The Twitch

Pay attention to what you feel.

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

The following story was featured in the MicroZine Digital Issue 2 curated by

Erica Drayton

. Erica does a wonderful job of promoting fiction on Substack and I would encourage you to read all the submissions in the MicroZine which you can find here. I was proud to be a part of it. 500 words is not a lot of words (to me) and I had a lot of fun working with that limit. It was a real challenge for me to tell a story, though several of the writers in the MicroZine told amazing stories with even fewer words. Check them out. You’ll be glad you did.

It was the twitch that told the tale. It always did. For sixteen years as a deputy with the Roane County Sheriff, Clint Hardeman had paid attention to the twitch with the fervency of the saved. Preached it. Lived by it. Marybelle and the kids gave him a hard time about his fervent devotion, but he knew what he knew. The twitch was undefeated. He always said so.  

The late summer sun was blasting down on Highway 70 and the heat was rising from the Tennessee asphalt like the fingertips of the Devil Himself. Sweat burst onto Clint’s neck when he stepped out of his patrol car and approached the rusty pickup truck with the license plate that belonged to a Honda Civic. Confidence and caution in his walk. Over the radio, he had called Don Carlson to back him up on the traffic stop. Don said he was just a couple minutes away. A lot could happen in a couple minutes.

“Got your license and registration handy, sir?”

“I left my wallet at home, officer.” The voice was sheepish. The eyes were wolfish. Long dirty blonde hair shagged around a pair of cloudy but still darting eyes. The scraggly beard hung from his jawline. A long-healed, jagged scar ran down his left cheek. Clint’s uniform, normally crisp, was almost starting to wilt. Almost.

It was nothing but a slight tremor in the driver’s left eye. A wince of premonition, and quick as a hiccup. If Clint hadn’t been watching for it, he’d have missed it. But he hadn’t missed it. His right hand drifted gently to the butt of his service weapon.

The twitch.

“Can you step out of the car for me, sir?” And where the hell is Don?

“Why I gotta do that?”

“For your safety and mine, sir.”

“I’m safe here in the car, man.”

“I’m not gonna ask you again, sir.”

The driver’s shoulders slunk, he sighed heavily, and leaned towards the handle of the driver’s side door. As if he was going to open it. The barrel of the gun glinted in the summer sun. Clint saw that much before reflexes took over.

The first bullet thudded into his Kevlar vest, lodging there only inches from his badge and his left pulmonary artery. The second one ripped through muscle and sinews under his left collarbone. He didn’t feel either. His training merely responded to end the threat.

The footage from Deputy Hardeman’s body worn camera would be scrutinized by investigators from the D.A.’s office, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the media, and his own department. It would show that Ronnie Lee Gowdy, who had been on the run from a parole violation for the better part of two months, had drawn his .45 caliber pistol and fired before Deputy Hardeman had drawn his service weapon. Clint already knew it would show that. Just as he knew that his camera couldn’t capture what saved his life that day.

The twitch.

The twitch was undefeated.