Shaking (Version 6: Hands)
Her hands were shaking.
It was her strongest memory after the event the EERIE 'incident' as they taken to calling it. Her hands had been shaking as she pointed the gun.
How can you shoot someone if you can't stop your hand from shaking?
It took three days for her to realise and understand what had happened. Three days of being too busy with other jobs to remember what it was like when she was hungry and thirsty. Three days to remember how her hands shook and shuddered as she pointed the gun.
She was sitting on the living room floor when suddenly, without warning, she was shaking again. She was shaking and then crying and wondering why she wasn't screaming as Danny wrapped an arm around her. He handed her a white handkerchief and sat on the ground in front of her.
"We were trained for it," he said.
She nodded and blew her nose. "Sure. I know."
"They needed to see what we would do."
She pushed a stray piece of hair away from her eyes. "I never thought I'd be the one pointing a gun at people I work with. I mean, we've trained for it, sure, but I never thought it would be me."
"You didn't fire the gun, though. Tom did that, remember."
"Because I said he could!" She looked down, realising her hands were still shaking. She wondered if they'd ever stopped. "I wouldn't have been able to shoot the gun, Danny. My hands were shaking too bad. And I can't decide if I'm more upset because I couldn't shoot the gun, or because I might have needed to."
He held her as she cried. She looked up at him through swollen eyes. "Why did we have to do it, Danny?"
His eyes were set and his voice firm. "Because it's what we've been trained for, Zoe. It's what we have to do."