A Day in the Store

A day in the store

I woke up that morning with a splitting headache. I felt like an angry man with a sledgehammer was going bananas in the skull, I so wanted to call in sick, then I remembered Vick's wife had given birth two days ago and that I was the only one who could open, so I pulled myself outta bed and kind of stumbled to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror feeling like I should just not open the store it was a Wednesday and we never had business but I decide not to and I got in the shower and stood there and let the water hit me for a while, and then I got out and got a bottle of aspirin and got two pills and got my breakfast and got in my beat up '03 Accord and got to the store at 9:45 barely in time to open at 10:00.
I work at a comic store, which I love; in fact I’m the co-owner with my brother Vick. So I’m just sitting there reading the newest issue of the Avengers and this weird fat-guy comes in, and I mean weird. It’s the middle of summer time and he has a trench on, he has this scraggly like 7'o clock shadow going and like he forgot to shave but it’s a little too long to be forgotten shaving like he is cultivating it and some ponytail thing it’s kind of too short like it barley has any hair in it. So I'm scoping him out the whole time he’s in here and I lose sight of him behind one of the racks. So I go looking for him and see that he’s just reading some Spider-Man, and then he slips it in his jacket all nonchalant and I just like wait did this guy just do that, so I walk up to him and confront him.
“Hey what do you think your doing, put the magazine back and get the hell outta here” I say to him looking rather menacing, now I’m a kind of big guy, 6'1 200lbs and workout at regularly so basically I’m one of the biggest nerds your likely to meet and I look kind of intimidating. This guy isn’t. He is like 5'9 but he’s fat like 230- 240 and has a pretty large spare tire.
So he decides to play dumb “What magazine are you talking about” he says putting on this innocent look
“The one under your coat you fat tub now get it out give it here and get out” I say getting rather annoyed
“But I don’t have a magazine” he says So I grab him by the lapels and low and behold the magazine flops out of his jacket but, this guy doesn’t have anything on but the coat, some shoes and a pair of socks. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t want to touch this guy at all so I throw him out of my hands and on to the ground. I pick up and magazine feeling very angry and disgusted.
“Get up and get outta here you nasty freak before they have to carry you out” I say adding emphasis to this by kicking. So he gets up looking hurt and kind of slides out under my watchful eye. So during this episode the headache I had which was slowly going away has come roaring back and was now worse than ever I just went and sat behind the counter and kind of leaned back.
So after a good thirty minutes of leaning back I get my second customer of the day, and it's my friend Joey.
“Hey David what’s up” Joey says as he takes the ear buds from his ears and grabs the comic I was reading earlier and starts skimming it over.
“Nothing much Joey I’m just sitting here with a bad headache” I say as I glare at him since he decided to start playing drummer on the counter.
Looking kind of sheepish Joey stops drumming and mutters an apology to me and asks if any interesting things happened today and I tell Joey about the fat guy, by the end of the story Joey is almost in tears he laughing so hard.
“So, he had nothing on under the coat”
“Nope, not a stitch”
“Bet you enjoyed that David didn’t you” Joey says as he jumps outta my reach as I reached for his neck
“Come back over here Joey, I dare you” I say trying to look threatening but getting won over by Joey's good humor
“Well I guess it was kind of funny I say rather reluctantly”
“Kind of funny man it’s hilarious” Joey says as he walks into the back of the store to look around, so I take this time to go back to my attempt as a nap since it’s just Joey in the store.
So of course as soon as I begin to attempt my nap I hear the ring of the bell that tells me so one has come in so I open my eyes and there’s that pathetic fat perv again. While he doesn’t have on the trench coat any more he still looks strange wearing a pair of camouflage cargo's and a purple t-shirt.
Already feeling my face red in anger I start screaming “I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU NOT TO COME BACK YOU FAT PERV” as I get out of my seat and begin to go around the counter I lose sight of him since there’s a spinning rack of comics there and when I see him again and he looks a lot less pathetic with a 9mm in my face.
“I'm fat huh? I'm disgusting huh? I’m a perv huh?” he says punctuating each of his questions with a pistol whip to my face.
So with my face just in so much pain screaming at me and my nose leaking like a comic nerd at the death of Cap I'm thinking this guy is insane since he is all of those things and crazy, and has a gun I tell him I didn’t mean it I was kidding that I wasn’t serious I was so sorry offering to give him comics just trying to buy time hoping Joey can help me out, and not getting shot.
“Well let’s see how fat and disgusting I am with a bullet in your brain” Said the man raising his gun.
So with no Joey in sight and a crazy fat guy leveling a 9mm at my head I decide to take matters in my own hands and lunge at the guy. I'm able to grab to gun as he fires and it whizzes by my head I grab at his arm and I 'm able to get it between our bodies and start to wretch the gun from his grasp when Joey come from behind a rack.
“Hey David what all the noise about” he says with his stupid ear-buds in his hands.
As I get distracted by Joey the fat guy lands a knee to my family jewels and I just kind of fold up in pain and try to protect them. So now the fat guy takes his arm outta my hands and get to gun back. Joey finally sees the gun and tries to tackle the fat guy but the guy just shoots Joey. Bang, and Joey drops like a stone. I look on in horror at the pool of blood slowly pooling under Joeys body.
The fat guy looks over at Joey and just kind of stares for a minute like he's in shock, in hindsight this would have been the perfect time to grab the gun out of his hands but that was then and this is now. I feel a sense of hopelessness as I say that pool of blood pooling around Joey’s body grow larger.
So we are both just standing there in shock and then the fat guy starts laughing. I look on in horror as his laugh builds from a chuckle to hysterical shrieks. He was laughing so hard that he could breath
“What the hell is wrong with you, you just killed my friend you fat piece of garbage” I say not caring about my own safety but wanting to help Joey and maybe save him, enraged as I lunge at the fat pile of trash.
I connected with a right hook to his jaw and I can feel the bone moving under my fist. Then I slam my left hand into his nose and feel it go soft under my blow. I then uppercut his chin and feel a little resistance and then I slip my hand over his throat and start to just pummel on his face with my left hitting ever piece of flesh I can. The blood from his face was aplattering on me and I felt sick from it but I wanted to disable him
Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my midsection and I stop my beating to see the pistol still in the guy’s hand hovering over my stomach which has blood leaking from it.
“I win” the man says as he fires three more times into my stomach.
As I feel the strength leaving my blood covered hands I let my hand leave his throat and fall to my knees, the guy looms over me and looks down at me. I felt a burn inside of my stomach the pain was astounding.
“Nighty, nighty” he says as he raised the pistol and slams it down on the top of my skull. That’s the last of it I can remember of that day, I was told later that another customer had walked into the store about 10 minutes after this all happened and seeing Joey and I laying there he called the police.
Somehow I survived four bullets and a fractured skull, they had me in surgery for six hours after I was admitted and I still have bullet fragments inside my stomach, they plan on doing more surgery after I recoup a little while. My friend Joey though didn’t survive though, the bullet hit him right in the carotid artery and he bled out within the few minutes me and the fat man fought each other. I will always feel that if I had handled that man just a little better than Joey wouldn’t be dead but I’ll never know.
They found that fat piece of scum, his name was Henry Smith, a 34 year old good for nothing lout living with his mother he lived a few blocks over from the store. The trial is set for next month after I can attend trial since I'm going to be the prosecution’s star witness.
I feel a little better after writing this account. I hope that this will help the prosecution in the trial because I’m not sure if I will be able to live myself after what I feel that I did to Joey, I just know that I could have done something to help Joey. I just know it.