3 A.M. and the Barrel of a Gun

It is 3 a.m., I can't sleep, and I just wrote this. Maybe one day we'll meet The Scarred Man. Until then, let's have a fanciful little "what-if." I tried to do this from a third-person sort of perspective, because I'm always hitting up the first-person. I felt like this turned out punchier than I thought.

I'm probably not going to go back and edit this. It was more "for fun" than anything else. Sometimes a story just pops in your head, and has to be told.

"Open up, Johnny."

Johnny most certainly wasn't about to open up. Opening up meant submission, humiliation, the intimidation that The Scarred Face favored so much. Not that Johnny was necessarily an opponent of intimidation. He was all for it when it came to his line of work, the right action or word that'd turn stalwart into songbird. But when it came to being the intimidated? No, Johnny just was fine keeping his teeth clamped nice and tight.

That's why a pistol whipping was in order. The first smashed into his temple. The detective saw stars. The second went across his nose, putting a bend in an otherwise straight piece of bone. The third went about breaking up his skeleton smile. Bone and blood flew from the handle of the handgun, drawing a little gasp from the detective.

It was the perfect opening for the barrel of a gun. It tasted like a roll of pennies, if U.S. currency was in the habit of punching holes in skulls.

"Now was that so hard?" asked the Scarred Man, enjoying the fact it had been. Johnny's head swam, nausea and anger competing for attention. As always, anger ran to the forefront. He growled into the handgun. The Scarred Man blinked, once, twice.

"... What was that?"

Johnny repeated.

"That's ahell of a thing to say about aman's mother."

And yet the dead man meant every word of it. The mobster with the cut lip sighed. This was getting him nowhere, fast. Most men would be crying, pleading, begging for a second chance. Not Johnny. Maybe it was because he'd already had his second chance, a reprieve from death's dark door. Maybe it was because second chances weren't all they were cracked up to be. Whatever it was, the Scarred Man was losing face in front of his men, and fast. That's why he had to make a decision.

He'd love to hurt Johnny, to break every bone, but he'd already pulled out the gun. If he didn't pull the trigger, he'd be seen as weak, not having the balls for this sort of work. It didn't matter if he'd beaten one man to death with a bat, or put slugs in the heads of countless others. All that mattered was the next victim. If you showed one solitary sign of weakness, that was it. Those you'd loved, those you'd protected, those you'd known their entire lives, godsons, brother-in-laws, childhood friends, all, would tear you apart, piece by piece.

"Lemme clean that dirty mouth." The Scarred Man pulled the trigger.

The dirty words were washed out with blood.