The idea of becoming a statistic is pretty foreign to most people. Being one of the 82 of 100,000 people who get robbed in the United States every day. Or one of the 11 of 100,000 who get in a hit and run car accident. Per the National Safety Council, the chances of you, right now, dying in a workplace shooting are 1 in 11,125.
Just keep in mind, that’s a one. Not a zero.
My name was Eddy. Technically, I’m dead.
I’d been working in the arcade for a good… six months? Six months, I think. Think “discount Dave & Buster’s” and you’re on the right track. I’d finally gotten the hang of the game card machine, people had finally stopped ‘volunteering’ me to unstick the ski ball machines on account of me being small enough to get in them properly, I’d even made a few friends. All in all, not a bad gig. Still, we served alcohol, so there were a few nights I’d come home smelling like stale Miller. Couldn’t even be something pricy, it was always Miller, or Bud, or some cheap, nasty-smelling stuff. Regardless, things had managed to, overall, go great. Pity about the Wellington birthday party deciding to screw that whole situation up.
They were your standard rent-half-the-place types. Not quite to where they could afford to close us for an evening and have the run of the place, and a little bit mad about it. Vocally, usually. Lots of almost-designer outfits with equal amounts of really, really shitty attitude. I’d never actually heard someone call their empties ‘dead sailors’ before, but—
“Ay!”
I winced a little. The chief douche of this particular outfit, the birthday boy, snapped, and, no lie, whistled at me. Like a dog that wasn’t fetching fast enough.
“Ayo! Dead sailors! Take ‘em and replace ‘em!” He gestured to the pack of empties they’d manage to horde, each of them at least four deep. We’d been trained, on pain of death, or worse, unemployment, to not serve drunk people. State law or something. But these, these were experienced alcoholics. Drink just fast enough to keep the buzz high, drink just slow enough to have a case if I decided to cut them off.
“Sure thing! More Michelob, right, Billy?” Did I get his name wrong on purpose? Absolutely. My time in Starbucks taught me well.
“It’s Bobby, fucking get it right,” he spat, glaring daggers at me.
“Right, right, sorry,” I lied, customer service grin nearing rictus status. My cheeks ached. “Lemme go grab a pitcher, ok?”
“Fuck that, it tastes better from the bottle. Just bring more, alright?” He sounded almost exasperated. However, given a chance to escape, I nodded, and made for the beer fridge at the back of the kitchen, openly walking past the one the customers could see. My excuse all night had been that it was a display fridge. Thankfully, Mike and Michelle had heard me and kept the ruse going as they split time between babysitting snapback country and keeping the place from catching fire elsewhere. Thankfully, the drunken jackass brigade had driven most of our usual clientele away for the night. Tonya had managed to keep the kitchen on lockdown the whole night, churning out pizzas and burgers like a one-woman heart attack factory. Bill and Marlena kept that pace, turning the whole production in to a ballet of shortening and sizzle.
Big shoutout to you guys if you’re reading this, by the way. Thanks for sticking around.
The relative peace of being surrounded by nothing but dough boxes and kitchen supplies was broken by the sounds of an argument from the front. Sudden yelling usually meant either “kid stuck in the claw machine” or “drunken brawl” and this sounded like the latter, so I slowed down to listen. I didn’t want to catch somebody’s fist when I left the kitchen if the fight started to migrate.
“I didn’t do shit to you, what fuck, Mikey?” The birthday boy, it sounded like. The tone of someone who’d just had their night ruined.
“You know exactly what the fuck you did!” That was… table 16? Part of the birthday crew, but he’d kept to himself. Mikey had been largely nice. It’s not the waiter’s place to pry when someone at one of your tables is looking sad, or mad, or whatever, but. I’d done what I could to help him. Kept staring at his phone, too. An extra plate of nachos had seemed to do something, at least, and he seemed pretty grateful. Sad, tired. But he managed to slip me a five and say thanks. I still have that five, actually, I saved it. It’s lucky.
As I walked out from between the racks of to go boxes, I saw him storming from the restaurant, the glass and anti-road noise insulation keeping me from hearing whatever he was shouting in to his phone. Bobby was holding someone’s glass of ice water to his cheek, the bruise of a sucker punch already starting to show. Quietly as I could, I started replacing the old, empty bottles with new, fresh ones, deftly popping top after top in rapid succession.
“You, uh.” I faltered, customer service Eddy tagging actual Eddy in. “You want an ice pack or something?”
He blinked, looking borderline defensive for a moment, before slowly nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice. Do you have security cameras or whatever? He tried to take my fuckin’ head off out of nowhere! What kind of asshole does that?!”
“Yeah, we do. I’ll see if there’s a spare flash drive or something, I should be able to get you a copy of the tapes. Be right back, alright?” I gave him a nod, heading for the fridges again. The first aid kit over the sink had some of those instant cold pouches, last I had checked, and some of those butterfly things. You use those if you got cut by somebody’s fist, right? That’s what they used mid-UFC match, that I knew from all the fight night specials we’d managed to have during my illustrious tenure there.
————
Knuckle tattoos are, going by experience, usually a sign that somebody isn’t someone you want to mess with. As is a flannel work shirt that once had sleeves being worn by someone who once had skin that wasn’t covered in ink depictions of skulls or a soldier’s field cross. Seeing an example of each walk in trailing behind the person who’d just left after trying to clock the birthday boy, that upped the stupid incident likelihood meter to “you aren’t paid enough for this, hide now.”
I’d been helping to take a look at Bobby’s face, making sure the cut his now former friend’s sudden sucker punch had left wasn’t gonna bleed all over him more than they already had. His wedding ring had done a number on Bobby’s face. Upon seeing the dumb, violent bastard brigade walk through the front, I got up, speaking quietly in hopes that the people near me would listen and follow suit. “Back door’s past the dish sink, move now.”
“You think you can just mess around with my girl, huh? Is that it?” Mikey shouted, his voice cracking with strain and anger. He’d been crying, sounded like.
Bobby stood up, backing away, hands raised plaintively. “Whoa, whoa, hold up, I thought you we—”
“SIT YOUR ASS DOWN.” Flannel guy bellowed, and for a second, I actually started looking for a chair. His voice shot out like it had been chained up in his throat, and that deep a range was enough that you felt it as you heard it.
“Look, is this about Sherry? She told me you two were done, bro, I wouldn’t—”
“YOU FUCKING KNEW WE WEREN’T,” Mikey roared, a fresh cry almost building, suppressed only by sheer, star-hot rage. His face was starting to redden. “You KNEW. You knew. And you did it anyway,” he seethed, trying to use his gaze to burn his former friend in to a shadow on the far wall.
“Get the fuck outside, we’re going for a drive,” knuckletats said, thumbing at the door behind him. “We don’t gotta do this here.”
“Hell no, I’m calling the cops,” Bobby said. His phone was out, and he was already dialing.
Long about here is where I learned about chronal relativity being a thing, in that time is all perception. Seeing someone distraught shove his hand in to his friend’s waistband and pull out what, at the time, looked like the world’s largest hand cannon, that slows things down. I froze, hard. Deer in the headlights, baby. You’re looking at one. You try going hero mode when you’re getting a buck above minimum wage plus tips, it ain’t happening. As Mikey pulled the chrome cannon from knuckle tats’ wasteband, everything really did seem to move in slow-mo. The grab, the turn, bringing it to bear against the subject of his rage.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
That first shot, that was slow-mo, too.
I remember the slide going back, making the thing buck in his hand. The look of surprise on knuckletats’ face, the look of confused disgust mingling with disappointment and rage on shouty flannel guy. Neither one of them had actually expected Mikey to jam it straight to twenty, just bypassing eleven like it wasn’t even there. Bobby didn’t die then because sorrow makes for terrible aim, turns out. The shot went wide, smacking the men’s restroom sign, shards of painted pressboard exploding out the back of the thing. He’d managed a dead center chest shot, the little man on the sign never even saw it coming.
Bobby ran for it, as any sane person would. Whatever athletic scholarship he was in town on, he sailed over the counter with only his hands touching it. There was, like. Seven, eight inches of air between leg and countertop. Another two shots rang out, one striking tile backsplash, the other putting a hole in the drop ceiling as non-dipshit heads prevailed. Gunney Flannel had started working to wrestle the gun away from his friend, and Knuckles had started trying to work a choke in. Me? I was running for the arcade. The nearest phone that didn’t involve me crossing the firing line was that way, and I wanted to put as much stuff between me and a scorned lover with a moose removal cannon in his hand as I could. I’m no hero, but I am smart enough to know how to hide really, really well, and also know how to dial three numbers in sequence and scream like a girl in to the receiver while babbling. So, I did.
I won’t try to articulate exactly what I said, just know that it was something to the effect of “ohmygodgunhelpplease,” after which I took shelter in the little hidey hole between the Rush 2049 machines and Time Crisis. Good, thick game machine bits that would probably stop a rifle round if need be, and almost no chance of the crazy man with the gun playing Judge Dredd and finding me wanting for daring to give somebody an ice pack.
Having a second to breathe meant finding some kind of calm. Being calm meant being able to think. Thinking, that meant peeking out, wondering what was happening. So I stuck my head out from behind the racing seat platform next to me, low to the ground as I could, and tried to see why it was so quiet. Nobody said I’m smart, okay?
Mikey was somehow managing to hold his own against his two much smarter, better-looking, saner friends. The gun had hit the floor, an improvement. Mikey managing to shove Gunney Flannel back with his legs before kicking him square in the crotch and knocking him to the floor? Not an improvement. The stomp to Knuckletat’s foot followed by several elbows to the face and ribs, leaving Mikey free to bend down and grab the gun, the look of quiet, resolved hate on his face oh-so-visible from my suddenly compromised hidey hole? Wasn’t a fan of that, either. I ran, hard and fast. The employees only door slapped the wall hard enough to dent the stop plate as I sprinted through, desperately looking for some shred of cover. Anything, even a dough rack to hide behind! Picky people die, I would’ve taken anything. Mikey followed, yelling for his intended victim.
“Stop hiding, you fucking coward! Bobby! I’m gonna find you, fucking homewrecker!” His voice echoed on the tile. I didn’t catch the edge to it at the time. I didn’t know what to look for back then. Had I known, I would’ve just kept running.
That thing in movies where the radio that’s playing in a place suddenly cuts out for dramatic bits, that doesn’t happen in real life. There’s no orchestra waiting in the wings to play you off. Some day, it’s real, real possible you’ll die, and the last thing you’ll hear fully won’t be your family. You might not even get silence. You might breathe your last to the dulcet tones of Skrillex or Dinosaur Jr.
You might die to Tom Jones singing about sweet pussycat nose. Just saying.
Whoever’s turn it was to pick the music that night? You’re a dick, by the way. Having somebody shoot near you thinking you’re somebody else while Mick Jagger is singing about the blitzkrieg singlehandedly ruined that entire band for me. He shot at me twice. Twice! Bobby is 5’ 10”, I’m like 5’ 6” on a good day! We didn’t even have the same hair color! I wasn’t anywhere near that color of box blonde, he had zero excuse. The second shot angled off a vent hood as I slammed through the kitchen door, coming face to face with yet another gun.
Bill was moving to cover the door, having apparently decided to carry his gun that he had at work for some dumbass reason. He had been covering the other door in to the kitchen. Meanwhile, Marlena’s own sleek, black plastic piece of Austrian Americana was leveled right at my eye, however briefly.
“The hell are you doing?! Hide, stupid!” Marlena shoved me back toward front of house, moving to use some of the prep area as an elbow rest. Near the rear of the kitchen, Bobby sat near a sink, crouched low, one of the few people managing to be suitably terrified at being trapped in a building with an active shooter. I moved to hide near him, hoping all the metal in the kitchen would manage to deflect any incoming fire.
“Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Oh, fucking shit. What the fuck? What the fuck,” Bobby said, out of breath. Honestly, he took the words right out of my mouth.
Mikey had apparently played his fair share of Call of Duty. See, there’s this trick you can occasionally pull on people. If they’re going down a hall, you shoot a couple times at them. If you don’t get the kill, don’t chase them. Circle around for the flank, and bam. Nobody expects that, at least not the first time.
Turns out that can work in real life, too. I saw him before anybody else, popping up from behind the register. He’d snuck around, popping up to turn the kitchen in to a killing ground, his own personal gun range full of live targets. Time did that slow thing again.
I moved without thinking. Mikey raised the gun as Bobby was standing up, making to run. The slide rocked back, fire exploding from the barrel, this big gout of flame and metal shavings backing a high speed hollowpoint. Because I am an indescribably stupid person, I managed to get in front of Bobby just in time to stop the bullet. What would’ve been a shot in the gut for him turned in to a shot in the heart for me. It burned, that’s the strange thing. Pressure and burning, all at once. I’d always thought it’d be sharp. I also didn’t know pain could be like that, that loud, that bright. I slumped back against Bobby, looking down at the blooming flower of red staining my now-ruined work shirt. Bill and Marlena responded in kind. Four shots, four hits, all dead on in Mikey’s torso, dropping him.
The last thing you ever hear is something you don’t have any control over. Nor are your last thoughts, or even, in most cases, your real last words. I’d expected to die old, surrounded by family, probably in hospice. Last thing I’d think, about how I’d done pretty okay. Last thing I’d say, some profound crap about living well or something funny, at least. Yelling for the nurse to bring me a bed pan, or more water, or whatever. Last thing I’d hear, my wife saying she loved me, or my kids, or something. I would’ve even taken a heart monitor stopping.
Instead, I got “That fucking hurt. It was my Friday, too,” while coughing up blood, and some alt metal song I’d heard a couple of times on the radio before. Catchy, upbeat despite the lyrics.
“You said I’d only have to wait until I died, and that’s no time,” the radio sang out. I put my hand out, catching myself as I fell away from Bobby, the prep table keeping me from hitting the floor. I hit the ground, knees first, suddenly too heavy to stand. Breathing wasn’t really happening anymore. I was so, so tired. The tile was nice and cold, and I was almost off shift anyhow. Nobody was gonna begrudge me a little nap, I was a hero, damn it. I made it to my back, staring up at the ceiling.
Same rule applies about the last thing you see too. I expected hospital seafoam green or hospital-industrial off-white. What I saw was a woman. Really pale and concerned-looking, eyes solid white, wearing one of those old World War 1 nurse hats. She offered me a hand.
I took it.