result of a grain of an idea I've been kicking around for a while. Not substantial enough to be anything other than a very short story, but I had fun playing with it anyway. Have a good weekend.

-PK