Baked Scribe Flashback : Crowd Source
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He walked around the bar, eyes dancing around the room and the people but never settling down on one thing. The gun wasn’t pointed at anyone specifically but he waved it back and forth in front of them, jabbing it through the air at him as if he needed to make his point again.
“Someone in here is not who they say they are,” he said, stabbing the gun in the direction of each person he passed. One woman shrieked as he did so and jerked her hands up into the air, knocking over the drink on her table, scattering liquor and ice cubes all over the floor.
The man carried on, oblivious. “One of you doesn’t belong here and I am going to find you. I don’t care what your fucking leaders claim you’re doing on our planet. I don’t care what the President says, you aren’t welcome here.
“Sir, please. You have to calm down.” The bartender stood there with both hands out, trying to soothe the man, to talk some sense into him. The gun swung around, seeking the source of the noise and the bartender flinched against the shelves behind him, knocking several bottles off in the process.
“Shut the hell up!” the man screamed. His finger tightened on the trigger and anyone who was near the bartender leaned away, afraid to be caught in the path of a bullet, meant for someone else.
“Please stop!” This voice chimed in from the back of the bar and the gun was already arcing around to find the source.
“Who said that?” His voice was shrill, cracking from the effort. “Who the fuck said that?”
No one volunteered. He took one step forward, took aim at the back of the room and fired once. The sound of the shot echoed off the concrete walls and amplified so much that it sounded like a bomb. The people who had crowded around the back screamed in unison and fled in several different directions, save for one man. He fell to his knees, clutching at the wound in his neck that the and trying to stop the blood, to find breath that he would never taste again. No one came to his aid as he slumped against the pool table, knowing that there was nothing to be done and not wanting to create a new target.
Already, the lunatic was resuming his orbit around the bar, prodding at people with the gun as he did so, muttering under his breath. Whenever anyone might shy away from him, he would give them a sharp blow from the gun, or perhaps a vicious kick to the midsection.
In the time it would have taken to smoke a cigarette, this had turned from a normal afternoon into some sort of collective worst nightmare for everyone. The plates of half eaten food on the tables were still warm, abandoned as the patrons had clamored for safety that the sparse, tiny little dive bar could not come close to providing.
A sudden moment of realization seemed to alight on the man’s face and he marched towards the bathrooms. The door had barely swung shut when they all heard a piercing shriek, followed closely by a gunshot.
“To hell with this.” A man in a suit stood and ran for the door. His hand was on the handle and pushing down when the bathroom door opened again and they heard the gun discharge. The man took a shot to the head before he could push the door open and he toppled against the wall, taking out a small table in the process.
“There’s one of you in here!” He would not let it go, determined to find his answer, even if it meant killing every last person to find the one who wasn’t. He sounded like he was about to start crying, fostering the hope in many that he would simply turn the gun on himself.
In the end, it was a pool of spilled beer that saved everyone. He took an exaggerated step towards the crowd, only to have the foot slide out and away from him. His arm with the gun swung up towards the ceiling, out of his control and before he could bring it around to bear, three people jumped on him. They jerked the fun out of his grip and tossed it away, towards the counter.
The bartender came around to the other side, approaching the man and peering down at him as if he was some kind of a bug. The contempt in his voice was obvious and as the man on the floor began looking around the room, he noticed for the first time that everyone’s eyes were now glowing. Not one person in the bar. All of them. Every last one in here was one of them.
He looked up into the glaring search lights coming from the bartender’s eyes as the thing looked down at him and spoke again.
“You came into the wrong bar, friend.”
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