It had been several minutes before he could force himself to get out of bed.<br/><br/>His feet trembled, at first, but as he began to realize what was going on he sped up, forcing himself out the door and down the elaborate hallway. There was the notion that he should be quiet, perhaps some irrational desire not to disturb the guests or a substantially more rational desire not to be seen by whoever it was who had pulled the trigger, but the thought was lost in the adrenaline as he found himself sprinting down the hall. Skidding across the carpet until it wadded into the corner--his mother would kill him for it, later--he pushed off for the stairs still in his pajamas and took the stairs two at a time, working the railings expertly. His pulse in his ears drowned out the thunder of his footsteps, but he would never forgive himself for skidding into the foyer just in time to watch her slip out the door.<br/><br/>Or for halting when the site of the bodies hit him.<br/><br/>Gunshot wounds aren't as nice as the pictures would have you believe, especially a shot to the head with a large caliber round. Blood and pulped brains, cracked skull and thick, viscous slurry ran and dripped and pooled around the table, a few errant spatters criss-crossing the otherwise elegant wallpaper. Strangely--absurdly--it was the broken glasses that caught his attention, where they glimmered like garnets in the flows of viscera or lay scattered about the floor. It took him far too long to process all this, his heartbeat obliterating any notion of rational decision before he felt his hands ball at his sides and his body turn for the door.<br/><br/>Someone had left, and that someone must have killed them.<br/><br/>He had no shoes and the cement was rough on his bare feet, but he vaulted down the brownstone stoop and hit the cement running, ignoring the rasp across his feet as he caught the hint of flame at the end of the block desperately. It must have looked absurd--he couldn't have been more than fourteen in a pair of somber pajamas--but he dashed after her all the same in a fury.<br/><br/>"Get back here!" he demanded, shouting after her in a snarl.<br/><br/>Hardly poetry, but it got the job done.