I write little shorts now and then, this is something I wrote earlier this year.
I know I had to look out of place walking out of the building with a coat on when summer was only a few weeks away. I had been visiting a friend at the University that worked in a cold room. While it wasn't as cold as he had said, I was still happy to have been wearing the jacket. Regardless, I emerged from the large stone building pock marked with windows, distracted by the extreme difference of temperatures. I use this as an excuse because I would like to believe that I would have noticed something was amiss as I turned down the alleyway between two building, but I truly didn't.
I should have asked myself why someone would be wearing a suit, yet choose to take a semi dusty, dirty alley versus the well traveled sidewalk path on the other side of the building. My rational mind dismissed it as he simply was taking the same short cut I was taking. I still blame the temperature change. The distance between us had narrowed to about fifteen yards, when something clicked in my mind. A late response is better than none, usually. Something in my gut twinged, I would say like buterflies, but more like butterflies in a microwave. That was when I saw the gun.
I was less than 10 yards away from this well dressed man, who had just drawn a Glock of some make or model. I really had nowhere to go and no time to react. I saw the flash of the muzzle. I even saw the bullet. Everything slowed around me as if time was trying like hell to stand still. The butterflies stopped, replaced by this fire that spread through my veins like elctricity. The sound of the fabric tearing was last thing I heard before the bullet slammed into my chest. The force of the impact took me by surprise. I didn't know what to expect actually. The impact lifted me off my feet, spinning me around in the air. Time was speeding up as I hit the ground. The fire that raged in my veins was gone, replaced by a serenity a feeling I can only describe as empowered. I clutched at my chest; the pain was unimagineable. The smell of gun powder filled my nose, but there was no scent of blood.
Two more shots rang out, then a third and a fourth. The sound dress shoes running on concrete echoed between the walls in the fading report of the gunfire. The man who had fired on me lay dead, three holes in his chest gushing blood, one red circle on his forehead with grey strings streaming out the back of his perforated skull.
The men were talking to me, but I couldn't really hear them. I was still focused on the tiredness that was enveloping me, as I pulled the hot slug from my skin. I was alreay bruising badly, but I should have been dead. There was a .40 calibre hole in my coat and one of my favorite shirts. The bullet never broke my skin. I did take note of a small point that in recollection I find amusing. When I hit the ground I cut my hand on a piece of glass, after just being shot in the chest with only a bad bruise to show for it.
Eventually the voices came into clarity. The men were talking to me, asking me questions. One was on a cell phone requesting medical, other sirens started echoing through the buildings, people were around but keeping their distance. The days and events that followed were a bit of a blur. I felt displaced, and my chest felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. Everything was different now, and nothing had changed at the same time.
