The Rain from the Desert

The night grows colder with the setting sun and my coffee’s temperature follows closely behind. Outside the store, the patio bench, made of oak wood and heavy manufactured screws, holds me above the cold cement floor. The store has priced the bench at $213.19 but the district office has placed it on sale for $199.99. You will receive a full thirteen dollars and twenty cents credit, if you purchase this monstrosity of a seat, this economically insane, environmentally destabilizing butt holder.

            Both signs stating this wonderful savings are currently crumpled beneath my foot, along with the two Marlboro Red cigarette butts I smoked within the last ten minutes, a small piece of mysterious trash, and a half-deceased ant, complete with twitching leg. Under my size 10 black work boot is not the decomposing, unimportant tidbits of this world, but the astonishing parallel that is my life.

            The day’s rain has washed the filth from the cars and streets leaving that clean illusionary aroma that only comes when it rains. But the rain never fails to forget to wash away one piece of filth that has ridiculed this world for too long: the people.

            This is where I come in.

            I enjoy sitting outside, watching the carbon dioxide float through the air, watch the disintegrating ozone turn colors in the sunset – a sunset that everyone seems to miss anymore during their jobs or school or five-o-clock commute home. I enjoy watching the people scurry around their lives, thinking that everything they know and love is truly (and I laugh at this matter) important.

            Tonight’s number is generous: five.

            There is a man, he is older with graying hair and walks with a slight limp. He has his hands buried in the pockets of a white jacket, hidden against the cold, hidden from the outside world, just like he prefers his inner most thoughts to be. He walks tall, but that limp is fresh, and he will hide it with every effort he can. He eyes me slightly, but looks away, rotating his shoulder, brushing me off of him.

            There is a woman; she is youthful with brown hair and full breasts. She smiled at me as she passed; her smile was passionate and warm, but her eyes were cold and determined. She has no rings on her fingers, but there is a child with her, around twelve or so. Children are the hardest to see in my count. They flourish in the moonlight and thrive in the sunlight, but it’s not long before the rain is past due to wash them away. The child looks at me, a smile cracks his lip, but for a second, and then he turns to the woman, ignoring that I was ever there. His hands are separate entities amongst themselves, moving with free will, and they tell me what he whispers to her in loud convulsive exclamations.

            There is a man, he follows his world, pushes it along, in a steel shopping cart that doesn’t belong to this store. He’s heavy, a medical mystery, and bowlegged. His face and hair, under a blue beanie, is unshaved, uncut, un-groomed, and unclean: the bottom feeder of the ocean, and the only honesty to this joyous compilation. There is a ragged brown bear, a child’s play thing, strapped to the innards of this home: A friend and a listener. This man ignores me.

            I kicked at the ant, the cigarettes, the trash, the prices, and my coffee cup; I stood to my full six-foot-three-inch frame. I heard my trench coat rustle in the wind. My dark sunglasses framed my long, scarred face. My scarred past and present and future, framed by the dark mask I wear outside.

            I turned on my heel, and faced the doors of this store. I reached both hands deep inside my coat, deep into my belt, and pulled out two stark black .50 caliber desert eagles. My boots kicked open the doors, my hands raised the guns and the bullets rained upon them, washing the world of its filth, its excrement, a little at a time.

            There was a man, who dropped to the floor, his eyes begged and watered. When he died, his hands fell from his pockets and his arms opened wide. He no longer had to hide the hurt in his ankle, or his life.

            There was a woman, who dropped to the floor, her eyes determined to save her child. She leapt in front of him, and stood tall and ready. When she died, she crumpled onto the floor in a ball, slumped over and weak.

            There was a child, old enough to feel the rain, who dropped to the floor. His hands were separate entities amongst themselves. When this child died, he raised his hand in my direction; one finger told me all his words, words he never told his mother.

            There was a man, who dropped to the floor. He never looked at me, not once. He hugged his friend and whispered goodbye.

I walked out of the store. My desert eagles back in their nests. The rain had stopped. The air was cleaner.

I mentioned five for this game. I have been paid to do much worse, and in higher numbers. Today, five is generous to me. The fifth has remained silent until now. The fifth has not said a word, but merely taken part on these events.

The fifth is you, for when this story ends, so does your journey in my life.

To me, you will die.