The only thing that Jacob saw was the rifle. The black muzzle led the way through the door, perfect in the roundness of its flash suppressor, only echoed by the smaller, darker circle at its center.
Standing in the rainbow interior of the juice shop, its bright florescent lights turning every reflective surface into chrome, Jacob’s tall frame was elongated in the funhouse mirror of the entrance as it swung open. He wouldn’t have even glanced it that direction if he hadn’t been staring at the checkout girl. Prenessa was her name and Jacob had been timing his visits to the shop, more or less successfully, to match her schedule. On first seeing her, he had been enchanted by everything from her braids to the soft cocoa of her skin. He learned quickly, though, that she didn’t backed down from anything, whether it was that screaming middle-aged mom or the asshole with the Confederate flag tattoo. To Jacob, Prenessa was tough, smart enough to be bored with her shit job, and would occasionally grace him with a smile like the sun coming out.
As she brought listless eyes up from the register to the next customer, Jacob hoped she might see him. Instead, she glanced at the opening door next to him and her eyes widened as someone whose worst fears had been confirmed. Jacob ceased admiring her hard beauty at the almost instantaneous change.
After that, everything fell away, and there was only the gun. Jacob didn’t know much about firearms, but he knew that even in Constitutional Carry states like his, you didn’t walk around with your rifle unslung. Now here was one walking in through the mirrored front door, barrel raised, pointing into the shop’s bright and multi-colored interior.
Jacob hadn’t thought much about what he would do in what the news consistently referred to as an ‘active shooter’ situation. What thoughts he’d had mostly revolved around hoping he wouldn’t be in one. Here he was now, though, at the end of a long line of people waiting to get their juice, arranged like so many paper targets, with the tough Prenessa too far away to do anything, too petrified to even duck behind the counter. From somewhere, Jacob heard laughter.
With the door chime still echoing, Jacob reached out and grabbed the barrel behind the front sight, and yanked as hard as he could, pivoting with the weight of all of his body. He pulled the rifle into the store, dragging a scrawny and scruffy white dude with it, still attached to the gun by its sling. The man’s smaller size allowed Jacob to swing around, skittering him across the tile floor.
The rifle was better maintained than its owner, clean and well-fed, not a speck of dirt on it with a sizable magazine. Jacob grabbed its other end by the stock and launched a kick into its owner’s crotch.
The well-aimed blow crunched into the man’s testicles, doubling him over. As he collapsed with a groan, Jacob tore the rifle from him. The moment blurred and yells issued from beyond the adrenaline bubble that Jacob now inhabited.
Then there was an aspirated sound like driving out of a tunnel and Jacob seized. Something slapped into his back, hard and paralyzing like the ice ball a mean-spirited Michigan cousin had hit him with many years ago. He reached for the impact point on his back, but his fingers wouldn’t obey his commands, spasming into pained claws as his shoulders contorted, bending towards each other.
The juice shop lost whatever magic had been holding it in place and tilted, sliding away. The soft landing on the other man was what told Jacob he had fallen, rolling over so his vision was dominated by the firmament of the shop’s water-stained and cratered cardboard ceiling.
That moonscape was breached by another gun, another long rifle coming into view before the portly fellow wielding it followed. Eyes filled with a fear that mirrored Prenessa’s, he stared into Jacob’s still open eyes as he yelled, “What the hell are you doing? I told you to stop!”
The man jerked like a hunted animal that caught a scent on the wind and raised his eyes back to the crowd. He swung the rifle around as he yelled, “You saw him! That crazy nigger attacked my friend!”
Jacob’s chest felt very cold while his back felt warm and wet. He tilted his head to see the store’s patrons scattered, some hiding behind furniture, others circling to avoid the swaying rifle. “You dumb asshole,” someone screamed, “did you think the Taliban airdropped terrorists inta here?”
The second gunman shouted back, shrieking for the crowd to shut up, and leaned over to look past Jacob to his downed friend. From behind him, a smaller pair of arms appeared to wrap themselves around the man’s neck, locking under his beard to drag him out of Jacob’s narrowing field of vision. There may have been more gunshots, or maybe people banging into furniture, but he could only hear a faint and distant struggle.
It didn’t concern Jacob, though. He felt the warm love of God coursing from him, covering him and the man under him, and he wondered why his chest, pointed towards Heaven, felt so cold.
See the author’s published work here.
Related Posts
The American: Trouble with Idiots (pt. 8) Next Post:
The American: Trouble with Idiots (pt. 9)
