Page 2 of I Am the Messenger

It's like being in school again and your sadistic math teacher's barking orders at you from the front of the room, even though he couldn't care less and he's waiting for the bell so he can go home and drink beer and get fat in front of the telly.

I look at Marv. I want to kill him. "You're twenty years old, for Christ's sake. Are you trying to get us killed?"

"Shut up, Ed!" The gunman's voice is louder this time.

I whisper even quieter. "If I get shot, I'm blaming you. You know that, don't you?"

"I said shut up, Ed!"

"Everything's just a big joke, isn't it, Marv?"

"Right, that's it." The gunman

forgets about the woman behind the counter and marches over to us, fed up as all buggery. When he arrives we all look up at him.

Marv.

Audrey.

Me.

And all the other hopeless articles like us sprawled out on the floor.

The end of the gun touches the bridge of my nose. It makes it itchy. I don't scratch it.

The gunman looks back and forth between Marv and me. Through the stocking on his face I can see his ginger whiskers and acne scars. His eyes are small and he has big ears. He's most likely robbing the bank as a payback on the world for winning the ugliness prize at his local fete three years running.

"So which one of you's Ed?"

"Him," I answer, pointing to Marv.

"Oh no you don't," Marv counters, and I can tell by the look on his face that he isn't as afraid as he should be. He knows we'd both be dead by now if this gunman was the real thing. He looks up at the stocking-faced man and says, "Hang on a sec...." He scratches his jawline. "You look familiar."

"Okay," I admit, "I'm Ed." But the gunman's too busy listening to what Marv has to say for himself.

"Marv," I whisper loudly, "shut up."

"Shut up, Marv," says Audrey.

"Shut up, Marv!" calls Ritchie from across the room.

"Who the hell are you?" the gunman calls across to Ritchie. He turns to find out where the voice came from.

"I'm Ritchie."

"Well, shut yourself up, Ritchie! Don't you start!"

"No worries," returns the voice. "Thanks a lot." All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.

In any case, the gunman starts to seethe. It seems to come pouring from his skin, right through the stocking on his face. "I'm completely bloody sick of this," he growls. His voice burns from his lips.

It doesn't shut Marv up, though.

"I think," he continues, "we might've gone to school together or something like that, you know?"

"You want to die," the gunman says nervously, still seething, "don't you?"

"Well, actually," Marv explains, "I just want you to pay the parking fine for my car. It's in a fifteen-minute zone outside. You're holding me up here."