20th April, 2006
It Always Starts With a Bang
Thursday, 9:21 am in Storytime
Drabble written at work.
The second he walked in she knew he was going to be trouble. Tall and broad-shouldered, with wide, feral addict eyes peering out between an explosion of grotty dreadlocks and a ragged, mangey coat that looked like it might have once been made from long white fur. A jacked-up twink, and Eli was instantly set on edge. Nevertheless, when that toxic green gaze fell on her, she did her best to put on a smile.
“Hungry?” she asked when he ambled over – even with the sloping limp there was still something powerful about his walk. Maybe not a twink, then; and now that he was this close she had to crane upwards just to look at him. He was seven foot if he was an inch, and standing underneath that, Eli felt tiny indeed.
The stranger frowned an addled frown at her question. “I… don’t know,” he said eventually, his voice rich and and dangerous; velvet and razorblades.
She widened her grin, fierecly determined as she ladeled out greasy soup into a red plastic bowl. “Try some,” she encouraged, offering the bowl, receiving another wild stare for her trouble.
A frown. “I can’t take this.”
Eli resisted the temptation to sigh; she hated the vague ones. “Why not hon? It’s good.”
“I know but… it’s not mine. It’s another offering.”
(This isn’t right it shouldn’t be here…)
The thought was sudden and sharp enough to make her blink, but before she could say anything–
“This isn’t right. I shouldn’t be here.”
For an awful second the bowl dropped, turned over, spilt greasy, hot soup all over the desk, all over the stranger, all over her. And then Eli blinked, and the bowl was sitting on a dirty hand, the surface disturbed but not a drop spilt.
(I dropped that. I dropped that and I saw it fall and on my God he didn’t even move.)
“I– I think you’d better leave, sir.” All around she felt the room stir; the other patrons huddled a little further down inside dirty jumpers, Dave and Sister Joseph stood a little straighter behind her.
“You’re afraid of me. You shouldn’t be, not yet–”
“L-look if you don’t leave right now I’m going to have to–”
“But you should be afraid–”
“– t-to call Dave over there and–”
“– of them.”
And then everything happened at once. Behind her, Dave stood up, cracked his knuckles and rolled his thick neck in the universal threat. The stranger’s eyes flicked up for a moment but Eli was never really sure if he saw; he did hear the door crash open, hear the click of a gun and the first breath of an abortive shout. She never managed to hear was it was going to be; before she could blink the space in front of her was empty, the stranger nothing but a dirty grey blur.
In the next heartbeat it was over. Three men lay in a broken heap not half a foot from the door, three guns kicked across the room – one at her feet – unspent bullets arcing out across the lino. And the stranger was back in front of her again, still holding the bowl of soup, still with not a drop spilled. Eli couldn’t breathe.
“I’m sorry,” the voice was much sharper than it had been, the eyes behind it as cold and as clear as glass. “I shouldn’t’ve come here.”
He got halfway to the door before the gunshot.
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