Bad Day for the Home Team

by Alex O’Meara

Chapter 1

It just went off, like, oops. The first shot hit solid and sent a guy cutting pizza for his son back into a wall.

“Wow,” the shooter said. “I’m sorry.”

He apologized in the same tone a mother uses when she tells her child the hamster died.

“What was that?” someone said. “What the hell?”

The shooter looked at his gun, then watched the wife of the man who was shot go over to him. Her expression was like the saleslady in the china shop about to say, You know you have to pay for that now, don’t you? The infant with them put a bit of pizza into his mouth and looked to where the man was.

He clapped his hands together like he was saying goody-goody gumdrops!

There was movement.

Chairs scraped against the floor.

“Okay,” the shooter said. “It’s all okay.”

Sounds gained momentum and built on one another.

“All right now.” The shooter spoke only to himself but didn’t know it. “It’s fine.”

A wall of noise and panic moved in on him. There were screams. The man who had been shot pounded the floor with a flat, open hand. He kicked the table leg with his heel. Silverware went flying, for some reason, across tabletops.

“Mike,” the wife whispered. Then she yelled, “Mike!” over and over while another woman, a large one in a yellow flower-print sundress, grabbed her purse, put it in the bend of her elbow and started running. She had one hand over her mouth.

The shooter felt vibrations in the floor. He felt them through the soles of his feet.

“Mike!” the woman yelled. “Oh my God Mike oh my God.”

The shooter yelled, but no one heard him over the noise and the awakening to the reality of what was going on.

“All right. Okay. All right now,” he said.

He fired and made multiple shots in a line. It was a dotted line that started in the center of the woman in the yellow sundress and led away from her. She went down. Her purse trailed after her. The man next to her was shot in the throat.

It was amazing.