“Were I employed by a more forgiving man, I’d give you a second chance.”
“Yes yes, a second chance,” the other man, kneeling bloody and broken on the floor, pleaded, almost kissing the first speaker’s feet in sudden gratitude.
“Unfortunately, I’m not.” He pulled his gun, pointed it at the man on the ground so that it dominated his field of vision, so that all he could see was the single silver eye of the gun barrel staring him down as if to say “enough is enough.”
“No. No. Please, a second chance.” He was begging now, crying, hugging the man’s legs and begging for dear life.
He kicked the man off, heard the sickening pop as the man’s shoulder met the concrete floor and gave. “You’ve already had plenty of second chances, Stan, and every time it’s the same damn deal.”
“No no, another chance,” the crying man named Stan kept saying. The words were some mantra. If he kept saying them then he wouldn’t die.
“You’re all out of chances now.” There was a click as he pulled away the safety of his trusty handgun.
“No. Just one more chance, I swear, that’s it. That’s it. I almost have it just give me a little longer please.” Stan made his final plea, praying to any god that would listen that his words would be enough to keep him standing until the next day.
A gunshot was the final resounding gavel. The verdict had been delivered. “Almost doesn’t cut it,” the other man said. There was a thin haze in the room and the smell of gun powder (or was it brimstone?). Stan was on the floor, twisted, contorted, eyes frozen open, final words of an incomplete argument forever hanging on his pouting lips. His forehead was red in its final dignity, a hole the size of a quarter leading from one side of his head to the other, a thick slime the color of overdone oatmeal oozing from the back like melted chocolate.
He could have looked at the scene all night, but that wasn’t why he had come in the first place was it? He knelt beside the stiffening dead man, checked his pockets and found a wallet in the inside breast pocket of his coat. A quick check of its contents revealed thirteen hundred-dollar bills, blood money to be sure.
“He had the cash the entire time,” he would later tell his boss on the way back from the job. “He just didn’t want to give it back to us. That greedy fucker.”
The smell of gun smoke and tears hung in the air behind him as he left. It was a long night.
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