Austin’s yelling over Rex’s certainly limp and unconscious, if not dead body doesn’t make my predicament any easier.

Ramon has turned on me, his eyes glowing gold and all elderly mirth and calm has been thrown out the Pizzeria along with Rex’s body.

He takes a step toward me, blocking my view of all that’s behind me, but that’s what tells me...the Patrons…they knew this was going to happen.

The few gathered about four-seater tables and the handful of loners, I can hear them, hear them snickering at Rex and I. Suddenly, in a burst of clarity, sound makes it through my adrenaline filled head and I can hear some of them even cheering.

“Get them, Ramon! Show these loco’s who’s bosss!”

“Fuck them in the ass good! Woohoo!”

“Light them up like medium rare fucktards!”

Among other profanities.

Neither of the sounds I hear help me one bit.

I take a nervous step back, my foot crushing the broken glass from Rex’s violent exit and my back slamming onto the last bit of glass in one piece.

“Do you want me to blow you through that glass?” Ramon asks, his voice in more of a concrete state than before.

Naturally, I don’t answer, fortunately I don’t think he was expecting and answer, “I can’t afford another glass you see.”

“I’ll pay for it all Ramon!” One rather obese man with four empty pizza boxes on his single table and a large chicken lap in his hand hollers, barely able to keep standing.

Ramon manages a humble smile and a bow to his loyal, ecstatic patron. “Thank you for the offer, David.”

He turns back to me and instantly loses the manufactured smile, “While the bill is paid for, I’d like to give you an option since I don’t rightly take pleasure in blasting kids like you out of the glass doors of my humble establishment…not so good for the uh…optics.”

I nod mutely and take in a deep breath.

“Good, looks like you’re regaining a bit of your reason, though, I’d have liked you stricken with fear a bit longer…makes the decision-making process…speedy.” He claps his hands together and a spark of lightning streaks across the room until it gets grounded.

“Now then, do you want to be blown out, or do you want to walk out of here in one piece and help your friend who may or may not have just had a heart attack?”

The smug on his face could be scooped off like ice-cream and several layers would still remain.

I shake my head and stand up straight, my eyes scanning the room full of insanely bloodthirsty, chaos thriving patrons. I wonder if they’ll jump in…I should consider that.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Factoring a potential new entrant from the enthusiastic patrons I let my eyes land on Ramon.

He sneers, “I see…You’ve chosen otherwise.”

He needs no words from me to understand I’m not giving way, I tell him, “You should really re-evaluate what you think the social roles in society look like now, Rex wasn’t the meat, I am and like he said, I’ll be needing that five months tax, Ramon.”

“Will you now?” He hisses, his eyes lighting up once again, lightning arcing from palm to palm as he prepares a charge, “A sham-”

Pause.

He doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence nor the launch he was about to subject me to. Completely frozen in time he looks as though he’s just off staring in the distance, or rather, glaring.

The same goes for the patrons, I think perhaps all of them are stuck in time, proof of this is the fact that the fatso from before has stopped shoving his face with more and more calories.

I breath a sigh of relief. The range of my pause does not reach over to Austin however and I’d like to be done with this before he realizes I’m not dead yet.

Setting the goal, I take out my gun and pull back the hammer and just like before I press the barrel against Ramon’s more vulnerable areas…his knee for example.

Bang!

And his elbow. Bang!

Blood and perhaps a bit of bone by the clicking sound it makes as it hits the floor splatters all over the place.

It’s extremely difficult holding back the urge to empty out my stomach at the sight of Ramon’s now demolished left elbow and right knee, even worse is the completely unaware look he has on his face.

Still in the middle of a sentence, still glaring at where I was a second ago.

He’s completely frozen in time, not a single feature has moved in reaction to his joints being blown out across the floor of his establishment.

It’s unsettling how easy this is.

“Hey!” A voice barks at me. More shocking is that said voice is coming from within the Pizzeria.

Panic races through me as I ask myself, how is she still moving!

Across the wide space for the patrons and behind the cashier’s counter is a woman, or a girl by the looks of it. Like Ramon she’s got on an apron but unlike him her hair is tied back and stuffed into a net, and her hands are covered in…dough?

Shit. Is the kitchen out of my range?

“What…what have you done to them?” she stutters, waving a hand over the faces of the grinning, eating and laughing patrons. Pinching many of them even.

Her eyes rise and fall on Ramon and then they fall on me. In a flash I see it; lightning.

“Rragh!”

Her ‘attack first ask questions later’ attitude is more or less rewarded as I involuntarily let go of my grip on time, barely dodging the streak of lightning she blasts out from her eyes.

From her fucking eyes!

It’s an immediate burst of chaos as I hit the floor almost the same time Ramon’s body registers it can’t keep itself upright with a knee blown to oblivion.

He screams and bleeds like a cow, “Ahhhhh!! What the fuck! What the fuck! W-why? Why!!”

My luck is not all shot to hell though, even as I stick to the floor crawling under a table as fast as a chipper monkey with my gun raised to fire at the girl should she make her way to me.

Instead of hunting me down under the table she goes for Ramon, “Dad! Dad!”

Shoot, he is her father.

Ramon’s only response to her calls are his screams of agony.

She’s distracted. I have to…I have to take her out...Shit!

I don’t want to. She’s…she’s just like fucking Paige.

Except deadly and with what you’ve done to her father she’s more than willing to kill you.

The voice in my head is right. I need to end this before I’m ended.

Gathering my courage, I start to step out from under the table when.

Ding Ding!

The bell chimes as someone enters.

Bang!

“Ah!” I gasp.

Bang! Bang!

“Good job kid.” Austin mutters, the barrel of his gun still steaming. “I can get her to our medic outside Ramon…the wound is fresh and not immediately fatal, she can and will survive.”

“Arrghhh!! Selena!”

“Just pay what you owe and your daughter will live.”