Spring Surprise

SPRING SURPRISE

I bought a gun today. Just walked into the local gun shop and said to the guy…”I’d like to buy a gun”.

He doesn’t even blink…”Certainly sir, what sort of weapon did you have in mind?

There was no, “Are you sure sir? Problems at home sir? Any medical issues sir?”

Nope, just,” Something like this sir?”, and he’s showing me a large, black, evil looking thing that I’m sure would have stopped a charging rhino…

”Uh, no, not quite” I said. “I was thinking of something smaller”.

“Ah,” he says, “a concealable, very popular with the ladies”, and then he proceeds to show me about two hundred admittedly very pretty little guns, all with names like ‘Comforter’, and ‘Babe’, and ‘My Little Friend’.

One was called “Kiss My Ass”, I swear to god.… and there was an all pink number called ‘Pink Lady’…

Very popular with the alcoholic set I would imagine…

“Not quite what I had in mind “ I say, “Do you mind if I take a look around”?

“Of course sir”, he says, and as I begin my walk around, he adds, in a very bad attempt at an Australian accent…”Let’s throw another shrimp on the barbie eh mate?”, gives me a big wink and says, “I hear you can’t buy guns in Oz…that right?” I’m too embarrassed to say anything so I just nod, thinking that’s why I’m over here dickhead.

Paul Hogan has a lot to answer for.

So I continue my walk around, and it’s like a candy shop for gun

lovers. Every conceivable type of weapon is on display… There’s even a special section labelled ‘Military’ where they keep the anti tank missiles and AR 15’s and so on, all with appropriate price tags attached.

You know, there are more gun shops in America than there are grocery stores…I’m not sure if I should be impressed or terrified.

Anyway, in the shop, people around me are fondling these things; that’s the best way I can describe it, fondling, aiming, making strange shooting noises, pretending to shoot their friends in the head…

There’s one guy I catch actually kissing a nasty looking semi automatic complete with silencer and night vision optics. What you might call the ultimate killing machine on steroids.

This guy is massively overweight and he’s wearing a t shirt with the charming logo ”Pigs Give Good Head” emblazoned all across the front, and when he turns around I see the tasteful follow up on his back, “…or so your wife tells me”.

There’s a compliment if ever I saw one.

Anyway, what happens next is the beginning of the weird part of my day.

A few minutes later there’s suddenly some sort of commotion going on near the front of the store, and there’s the fat guy being held by a couple of security guards as he tries to explain that he had accidentally tucked the killing machine into his pants thinking it was his own weapon which he had accidentally left at home on this particular day.

This doesn’t go down too well with security and they relieve him of the weapon and escort him from the store, provoking a torrent of abuse and some pretty horrific threats which seem to bother the security guys not at all. The last thing I hear the fat guy shout is something along the lines of “I’ll get you motherfuckers”.

Not your typical Sunday morning shopping experience I can tell you. 

Anyway, I finally choose a small anonymous hand gun, along with a

box of bullets. They wouldn’t just sell me a single bullet so I had to buy the whole box. A bit of a waste I thought as I made my way to the café across the road for a final coffee and doughnut…

Maybe a bit of background would be appropriate here…

My name’s Tom Cassidy, and until fairly recently I ran a very successful brokerage business in Sydney Australia.

We had some of the best people on our books, including I might ad some of the more spectacularly successful crime figures…

Well you know, you don’t turn down that kind of money without good reason, and these guys were always perfect gentlemen.

Of course you had to make sure their money was safe and paying good dividends….And that’s where my troubles began.

The day the auditors called I was feeling pretty good about myself. Our profits were soaring, our clients were happy, my beautiful wife was convinced I was the best provider in the history of commerce, and all in all the world was my oyster.

But then my oyster turned into the one you don’t want to find sliding down your gullet…not nice at all.

It seems my long time friend Alex, who as it happened was also my chief accountant, had a tiny gambling problem…a problem worth approximately twenty million dollars, or to put it another way…almost all of my clients money.

It’s funny the way people don’t want to hear excuses when their money goes missing, and my underworld friends were the most concerned of all… So that’s when I decided to go down swinging.

I figured I was a dead man anyway, so before the details of my situation became public, I arranged for the remaining investment money, a tad over five million, to be transferred to a trust account in my wife’s name; a kind of apology in advance I guess. And then I arranged for us to disappear. It bought us a bit of time, and there was still something I had to do…

So here I am in the good ol’ US of A, giving my family one last good time before I take the easy way out, having made sure they’ll be

provided for, and fate decides to play the joker.

As I start to write the obligatory goodbye note, trying not to think too much about Helen and the kids, I suddenly see the fat guy again. He comes around the corner with a real sense of purpose and he’s heading straight for the gun shop, and he’s carrying something in his hand, something black and ugly and distinctly gun like.

I’m frozen to the spot. What should I do? Should I try to warn the people in the shop? But how could I do that without putting myself at risk? The irony of this indecision didn’t hit me till later, but then I’ve always been a do it yourself kind of guy, and while I’m struggling with this dilemma, there’s a barrage of shots from the gun shop. Bang! bang! bang! Three shots, and then two more.

People are yelling and screaming, and pouring out from the gun shop, and then the sales guy comes out, trying to run, but he’s limping, and the fat guy is right behind him. Two more bullets in quick succession and the sales guy crumples to the pavement with the fat guy standing over him screaming obscenities. “You don’t fuck with me motherfucker “and stuff like that.

Well, for a moment I go sort of crazy, because I stand up and yell out to the fat guy. “You son of a bitch, you’ve just killed an innocent unarmed man,” and I whip out my brand new gun and aim it at him. But there’s a sad little click as I pull the trigger and I remember I haven’t loaded it yet, and the fat guy is walking towards me with his gun aimed right at me and I’ve got nowhere to go except maybe under the table, and that’s when I start to run like I’ve never run in my life, and that’s when I hear the sirens.

The next minute, I’m passed by the fat guy who is running like an Olympic champion…I could not believe a human being could ever run that fast, and then he’s gone…just ducked into an alley and disappeared.

I stop to get my breath and as I’m walking back to the café and my unfinished goodbye note I notice something on the ground. It’s a wallet, and I realise the fat guy must have dropped it when he passed me. After I check for I.D. I slip it into my pocket and pretend to the cops who were all over the place by now that I was just an innocent bystander who hadn’t seen a thing officer.

And so I never did finish that note. Instead I went and bought some treats for the kids and some flowers and chocolates for Helen. It was the first day of the Northern Spring, life was calling and I figured I could probably afford the expense now because according to the cops I spoke to, the fat guy had apparently killed three people in the store, one of whom was an off duty cop, and I knew that meant a large reward was coming my way.

All I had to do was wait…

© Leo Taylor 2020