Mr. Murder

The Other's arms, trying to spread them wider and break the strangulating grip. The assailant redoubled his efforts, determined to hold tight. Marty strained harder, too, and his overworked heart pounded painfully against his breastbone.
        They should have been equally matched, damn it, they were the same height, same weight, same build, in the same physical condition, to all appearances the same man.
        Yet The Other, though suffering two potentially mortal bullet wounds, was the stronger, and not merely because he had the advantage of a superior position, better leverage. He seemed to possess inhuman power.
        Face to face with his duplicate, washed by each hot explosive breath, Marty might have been gazing into a mirror, though the savage reflection before him was contorted by expressions he'd never seen on his own face.
        Bestial rage. Hatred as purely toxic as cyanide.
        Spasms of maniacal pleasure twisted the familiar features as the strangler thrilled to the act of murder.
        With lips peeled back from his teeth, spittle flying as he spoke, impossibly but repeatedly tightening his stranglehold to emphasize his words, The Other said, "Need my life now, my life, mine, mine, now.
        Need my family, now, mine, now, now, now, need it, NEED IT!"
        Negative fireflies swooped and darted across Marty's field of vision, negative because they were the photo-opposite of the lanternbearing fireflies on a warm summer night, not pulses of light in the darkness but pulses of darkness in the light. Five, ten, twenty, a hundred, a teeming swarm. The looming face of The Other vanished in sections under the blinking black swarm.
        Despairing of breaking the assailant's grip, Marty clawed at the hate-filled face. But he couldn't quite reach it. His every effort seemed feeble, hopeless.
        So many negative fireflies.
        Glimpsed between them, the vicious and wrathful face of his wife's demanding new husband, the domineering face of his daughters' stern new father.
        Fireflies. Everywhere, everywhere. Spreading their wings of obliteration.
        Bang. Loud as a rifle shot. Second, third, fourth explosions-one right after another. Balusters breaking.
        The handrail cracked. Sagged backward. It no longer received support from the balusters that had gone to splinters under it.
        Marty stopped resisting the attacker and frantically tried to wrap his legs and arms around the railing in the hope of clinging to the anchored remains instead of hurtling out through the opening gap.
        But the center section of the balustrade disintegrated so completely, so swiftly, he couldn't find purchase in its crumbling elements, and the weight of his clutching assailant lent gravity more assistance than it required. As they teetered on the brink, however, Marty's actions altered the dynamics of their struggle just enough so The Other rolled past him and fell first. The assailant let go of Marty's throat but dragged him along in the top position. They dropped into the stairwell, crashed through the outer railing, instantly making kindling of it, and slammed into the Mexican-tile floor of the foyer.
        The drop had been sixteen feet, not a tremendous distance, probably not even a lethal distance, and their momentum had been broken by the lower railing. Yet the impact knocked out what little breath Marty had drawn on the way down, even though he was cushioned by The Other, who hit the Mexican tiles back-first with the resounding thwack of a sledgehammer.
        Gasping, coughing, Marty pushed away from his double and tried to scramble out of reach. He was breathless, lightheaded, and not sure if he had broken any bones. When he gasped, the air stung his raw throat, and when he coughed, the pain might not have been worse if he'd tried to swallow a tangled wad of barbed wire and bent nails. Scrambling cat-quick, which was what he had in mind, actually proved to be out of the question, and he could only drag himself across the foyer floor, hitching and shuddering like a bug that had been squirted with insecticide.
        Blinking away tears squeezed out of him by the violent coughing, he spotted the Smith & Wesson. It was about fifteen feet away, well beyond the point at which the transition from tile floor to hardwood marked the end of the entrance foyer and the beginning of the living room.
        Considering the intensity with which he focused