With Eyes Widened #28

Suzie laid down her pack of smokes and looked up just in time to see the masked man walk in the door. Her first thought was to scream but as the cigarette fall from her mouth she second-guessed herself and just continued to watch his every move. It was thirty feet from the door to the bar and he wasted no time getting there. She could not hear the conversation between the assailant and the barkeep but it was a heated exchange. No one else in the bar had seemed to notice all the commotion, all their attention was fixed on the hockey game, you will have that this far into the Canadian north. This bar is almost on the other side of the Artic circle and on most days can not be seen from the road.

The bartender must have recognized the man because it had been at least one minute and he has not even started to walk towards the register yet. What could he be demanding? What was his intention? She dropped her eyes just long enough to fumble for the dropped smoke and to light it. Her eyes readjusted to the scene playing out before her through a thick cloud of smoke and flashing beer lights in the window. Out of nowhere a man came running across the bar and tackled the masked man. Suzie choked on a sip of Dwars as her eyes widened, she felt her heart stop and heard a gun shot crack out. The two men on the floor had not stood up yet. All of the patrons were looking around trying to find the cause of the sound but there was a half wall around the bar and no one except her and the bartender knew exactly what was going on. After what felt like an entirety a man stood up from behind the bar but she did not know which man it was. As soon as the man stood up the bar erupted into a round of applause and everyone went back to watching the game. Could she have dosed off and imaged the whole thing? Did some thing fall and wake her up, was that she heard and thought was a gun shot?

In the ash trey sat a half smoked cigarette with a half-inch of ash on the end of it. Next to that was her empty glass that she had been drinking Dwars out of all night. Did she really just down the last of it and witness all of this, or did she just dose off. If anything she knew that she needed another drink so she jumped the one cigarette of the other and went to the bar. Since there was only the one bartender she had to what behind seven or eight hockey fans that had beaten her to the bar. She looked visible shaken, her brow was all a glow, she could not keep her hands still, and the cigarette in her mouth was shaking. After the hockey fans got their drinks and left, it was just her, the bartender, and one of the two men. Her voice cracked as she said "another Dwars" just enough to make the barkeeper ask her "what mam", again she said "another Dwars Please" this stuck her as odd, that she had just said please to a man that might have a hand in a murder just minutes before. When the bartender came back with her drink she add "can I look at a phonebook for a moment" hoping that the man would have to step over the body as he went to the other end of the bar to get the phonebook from next to the wall hanging phone. She had never been in this bar before but the had noticed when she came in that the bar still had a corded rotary phone that was the same one where grandmother had had years before.

For the next hour she stayed next to the bar trying to notice if the bartender or the other man who was now sitting at the other end of the bar, would look down at the body in the floor, if there was even one there. She could not tell by the mens' mannerisms if her suspicions were true. By this time the Dwars was taking effect on her. She felt her head getting heavy, only if she was not in this wheelchair she could see over the bar and tell if there really was a man dead behind the bar.