He desperately tried to push her up, to save her, maybe she wasn’t dead yet!
Yes, she was!
Who did this? Who did it?
The clerk?
The cashier?
The butcher?
Maybe it was the owner who came back to work unnoticed?
He climbed on the toilet seat, and cut the rope loose with his pocket knife. He lifted her and gently put her on the ground. For couple of minutes, without stopping he gave her mouth to mouth respiration. He kept massaging her heart without loosing hope.
But no! She didn’t wake up. He was furious, he wanted to find the murderer, the bastard who did this to her, his loved one. Once he was out he saw the people gathered around the front door, and one fairly sized man was trying to break the glass with a candy raft for them to get out.
The clerk was urging him excitedly to hit harder because the glass was thick.
“Who killed her? I said who killed her?” he was shouting to the top of his voice.
The man with a candy raft in his hand stood stunned and tremulously looked the gun pointed at the clerk.
“Young man… we all stood here next to you, none of us killed your girlfriend… we were giving you our wallets, remember?”
He couldn’t believe her cunning eyes… She knew it! She knew M. was going to die!
“You said she is going to die! You murderer!” he shouted and pointed the gun at her head, ready to pull the trigger.
“Yes, I did say that! I knew she was going to die! I always know when someone is going to die!” she shouted back at him angrily.
He pressed his lips and tried to stop the tears running down his cheeks. His finger shivered at the trigger, but he couldn’t pull it.
The clerk she appears to be, there is something more to it. Maybe she is not human. She stretched her hand and asked for the key to free the innocent hostages. She promised that the suspects for the murder would stay, including her. The cashier, the two clerks and the butcher were the only one left. He freed the customers and locked the door again. He ordered her to tell him everything.
“I know when somebody is going to die!” she said.
“So you killed her? Which one of you killed her? Say it!”
“No, none of us killed her, we are no murderers! Why don’t you try to remember what happened then?” she told him mysteriously.
“I remember it all very well. She went to the toilet, and you told me she was going to die!” he shouted again but she wasn’t scared a bit of his gun.
“No, she leaned and whispered in your ear that she couldn’t live like this any more. But you were too busy with your mission, and hardly noticed her at all.”
He was confused and he stared at her, his eye scrutinizing her face, looking for one single pore to tell him she wasn’t telling the truth. The clerk observed him calmly.
“That’s not true… I don’t remember…” he kept saying as if defending himself.
“She stroked your shoulder, and she knew you didn’t hear her, she didn’t want you to hear her. Your life isn’t good for everybody, she probably liked her pretended job, honest job, she felt like a part of us, she saw that living a normal life can be nice for a change… She could never have that. I’m sure she wanted to buy the box of chocolate with her daily wages, to know she earned it herself, that she got it on her own.”
He sat down on one of the chairs, leaned the gun near to the ground and lowered his head. Yes, she was really looking at the box of chocolates when he came at the store. But he thought that she was just sad, that she hated doing that job. It seems that the gun was meant to be for him. The two of them, they are Bonny and Clyde, aren’t they? They must die together. She decided that today was the day they must go away. Yet he forced one last glance to the three workers… but something changed, the clerk’s eyes were shining, almost like a lightning, waiting for him to pull the trigger, to blow his brains out. The butcher was rubbing her fat hands insensibly under her belly.
There was something treacherous about them.
He felt that they were expecting some kind of spectacle, that they aren’t just some ordinary workers worried about their jobs. Especially the clerk, she acted as a leader, as one of those persons that put on a sad face once the press is here, and suddenly she is the savior of the hostages. She is a false hero!
They killed Bonny!
They almost had him fooled too.
He picked up the gun, pointed it towards the clerk and shot her straight through her head. She fell on the ground motionless. The butcher stuck her massive body to one of the shelves, trying to hide behind the other clerk, the skinny one. But he stood up and uncontrollably fired several bullets. There was blood all over the floor, and the three bodies were laying one on top of the other.
He had no sense of fault, or guilty conscience. He knew he did the right thing, the only right thing in his short life. He freed the world of these three wicked creatures, full of grudge.
Then he went to the toilet and set next to the dead body of his beloved one. He put the gun at the temple.
And of course, fired!
Translated by the author