Pitiful and Despicable People

The scene is tense. The air thick, heavy. Eyes flooded with terror blink rapidly, uncontrollably, dart around the room. Their breathing is accelerated, hearts flutter in closed chests. Fear pours from their tear glands in shining crystalline streaks. Frantic. Their thoughts pulse through hysterical minds.
In his hand, the metal is icy, unfamiliar. He feels the power, holds it in his outstretched fingertips. This power, potential wells in his silent trigger finger. The man shakes violently in his grasp. Fully-grown adult becomes a child in a split moment. Pistol to his brow and he feels it, knows what it could do. He feels the power. Smells it, hears it ringing in his eardrums. Tastes its tangy essence on the tip of his tongue. Collapses under the enormous weight of fear, he becomes a child again. Lips tremor, eyes swim in a fresh overflow leaking down his cheeks.
These people disgust him. They cower in the corners, rats hiding in shadow. He looks at them and sees weak children in the shells of adults. He feels strong standing tall, pointing the piece to the man’s forehead. Beads of shining perspiration trickle off the man’s nose. Drip to the tile floor. Silent. Terror holds their tongues, slips down their throats.
Greg had been having a casual day. Work at the bank had been average. Everything had been smooth, normal, typical. Not to the point of being enjoyable, just routine. As the double front doors to Bank of America had parted, revealing a dimming, evening stretch of sky, Greg’s cell phone had vibrated. This whisper, murmur, buzz. He stepped out of work. He answered the phone.
Her voice had been shrill, choking, as if about to shatter. He would never forget the sound, the tone. No matter how fiercely he would attempt to push from his aching memory, it would remember and haunt. She had said it with a quiver in her speech, yet deliberately. “Leaving. I’m leaving you Greg. I won’t be there when you get home tonight. Please don’t try to find me. Please don’t call. It’s over. It’s done. We’re done. Bye Greg.” The phone had clicked slightly as she ended the call. He could picture her now, riding away. It was over. She was leaving him, ending them. It was a natural response as fifteen minutes later; Greg was roaming the isles of the grungy liquor store around the corner.
He had snatches them up before reading labels, identifying; some he even opens before reaching the register. He doesn’t care what was going down, as long as it’s going down. Fill me. Fill me. Drown me. Thoughts tumble, trip, fall over one another within his brain. Over. It’s over. It’s over. Done. Replaying those words again and again. They ricocheted and rebounded off the walls of his tortured, suffering mind. His chest is hollow. He can feel the absence quite distinctly. Greg sees nothing because everything has fallen away about him. His lonesomeness, emptiness is all that remains.
A man bursts through the door, curls his arm around Greg’s neck, gun to his temple. Yelling, shrieking voices suddenly penetrate the absence of sound that Greg has been lost within. In a sort, he awakes. His state of mind is, within seconds, entirely altered. Fear now; it consumes his body. The sudden tightness that engulfs his esophagus is staggering. His temple aches from the pressure. He glances around with frightened eyes to take in the scene.
The store was designed much like any other liquor shop. It’s not a very commodious space, but the people like it because the people love their alcohol. The back wall of the outlet is a refrigerator with foggy glass doors. Bottles varying in size, shape, color, quality, and price fill the fridges; their contents are chilled and deadly. Shelves line the remaining walls, and several isles run down the center of the store. The register is set up on a large desk to the right of the door when you enter. The amount that will be consumed from this shop alone is astounding. People will die by the hand of these creatures.
On this particular date, a twenty four year old is running the cashier. His mother named him Joshua when he was born, after her father (whose full name was Fredrick Joshua Cook). He had died under a month before she gave birth to Josh. It’s nearly Joshua’s second week at the shop. He’s still getting used to things, yet trusted enough to work single-handedly. He graduated college with a degree in fine arts. Josh dreams of becoming a famous painter. Unfortunately for him, painting isn’t going as well as he’d hoped, money is chokingly tight, and jobs are difficult to find. This is how he landed himself in a liquor store.
He continues to press the weapon into the skin a little above Greg’s ear. He can feel him shaking in his firm, restricting, squeezing grip. A grimy, grubby woman cringes in the far right corner. Her hair is oily, thick, disheveled. She wears loose jeans, too big that are ripped. A dirt covered, grey shirt sticks to her upper body. She clutches two cases of beer to her chest. Her eyes are wide and scared; her lips are pressed tightly together. He looks down on her. She is pathetic, vulnerable, and weak. She is the dirt beneath his feet.
Next to her, slightly spaced apart, sit two other men. He grins at them, loving their fear. He lavishes in the terror that chokes their eyes, plugging their pupils.
Fingers stumble as they scramble to pack wads of bills into a black trash bag. Trepidity makes his hands tremble, his thoughts reel into disarray. His fingers keep slipping, dropping.
“Faster, go faster. Do you want this man to die? It would be your fault.” His voice is deep, menacing, and strong; the gun stands behind it. His breathing speeds into violent hyperventilation. Sweat trickles down his cheeks, chin and then down his neck. “You are pathetic. You are weak.” It takes two fingers to pull the trigger. Two fingers, Greg is dead.
Bang. They jump, gasp, and gently caress their sore ears. The shock then horror that illuminate their faces is the reward. Greg slides from his grasp to the floor, quickly darkening in color to a murky red. His life is done, over. It will take time, but the world will forget him eventually. The shot echoes in their minds; they sit paralyzed as the course of events has stupefied them.
The man rips the back from Joshua’s loose grip. He bolts into the outside, struck by the idea that he has killed. Back inside, blood slithers in bright scarlet streams along the floor. Joshua Cook stares into nothingness, unable to move. His mind cannot accept what has occurred. Tears flow vigorously down his face.
What have I done? Guilt, shame, self-hatred, crushing depression burn through his veins, he has been poisoned. Joshua heaps blame upon himself to an overwhelming extent. It amounts to a pressure exceedingly too great for any one soul.
Two weeks pass. One dark, Saturday night Josh wraps a rope around his throat. An early morning jogger discovers him the following day dangling from a sturdy tree. Joshua’s mother is heartbroken.
The man with the gun indulges in his money. Gradually, time takes his mind. It is eleven years before he is caught for a crime. Until then, he lives a wild life of peril, wrongdoing, and insanity. Greg is but the first of his victims. Jail kills the man quickly and he never pays for his harm. The calamity comes to a close.