7-11

Sometimes rain makes you want to go run around in it.  Today I wanted to stay out of the downpour.  Every drop felt like a tiny hand pushing earthward, begging me to reconsider.  Broken cigarette in my lips I relished my last pull and let the jilted square fall.  Some days weren't worth waking up for.  The wooden paneling of the used handle felt warm and smooth against my wet palm.  Only $100 for the piece, $75 for the bullets.  I had to hope that Slurpees and Twinkies were hot.

Sticky.  She hated it when her fingers got sticky.  She wouldn't notice right away and then it was like, "hey, what is all over my hands?"  The Slurpee machine was broken.  $6.25 an hour wasn't enough.  She sighed and glared at Árpahd, making a face as she realized what kind of magazine he was grinning at.  Just because she’d taken a pack of gum once didn’t mean he had to watch her like a hawk, a hungry, creepy, Hungarian hawk.  How was she going to pay rent and make it to Casey’s party?  The bells above the door tinkled in a way, which if heard once, would have been pleasant.

Mother never had been proud of him.  She never liked that Szolnok hadn’t been good enough for her second son.  He scratched his stomach, leering at the image in the magazine.  He glanced up for a moment, beady brown eyes quickly finding the girl.  She was struggling to fix the Slurpee machine.  He didn’t see how anyone could partake of that strange drink.  It was like the Americans to drink something sweet enough to give you the sickness that had killed his mother’s sister.  Not that he had ever liked old Franci Fanni.  She’d had a way of looking down her crooked old nose at him as if she knew…well, as if she knew what he was thinking.  Some show on the television had said that it only took four pounds of pressure to break the human neck.  Árpahd grinned, feeling the strength in his thick fingers.  As bird thin as old Franci Fanni had been, four pounds would have been more than enough.  The bells over the door chimed, pleasing, as always, to his ears.  Perhaps he should bring some milk back with him.  His wife nagged less when he brought home food.  Perhaps he should bring a Slurpee back with him.  Pulling his eyes from the magazine he glanced around the store again, grinning absently.

“Give me all the money in the register.”  The fat, hairy guy behind the counter had been smiling.  He wasn’t smiling anymore.  But then again I didn’t blame him.  A .38 couldn’t do too much at a distance, but I was only a few feet away.  I decided that he was moving too slow so I screamed whatever profanity I could muster accentuated by a few gestures with the gun.  I heard something drop behind me.  Cursing I turned and pulled the trigger.  $25 right down the drain.  She lay on the floor, blue Slurpee pouring from the machine down on to her leg.  There was a hole in her chest that leaked a bubbling red across her Jump 21 Street t-shirt.  I stared, her pretty blues eyes watering, her lightly glossed lips half trying to speak, half trying to breathe.  $25.  That hole in her chest had cost me $25.  Something screamed in my head, like a prisoner in some forgotten dungeon who is chained to some green, molding, rat tracked wall.  The familiar ratchet of a pump action shotgun cut against my ears as I dropped the .38 and lifted my hand towards the girl I’d just shot.  I had to take it back, or at least tell her I was…was I sorry?  I was… (the roar of the shotgun thundered against the counter, packages of gum and skittles falling.  The half gasping, half sobbing girl looked in the eyes of the man lying next to her as he looked at nothing at all, their blood mixing with blue Slurpee on the scuffed up floor.)