Robbery

I walk into the bank and raise my gun with a shaking hand. All the hustle and bustle of people walking around stops suddenly as a single gunshot rings across the room. Kids cry out and people dive under tables.

I walk up to the counter where a worker's trying to duck down so to not be seen, but the cover of the counter isn't big enough. I pull him up by his hair, and put my pistol against his forehead.

He looks at me and there's visable fear in his eyes, and even without words I see him begging for mercy. For what must be the millionth time, I think about my life. I think about the monster that I've become. But I know it's too late to turn back now.

I tell him calmly, "I want five hundred-thousand dollars in this briefcase right now, or your brains are gunna be splattered against the wall behind you."

He nods vigorously, then ducks down and starts loading green hundred dollar bills into the black briefcase.

Suddenly, I fall to the ground, my breath knocked clean out of me. I roll over, and a man who looks to be in his 40s in above me. He makes a move for the gun that had fallen from my hand, but I get to it first.

I grip the cold steel in my hand as I aim the shaft at his chest. My finger pulls the trigger.

He puts his hands on his stomach where the bullet hit. Blood slowly seeps though the shirt, the crimson red soaking his white button down. He drops to his knees, and somewhere behind him, someone cries out, "Daddy!"

A young boy rushed up to him and held the man in his arms, sobbing. Through the tears, I keep hearing "No! No, daddy, don't leave. Don't leave me."

The man's breaths get shorter and shorter, until finally his chest stops moving.

The little redhaired boy sits on the blood soaked ground for a moment before getting up. He walks up to me screaming, "You did this! You killed my dad!"

He Pounds on my chest, and he reminds me of my five year old son. The son I left. As the sirens in the distance start to get louder, I think about my life, about all I left behind. And I run.

I run from the bank,

I run from the sirens,

I run from the little boy,

and I run from the money that I killed a man over.

But I can't run from my thoughts.