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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Bella and the Black Book: Chapter Three

So let’s recap. Me and a gunman are out in a parking lot where I run into my elderly neighbor who pisses himself at the sight of a firearm and violence is about to ensue.

I had a moment to actually register how bad life was about to get as the gunman swung in the direction of Mr. McGuffy with every intention of ending his life a little sooner than initially anticipated by Mr. McGuffy’s friends and family. Personally, I realized I could have taken that particular moment to make a break for it myself. After all, he just turned the weapon away from me to deal with another threat and if I remember correctly, handguns are only good up to a certain distance unless you’re a crack shot. Granted, I didn’t know if my captor was a crack shot, but the chances that he wasn’t were higher than the chances that he was. Either way, I didn’t take the obvious chance to exit stage left. Instead, I did the heroic thing: I turned around and ran right into my captor.

The gun went off and my head started to ring like I was inside a bell tolling the hours.

In the scuffle, the book hit the concrete. I would figure that out later. Right then, I was a little busy trying to keep this burly fellow from lowering that pistol into the range of any of my vital organs, most notably my brain. As he and I were turning in circles in the parking lot, Mr. McGuffy was rapidly (at least for the geriatric he was) making his way back toward his apartment.

“Stupid…” He said a word I refuse to use in reference to myself after that, so I’ve decided to leave it off. Either way, his displeasure was obvious and it was immediately followed by him knocking me back on my butt. As I was sitting there, looking up into my all too imminent demise, the smell of Mr. McGuffy (boiled cabbage now overlaid with sugary urine, I’m pretty sure the guy is a diabetic) came back to me in a rush. There was a mystery smell with it which got my attention.

Mr. McGuffy was standing right in the shadow of the apartment complex with a sawed off shotgun in his knobbly knuckled arthritic hands and had a look on his face I don’t think I’d ever actually seen on him before. Saw it on Jimmy’s face once or twice, prior to his incarceration, right before he sent someone to the hospital, so I knew what it was. It was pure and simple righteous whoop ass.

“Get out of our lot.”

This is what it must be like to be the third wheel in a Mexican standoff.

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2 comments:

kioka said...

She's quite witty, eh?

Alledria said...

@kioka Bella certainly has her own personality. I'm trying to make sure that continues to come through as the story progresses.