The Hooded Figure

The Hooded Figure

The entire crowd drops to their knees then the floor, shaking, quivering.  Some try to hide between the slushy machines and others behind isle dividers.  Eliza inches towards Austin and wraps her arm around her screaming child, telling him to, “hushen up” or else “the man with the gun is going to get mad, sweetie.”  She gives him a loving squeeze that compresses his body inward and whispers “its going to be all right, its all going to be okay, he’s not going to hurt us.”  

“Shut… up…” the man over by the kit kats accusingly whispers through gritted teeth as he takes a quick glance around the room.    

Eliza nods and gently blows a ball of dust from her path before she sinks her head back onto the linoleum floor. Her cheek only touches the ground for a second before the stench of urine fills her nostrils and she realizes her right leg, the one closest to her shaking 4 year old Austin, feels damp.  She whispers once more, even quieter this time, “Don’t you worry about one thing.  Mama’s here.  Mama’s got you”

The tall slender figure with the black hoodie hastily takes four steps towards the cashier.   Eliza can see the vein on  the cashier’s forehead protrude and pulsate as he yells with gusto,  “Don’t do it!…  Please, leave these people alone… If you go right now… nothing bad will happen…  to you or these people”  he adds once more trying to dissolve the situation and provide another option for the hooded man.   “Please” he begs one last time then sighs while his right hand ever so slyly slips under the counter.  Eliza sees the muscles in his forearm and bicep tighten above the counter, but cannot see what is beneath it.  

“I can’t do that,” the hooded figure retorts without a single stutter in his voice. He takes one last step to the left. “I’m not the criminal here,” the figure says as he turns around and shoots.  

Bang! Bang!  Two shots; Two deafening blasts from two different locations.  The lock on the door to the back room next to him falls to the floor and so does the hooded figure who shot it off.

The cashier stands holding a smoking 38 handgun with his finger still on the trigger, aimed at where the man’s heart was only two seconds before.   It takes a few seconds for Eliza to realize what happened.

The impact of the bullet had knocked off the man’s black hood and revealed only a boy whom Eliza now sees could only just be out of high school.  With his last few breaths, the boy in the hoodie musters his last ounce of energy and squeezes out “... Amanda… are… are you in there?” then falls limp leaving his hands raised to the ceiling and head tilted only slightly to the right.

Eliza strains to lift herself upright into a sitting position, then scoots herself to her son to shield his eyes as if it could somehow erase the scars she know will come from this experience.  She holds her still trembling, but absolutely silent son, rocking him back and forth between her legs.  Her quivering lips kiss the top of his salty head then leak out the words,  “It’s alright.  The bad man is dead, he can’t hurt us.  The brave man by the cash register made sure he can’t hurt us.”  

The clerk drops the gun back onto the counter and takes two haste steps towards the unlocked door and reaches out his right arm as if to close it shut.  But before he can reach it, the head of a girl no older than 15, eyes squinting, skin so white that Eliza thinks it might blind her if in direct sunlight, peeps her head out behind the door.  She sees the body on the floor and drops to her hands and knees while the tear ducts in her eyes begin to fill.

The entire rooms gasps and falls silent once more, but the clerk’s pupils enlarge and that vein on his forehead throbs even faster.  Once his eyes reach the girl, and he realizes that Eliza and all the customers in the store see her too, he V cuts straight through the entry doors and sprints into the raw night air.