The shorter man took another step toward William. His nose only inches away from William’s face. “Maybe you didn’t mean to offend me but you sure as shit did offend me, pup. You fucking offend me plenty,” Anger was plainly written on the shorter man’s face and his hands had clenched themselves into tough, experienced fists.
William put his hands up in a defensive posture as he took a step back. He couldn’t help but shoot a look over his shoulder back toward the relative safety of the street. “Look, I think that I’m just going to leave.”
The short man took another step toward William. His lips pulled back over his teeth as he growled out, “What, you just going to leave without asking me my name?” William stopped moving and he couldn’t help but cock his head to the side in a questioning gesture.
The short man erupted in laughter. William had no idea what was going on and the confusion was written on his face. This only seemed to add to the short man’s mirth as he laughed even harder. The short man was bent over holding his stomach. “You shoulda seen…,” his laughter interrupted himself as the man tried to breathe and speak and laugh all at the same time, “the look… haha…the look on your face…Hahaha… priceless.” William watched as the man tried to control himself. He wasn’t upset, he just didn’t think it was that funny. William tried to wait patiently as the man gasped for breath and continued laughing. “Shit, son… that was one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever seen,” The man’s eyes were watering, and he was doubled over clutching at his sides. After a few minutes of this William was concerned that the guy was going to have an aneurism, or a heart attack.
The laughing fit was brought under control and at last the guy could stand up straight. His body was still shaking. He stood up and instead of laughing he held his hand to his mouth and coughed as he tried to bring himself under control. William was afraid the coughing was going to turn into another fit of laughing but the man controlled it and wiped the tears from his eyes. Without a word the man turned his back on William and went deeper into his shop shaking his head and coughing out a laugh or two. Even now he thought that what had happened minutes ago was hilarious. Just when William was about to leave, the man yelled out over his shoulder,
“Well, do you want to see what I do here or not, pup?” There was still joy in his voice and the earlier menacing bravado was gone. Still, laughing that hard at something so trivial made William seriously question the man’s sanity.
William took one last look at the safety of the street, questioned his own sanity at staying here with such a man, and followed the guy further back into the weapons shop.
William took a good look around the store. It was more of a garage than an actual store. There were pits and pieces to all sorts of things just lying around. There were hammers and other power tools hanging up on the wall. There were racks right in the middle of the place that William had to walk around. The racks themselves were sturdy and were covered with all manner of tools, screwdrivers, hammers, drills, sanders, extension cords, drill bits, wire, wrenches, and every other thing a well-stocked garage should have.
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The man had moved further back into his store, past the workbench that he had been working over just a few minutes ago. The workbench was solid, but it was a patch work of worn and grooved wood, with some metal throughout. It had metal drawers but an all wood top. One of its legs was, he guessed, aluminum while another leg was oak. One side of the bench had two cabinet doors. The cabinet door on one side was richly stained pine, while on the other side the door was metal. William moved past the strange, but well made, patchwork all-purpose bench and met the man almost in the very back of the place.
The man was leaning against a wall that was covered in neatly hanging handguns of all types. William had no idea what was what but the shear amount of firearms on display was enough to impress him. The entire wall was covered with handguns from floor to ceiling with no more than an inch separating one gun from another. William turned his head and realized that the collection also went from the very back of the store to more than half back the way William had come. There were all kinds of guns from all black guns to shining silver ones that seemed to be as big as Ares’ hand. There were little ones that William’s own hand would have covered with ease. There were strange shaped ones that had huge gaps between the trigger well and trigger. William had never been much of a gun enthusiast but even he had to admit that the collection was impressive.
“Yep, these are my babies.”
William looked down at the little man as he glanced at the firearms. “Did you make all of these?”
The man looked as if he was going to go into a laughing fit again. A huge smile spread across his face instead. “Shit, son of course I…well I did all the custom jobs, all the ones that have the enlarged trigger guards are definitely mine.” He motioned to a rather large silver handgun. William assumed that it was one of those guns that used a clip because there wasn’t that cylinder thing that would have rotated when it was fired. “This one was one of my first models.” The man took it off the wall and hefted it. He grabbed the barrel and handed it to William, grip first.
William took the gun in his hands and was amazed by the weight of the thing. “Wow, that’s pretty heavy.”
The man waved away the criticism. “Yeah, like I said it was my first model. You see when I first came here, I didn’t have a clue about what was happening to me. The people here helped me through it, and we soon found out that my skill as a gunsmith could help them too. So, they gave me this place and told me to ‘go to work’.”
William hefted the gun one more time and handed it back to the man just as it was handed to him, grip first. The man took the gun and placed it back on the wall. He gently brushed past William and picked up an all-black handgun with the same kind of enlarged trigger guard. “Now, this one is probably still my best work.” He handed it to William.
For a second, he wasn’t sure if it was some kind of trick or not. The metal was cold on William’s hands, but he could feel almost no weight from the gun at all. The man was beaming. “I know right? Hardly any weight at all. Now, I must admit that I cheated a little bit with this one.” William raised a questioning eyebrow. The man started to scratch the back of his head. “Yeah, I kinda stole the idea from a movie and used ceramics and plastics in the construction. So, I can’t take full credit for this one.” The man took the gun from William’s hands and put it back on the wall.