The Appeasement of Our God
t was oppressively hot on that summer night. It was the type
of heat that seeps through clothes and leaves drops of perspiration as
soon as you set foot in its overwhelming, sweltering presence. It was
the dark heat of a summer night that can boil men's blood and drive the
desperate to acts of insanity. While most men lie in their beds
preparing for a more ordered form of worship, two lay dead in the middle
of nowhere. They lay on opposite sides of a counter in a tiny
convenience store which sat next to a tiny gas station which laid far
from the ears and eyes of anyone at three o'clock in the morning. The
fluorescent lights cast a heavenly glow on the scene, for the Lord was
pleased at just what had taken place there in the emptiness of that
night. All was deathly silent, save the contented whirring of the cash
register and the barely perceptible flow of blood across the celestially
clean tile floors. One man, the employee on the night shift lay, with
gun in hand, shot through the face. The other, dressed all in black,
his face covered with a ski mask which shrouded his identity, lay
opposite the counter, also with gun in hand, shot straight through the
heart.
The man who lay behind the counter obediently wears the demeaning, silly orange uniform required of all employees. Few ever visited the store at this time of night, and those who did breezed in and out like ghosts giving little thought or courtesy to the man behind the counter as if they didn't even share the same plane of existence. The employee spent must of his time windexing, wiping, sweeping and mopping spots cleaned dozens of times before. He seldom spoke to anyone, save the required "Thank you, sir", which he dribbled out apathetically to all those who purchased an item or gas. Although he might have seen his life as that of failure, God had chosen him to guard his temple against the evil villains who lurk in the shadows and seek to pillage the temple and upset the order He has imposed. Everyone has a place in God's kingdom.
His was a life filled with disappointment at what hadn't been. He was intelligent, had been an Honors student in high school, but his parents had been dirt poor. As much as he wanted to further his life and leave behind the humiliation of food stamps, ratty clothes and tiny apartments, he couldn't escape. His parents simply lacked the financial means to put him through college. After attending the university for two years he was finally forced to drop out and turn to this convenience store to make his living. He sat all night, every night, alone with his thoughts and unable to keep from wondering what might have been, could have been and should have been. The clerk had seen the promised land, and had seen it fly away forever. His job was that much worse for him because he knew exactly what he was missing He lived in fear. Fear brought by bills he couldn't pay that drove him to work every day, and the growing feeling of fear that his life was completely empty of meaning. Now he lie, his face a bloody mush of anonymity, as nameless and unidentifiable as he had been in life. However, the Gods smiled upon him tonight. He had proved a loyal disciple in the end.
The other man was shrouded all in black, save the ever growing stain of deep crimson that slowly spread across his chest and then the tile floors. He had lived a life similar to the clerk's, in the sense that he spent much of his life being ignored. This hadn't always been the case though. Once all the major universities in God's kingdom had been recruiting him to fill their backfields. But one major knee injury later he was abandoned. A nobody again, bitter and filled with rage at having climbed so close to Heaven only to slip back down into Hell, a heathen outcast, an untouchable. He lived in the back of a tiny hatchback and had virtually no money to his name. In his dead hand he clutched tightly his only possible instrument of improvement of his life, a stolen handgun. He had been robbing deserted stores such as this one for months now. Each time he endangered his own life and the life of another, he earned himself about thirty dollars.
Once, though, he lost money on a robbery. While he was pillaging another of God's temples a man came in to buy ice cream for his pregnant wife. The man froze when he entered and saw the man holding the checker at gunpoint, then made the mistake of running. The thief knew the man had seen his face and was forced to shoot him in the back. Having shot the customer, of course, it took two more bullets to ensure that the man was dead and three more bullets to kill the clerk after he received the money. The purchase of a new clip would cost him ten more dollars than he made on that particular dark evening. From then on he wore a mask when he robbed these stores, as much to disconnect himself from others as to hide his own identity.
He had strolled into the store which, as usual, was completely empty, save the clerk who was cleaning the counter. The clerk watched from behind the counter as the man draw a pistol and quickly advanced on the counter intent on robbing the store. The clerk, however, was ready and, fearful of the consequences with his boss after having been robbed of the nineteen dollars and change that lay in the register, he drew his pistol which was illegally stored under the counter. The robber paused and demanded that the clerk drop his gun. The clerk only aimed silently. The robber warned the clerk that he would shoot him. The clerk only aimed silently, staring down the thief with a glare that said he wouldn't bend over backwards anymore. The robber screamed at the top of his rage and repeated his demand for the money. The clerk shook his head and continued aiming. The two men fired simultaneously and the bullets, the very expressions of their life's frustrations, found their targets. Both men dropped dead instantly and laid there until morning.
As the heavenly lights of the store cast upon this grisly scene of sacrifice, the Lord was pleased by what had taken place. The clerk, a warm body now cold, would be replaced the next night by yet another meaningless warm body to perform the same menial tasks in the service of our Lord. The heathen invader had been eliminated, and although more would certainly return, the clerk had done well. The policemen and the coroner who investigated the occurrence simply shuffled some papers, signed a few forms, threw the corpses in body bags and sent them off to the morgue. They were all very happy for the opportunity to earn themselves two free coffees each for their minimal efforts. The bodies were removed to sit nameless on a cold slab on the morgue before they were burned into a pile of ashes that were simply thrown in the trash because there were no loved ones found to dispose of them properly. The men found their final resting place in the city dump, along with the other useless by-products of a modern society.
The owner of the store was in a bad mood all day because he would have to clean the blood stains from the floor or call someone else in to do it. He would also have to call and hire someone today to work the night shift, that could take a half-hour of his valuable time. Really, though, these were minor problems. The important thing, he reasoned, was that, despite all this mess, our God lay safely protected in the drawer of the cash register.
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