A convenient store robbery (excerpt from Dope Dialogue © 2004)
Stage
Debt
Dean
Earl Barbara Tim
Fiend friends, rob
store hold up
All 3 killed by gunfire
(Reap what gave sermon finished at 10 pm. Sleeps
unsteady (dead dreams haunted by his own sermon till his clock strikes 2:oo
a.m. and he dies of a heart attack
You sow)
All die at 2:oo a.m.
Store-Church at the
midst of the Crossroads
The small radio setting, next to
a clock, the time is 2:00 a.m. Behind the register the radio was omnisciently
silent.
All me and
my main man wanted was some money to keep our realities fixed. We didn’t intend
to hurt nobody. My main man, Dean, walked up, taking advantage of the, dead
stagnated convenient store, with his forty-five automatic pistol, now stuck in
front of the dumb bitch cashiers face yelling, “Give me the money in tha’ cash
register bitch!”
Before any
one could make any kind of response, this old guy comes walking through the
door. Then the radio starts playing a song, All Along The Watchtower,
with Jimi Hendrix singing, “There must be some kind of way out of here….”
Dean being
paranoid, thinking the old guy was a cop, quickly turns his gun and shoots the
man right in between the eyes. Unfortunately for me and Dean this gave the
cashier just enough time to get her gun from behind the counter and “BOOM!” a
357 magnum bullet in Dean’s chest. He managed to retaliate, and guns fire
echoing through the room giving the song an added rhythm,
Radio: Said, the drunkard to the thief there’s too much
confusion. I can’t get no relief.
as
he was falling to his death, perfectly shooting the cashier in her throat. I
was frozen in time. Overtaken by all the drastic actions, for a few seconds,
the time it took for all this to happen. I started to flee when I heard a
voice, “Don’t leave me!” then…I don’t know who fired the shot that hit me in my
side. At first I fall to my knees. Then I hunch over and start spitting up
blood. Everyone was dead. I was the only one, in the store still alive.
I got to
get myself together, get the money and get high. I get up and quickly dash
behind the counter. Damn this cash register won’t open. Coming to this realization,
I pry the 357 from her dead hands, shoot the register open. Frantically I look
for the money. Damn only 50 dollars. Well, that is enough to get really high. I
run for the door so clumsily that I slip and fall to the hard tile floor. Maybe
I can just rest for a while, well just a couple seconds to…
I feel warm
slush in my hands, now covering the money and the gun. It is the bloody brains
of the old man. Gun, I don’t need this gun I didn’t hurt anyone.
Radio: There are many here among us who think that life is
but a joke.
I throw the
gun at the radio and it falls to the ground still playing. I glance across the
corpse of the old man. I could get a lot of money for that cross I see a cross
around his neck. Now I got the cross in my bloody left hand, and fifty dollars
in my right. I imagine how high I could get from all this loot:
The pain of
the needle piercing going into my main vein in my arm, the drug goes in, and I
feel the heavenly high. Heavenly?
“Hear thee,
hear the, reap what you sow.”
What was that sound? Where did it come from? I lay in a pool
of blood, but the old man is not beside me. “Hear thee, hear thee, reap what
you sow.” I look up, trying to find where the voice is coming from. It’s from
behind the counter. The oldman is now standing where the cashier was.
“Hear thee, hear thee! Reap what you sow. I gave a sermon on
that just hours ago.”
“Who are you?”
“You killed me and you don’t even know my name. My name is
Earl. I preach at Southwood Catholic Church. What is your and your friend’s
name?”
“Tim, don’t tell him!” Dean yells to me still on his back.
The old man now wears a purple robe.
The cashier
frantically paces the floor circling around me. I am shocked and amazed, this
is not the same store. No body is dead. There is no blood. I look at my own
hands, they are still bloody red. Why? I did nothing? The cashier then says,
“So let us not talk falsely now, the hours getting late.”
Dean: “You would have ditched me.” Dean points his
trigger hand at me. As if he’s trying
to shoot me, but can’t because he is lost in time. That is a lost time in a
lost action, in a lost memory.
Earl: “I am here to take all of you to a higher
level, if you expect…oh I mean, I am here to
take all of you to a higher level, if you accept the Lord!” he hits his fist on
the counter.
Barbara: “So let us not talk ….my kids, my kids! My God
please take care of my children!...falsely
now the hours getting late.” She is very frantic, this has caused her to think speak stupid.
Tim: “This is not real. This is not REAL!”
“DEBT.”
I
step outside myself seeing a sense of strange, overcame all of us, indicating a united word action:
Dean
could not shoot me because he didn’t have his gun. Earl expected nothing but a
God to save him because he was a preacher man. Barbara, somehow the cashiers
name came to me, was lost in words not of her own, with her thoughts
interjecting. Tim, my name? but the words exchanged between all of us seemed
not to be of our own. My hands are still bloody.
Earl: “Hear thee! Hear thee! Hear the Lord! Reap what you
sow!”
Dean: “To hell with you! You old bastard, you know what they
say, ‘if there’s hell below
we
all gonna’ go!” he stood up shouting, face to face with Earl.
Earl: “I am here to judge all of you! This is the purpose of
living my life to die, so I can save
all of you sinners!” he slams his fists harder. “so let us not talk…
Barbara: “Your no one to judge, only God is. I quit school
to work for my husband, who left me, and
my kids.”…falsely now the hour’s getting late.” She stops her pacing just long enough to scorn the preacher man,
then resumes.
Earl: “Lord please forgive me of my sins, and take my soul.”
Then he disappears to where? I
stare at my bloody hands.
Dean: “Let go off his cross!”
Barbara: “So let us not talk
falsely now the hours getting late.”
Heavenly?
I let go,
drop the cross. I don’t know why. I am feeling so weak.
Radio: “So let us not talk falsely now the hour’s getting
late.”
That damn
radio, sits on the floor, below where the clock reads 2:o3 am. The sound of
shots still echo in rhythm with Jimi Hendrix. Yet now, sirens fill the air
adding to the rhythm. From where? I’m so weak, no I can’t die. Everything will
be alright when I pawn this money and get a heavenly high. Everyone is dead,
the old man beside me, Dean on the floor, the cashier is behind the counter.
Got to get out of here. I’m up and standing, I’ll just run out of the door. Oh
shit the cops are at the door! Their guns are aimed at me….
Radio: “And the winds
began to howl!”
excerpt from (C) Dope Dialogue purchase this e-book http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KJ7M15G
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