“Inevitable?”
When the heavy beat of Zephyr’s “Stand to Fight” ended, the sudden silence jolted Nathan out of “The Zone.” He took a few slowing steps and brought his jog to a pause. He took a couple deep breaths and looked around as the slower “Never Again” by Gadise Boshe began. His morning jog had brought him to a part of town he rarely visited. In fact, as he looked around at the random collection of small businesses, he wasn’t sure where he was exactly.
He was about fifty feet from a corner, so he started a slow jog towards it to read the street signs. However, when he reached the corner a glance to the right showed him a firetruck, a couple police cars, and a small crowd.
Nathan took out his earbuds, and walked to the back of the crowd. He got a man’s attention and asked, “What happened?”
“Those lefty terrorists bombed Al’s Gun Shop.”
“Oh.” Nathan looked around at the crowd again, then asked, “Was anyone hurt?”
It took a few seconds for him to notice the man hadn’t answered. Nathan looked to him and saw the man glaring at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you one of those liberal pussies that supports them?”
Nathan held up his hands. “Terrorism is terrorism and needs to be stopped.”
That seemed to mollify the man.
“But,” Nathan continued, “if this was a bombing from the Well-Regulated Militia Group, they do call themselves Life Saving Terrorists. Their MO is once the package is taken inside the store, it announces that it is a bomb and that everyone has five minutes to evacuate. There’s been five, or six bombings, and so far nobody’s been hurt.”
“They’re leftist terrorists.”
“Yes, and every leftist politician and celebrity I’ve heard of has denounced them. Repeatedly, and vehemently. Unlike right wing politicians and celebrities when terrorists were blowing up abortion clinics and gay bars.”
“Owning guns isn’t illegal.”
“Neither were abortions or being gay.”
Nathan took half a step back. “When worthless politicians prevented anything meaningful being done to curb gun violence in this country, shit like this was inevitable.”
Then, not wanting to deal with this anymore, Nathan put his earbuds back in and started jogging back the way he’d come.
Go back to the main Monthly Story page, or the main page of my website.
For each story I publish, I like to give the backstory, or anything interesting that happened while writing it. You can see what I wrote for this story on my Published Works page.
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If you liked this story, you might want to check out Political Pies, my collection of forty stories of a political nature.