It was a mass murder--one shooter at one location with more than four people dead. It was a mass murder. Elizabeth and I had planned a rendezvous at Gypsey's, but the taste of Moroccan beef and Tikka Masala turned bitter the second the first shot roared through the restaurant. I was holding her hand when the bullet entered her skull. It grazed past my right ear and burst her left eyeball before slipping into her brain. She was dead before her bloody face fell into her plate. I couldn't tell if it was blood or sauce that was misted on my face.
The firing didn't register in my mind. I don't know whether it was sudden shock or the fact that I was so completely enamored with Liz's face in the firelight, but the shots didn't register as gunfire. Even as her body jumped at the sound and her eyes sprang open wide like a canyon before the bullet flew past me, the shots didn't register in my mind as gunfire. Bodies dropped to the floor all around us--some gripped by death, some paralyzed by fear. When the gunman stepped around our table, heading for the office by the kitchen, he turned around for a brief moment, and we made eye contact despite the firelight. His face registered with me. The shots didn't, but his eyes did.
He was the waiter I had spoken to the week before, when I entered the restaurant to set up our evening's rendezvous. He was anxious and angry, even then, the pen trembling between his fingers as he jotted down our details. And then, suddenly, he was walking through the restaurant with blood on his hands. Liz and I had been dating for two years before that night. She moved into my apartment five months before that night. She was my everything before that night. There, in the firelight, she was my everything, and then, without warning, she was my past.
The waiter that had seated us was holding a small box for me. Before the gunman entered the scene, before Liz and I were seated, I slipped the waiter a box to hold for me until dessert. When the gunman walked into the back, someone screamed, "No, Warren! Stop!" And then more shots echoed off the pots and pans, blistering the ears of everyone in the dining room. The manager laid dead in his office, and, satisfied with his plight, the gunman, apparently Warren, turned the gun on himself.
And I just sat there, staring at a once crowded, chatty, bustling dining room that rung with a disturbing mix of quiet and tears. The shooting was clarifying. Our rendezvous was supposed to end with her saying "yes" to the ring I was going to hold up while kneeling once dessert was plated in front of us. Instead the night ended with Liz in a body bag, with the ring in the dead waiter's pocket, and with me sitting there, just sitting there. Even though I will never set foot back inside Gypsey's, even when they do finally reopen, having removed the blood and bitterness from the dank walls--even though I will never step back inside that place, I think a part of me will forever be sitting there, just sitting there, waiting to propose, staring through the firelight.
The prompts for the Mutant 750 #70 Challenge at Grammar Ghoul Press is the word "rendezvous," a noun meaning: " a meeting at an agreed time and place, typically between two people."; and the image below:
|
Author
Born and bred in a small town, Tony now helms from a suburb just outside Birmingham, Alabama. He earned his Bachelors of Science in Elementary Education from the University of Phoenix and plans to guide young creative minds through the joyful wonders of writing as regularly as possible. In what little downtime he has, Tony writes as often as possible, acts in community theatre productions around Birmingham, dabbles in filmmaking through acting and writing, and more. He is the creator and co-writer of "the Park bench," a new webseries from Background People Productions coming in 2017. Tony has a deep love for music, movies, television, tacos, Greek yogurt and Yankee Candle candles. His website is Bedbug's Writing, which can be found at tonylovell.weebly.com. His books Bedbug's Writing: A Collection of Short Stories + Poetry, Volume One, and MMMMM., are available now in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.