January 26, 2009
Writing: Fiction
A Bank Robbery
The line at the Douglas County Bank seemed to stretch for miles behind the beige marbled counter. Although it was the middle of July and most were accustomed to the warm weather, everyone seemed to move extra slow that day in the humid mid-afternoon air. Outside the bank window passerby’s appeared to be a part of some modern painter’s mural. Their sluggish movements and drooped shoulders meshed with both the sun and the heat rising from the pavement in a way that made the assorted colors of their clothing and glistening skin seem to blend together.
The line at the bank was especially slow as only one teller was working. The building did not have a working air conditioner, and Eric Randal tried to position himself in front of the rotating portable fan without getting out of line. The heat made him irritable, and he wanted to rip off the thin streamers connected to the fan that seemed to wave to him tauntingly and say “we’re so nice and cool.” All Randal wanted to do was to go home and sit in his blue recliner in his cool house.
He had considered going home right after school, but passed the bank on his way and decided to deposit his paycheck. He worked at the local learning center where he ran a writing workshop. Most of his students were in their thirties and forties, and were trying, as Randal believed, to regain some part of their life that they regrettably let slip by. The truth was, he hated his job. He had wanted to be a famous author by this time in his life, and preferred to live amongst other writers in a large and bustling city such as New York. In his small town of Lawrence, Kansas however, exciting material was rarely produced, as exciting events rarely happened. Most of his students frustrated him. He had explained to them out of aggravation on numerous occasions that you had to experience the world in order to write about it.
One student, Charlie Paine, was overly pompous and often tried to impress the teacher and fellow classmates with stories in which he used a large vocabulary. The content of his stories were however dry and generic, and Randal couldn’t stand “smarty pants” who thought they were better than anyone else. Randal made sure to quickly distinguish Charlie Paine’s flame, and after a few weeks he heard less and less from the Paine boy. Another young woman in Randal’s class chose to spend her time writing about the tragedies and difficulties she had witnessed in her lifetime which Randal bashed as a poor and pathetic waste of his time.
Another student who Randal knew as Eliot Orvis was overly eager to please his teacher. He was always a disheveled mess running to and from class with armfuls of notebooks and papers that were torn and crumbled. What secretly impressed Randal was that Orvis was always writing and was always enthusiastic about writing. While Randal was intrigued by Orvis, he was also easily frustrated by him. Perhaps Randal envied the passion that seemed to envelop Eliot Orvis, but regardless right before he had left his class that afternoon, Randal angrily slammed Orvis’s latest story in front of him, and through a clenched jaw told Orvis that he would never get anywhere in life with his writing because a good writer must experience things in order to write about them.
Seven minutes had passed and there were still ten people in the line in front of Randal. Suddenly it was as if time sped up. It seemed to take only a few brief seconds between the moment when Randal heard the door to the bank door slam open and when he heard the loud crack of the gun that would carry with it a life sentence. The slammed door was followed by a man whose identity was concealed by a black and cheap looking ski mask. His voice was harsh and gruff, but Randal noticed a shaky nervousness in his voice as well. The outstretched hand of the man was also shaking as he pointed the gun at the teller’s face and warned everyone else not to move. The robber never even seemed to hear the cops enter the door behind him.
Two of the towns well known cops, Larry and Mike, happened to be across the street when they saw the masked man enter the Douglas County Bank. The masked robber jumped at the cops’ demands and made the mistake of spinning around and still held the gun which pointed directly at Mike who in turn fired his hand gun directly at the robber out of, what he would explain later, was for the safety of the town’s finest folks. Randal caught a glimpse of the robber’s eyes through the small holes in the mask, and watched as the man’s eyes went from holding a look of fear and desperation to a look of pure shock and disbelief as he placed his hand over the wound in his chest.
The blood around the hole where the bullet had entered darkened the black of his shirt to an even darker shade of black that symbolized death to everyone who saw it. As the robber pulled his bare hand away from his wound, he displayed the color of bright red before he looked with bewilderment at the cop who pulled the trigger. He gasped his last breath before he crumpled to the floor and left a trail of bright red fingerprints down the side of the beige counter. Officer Mike, who was responsible for firing the gun, slowly put his gun back in his holster and sucked in a breath of air with a sense of heroism.
“Alright folks,” he said with his hands placed proudly on his gun holster, “Everyone is safe now.”
He was answered by an echo of applauding citizens; however Randal was looking at Officer Larry who was searching the victim for identification. He overheard one officer whisper to the other that the gun was not loaded after all. As the officer removed the ski mask, Randal walked towards the victim against the cops’ orders. His eyes grew wide and he felt his knees begin to tremble. His stomach turned and his breathing quickened as he looked at the victim’s unmasked face, and recognized his student Eliot Orvis.
Next to Orvis’s still body lay a crumbled piece of paper. Randal, lightheaded and in disbelief, slowly knelt down to pick up the piece of paper. He unfolded it as he kept his eyes on Orvis’s lifeless body. Randal recognized the scratchy and penciled writing of his student, and began to read the last written words of Eliot Orvis. The paper read “A Bank Robbery” and Randal’s hands shook as he began, “His teacher told him that he would never get anywhere in life with his writing because a good writer must experience things in order to write about them.”
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