Oh, maybe Jo kept it in the drawer on the far right. Imogen always forgot to check there. Half the time it was locked, so she always assumed important papers lived in the right-side drawer. It wasn’t locked this time, though. It was filled with papers, which was a good sign. She lifted up the papers and that was when her heart stopped.

A gun.

There was a rational part of Imogen’s mind that continued to work. Started speaking calmly and logically in her mind. Archer Hunt Junior probably put the gun by the register in the case of a robbery or a mass shooting or the end of the world. He was one of those paranoid kind of white men who must have felt that he needed a gun in all of his spaces, even the spaces he hardly ever went anymore. He had to be prepared. Imogen sensed that about him, from the way he banned the store from being posted on the internet to the way he checked in on Jo every day via the landline phone.

Archer Hunt Junior was definitely the kind of man to own a gun.

But there was also an instinctive part of Imogen’s brain running at the same time. One that told her that this was the end of the world. That the gun beckoned to the darkness inside of her. Called to the void in her. Spoke directly to the nothing that she fought so hard against.

The nothing was winning. And then, in a flash, Imogen could feel—this piece of her that Imogen didn’t realize she had—it awakened within her and reared up and found the last scrap of survival that was left inside of her and—

—Imogen screamed with every ounce of breath that she had in her. With the smallest slivers of survival that remained intact. She screamed like it was the end of the world because, for her, it could have been. She didn’t stop screaming until people were all around her. Wouldn’t stop screaming until someone took the weapon out of her hand and destroyed it. Nothing else would keep her from her banshee wail.

Jo was the first to break Imogen’s screaming spell. “Imogen, honey, what is going on?”

“I found this by the register.” Imogen set the gun into Jo’s accidentally outstretched hand. Imogen swallowed, and her throat felt raw.

Jo’s joking demeanor changed in an instant. She went rigid. She stared at the weapon in her palm for a moment, then she looked up at Imogen, her eyes wide and nearly wild. “Holy shit. How did you get this?”