Fifty thousand volts has a way of doing that to you, I guess. When the charge from Merker’s stun gun hit me, the effect was instantaneous, and I don’t believe there are words to adequately describe the sensation. It was like my entire body was a tooth with a filling, and it had just bitten into the world’s biggest piece of tinfoil.

So I hit the floor, and lay there a moment, and was only vaguely aware of the commotion going on around me. But there was plenty of it. As best as I can recall, Mrs. Gorkin was the first to start shouting.

“Drop it!” she screamed.

“Fuck are you?” Merker shouted back.

Then one of the twins—like it matters which one—appeared out of nowhere and slammed Merker up against a wall. He took another shot with the stun gun—it being one of those newfangled ones, he was able to fire it more than once—and caught the other twin, who screamed and dropped to the floor as quickly as I had, but, and I’m not just saying this to be nasty, with a much more resounding thud. Then Merker fired the gun a third time, but failed to connect with anyone.

There was another shot, but from a real gun. It had come from Mrs. Gorkin, who fired wild, sending a bullet into the wall next to Merker.

“Be frozen!” Mrs. Gorkin shouted.

And then everything went quiet, except for some whimpering from both me and, as it turned out, Ludmilla. We were the two stunned ones.

“Okay, let’s everyone just calm down here a moment,” Merker said, catching his breath. For all he knew, these three lovely ladies were members of my family, and the Walkers were just waiting for someone like Gary Merker to show up so we could toss him about and fire bullets at him.

But he must have also been able to sense that something was amiss here. That he’d actually walked in on something out of the ordinary.

“Who are you?” Mrs. Gorkin said, keeping her gun trained on Merker but moving across the room to check on Ludmilla, who was struggling to her knees. “You okay, sweedie?” she asked.

“Who the fuck are you?” Merker said.

“Listen,” I said, trying to sit up. “Give me a second here and I’ll try to introduce everyone, shall I?” Merker glanced at me, surprised, perhaps, that I would be able to introduce him. I wasn’t certain he recognized me from the stun gun demo he’d done for the cops, and it occurred to me after I’d offered to do introductions that maybe it was a mistake for me to let on that I knew who he was.

The fifty thousand volts might have interfered with my mental processes.