Tony was a very muscular and good-looking Latino that had recently crossed the border of Mexico illegally. He was excited to immediately get a job for cash as a security guy at his cousin’s strip club. Tony was introduced to a very tall and muscular Latino named Steve that was head of security. Tony was so excited that he bought a lottery ticket that day to celebrate his American dream coming true.
Tony’s first night at the strip club a brawl broke out. Tony and the other burly Latino bouncer had their hands full in sudden and savage fashion. The club had metal detectors to be sure that no weapons could come inside. There were about seven members of two different gangs that argued in the club. One huge dude fired a fist that pasted a foe's face in a scarlet spatter. The guy fell on the floor and the big man stamped on his skull.
Steve intervened by grabbing the big guy. The monster swooped a wild haymaker that Steve adroitly sidestepped. The missed hit made him slip and Steve flipped him over his hip. Another brawler rushed with punches. Steve stuck him with an overhand right fist to the mouth that split his lip and he tripped over a table. Other members mobbed Steve in a siege of strikes and stomps. It was a whirlwind of limbs in a berserk brawl. Tony barreled into the battle like a grizzly amongst wolves. Tony's elbow knifed a nose that broke as the guy tumbled over a table from the force. Tony was pummeled by a pair of punks. He endured the assault and clipped one's chin with an uppercut that flipped the fella off his feet to the floor. Other gangsters massed and attacked Tony. He waded through the havoc absorbing a hail of hard hits. He smashed and bashed attackers in a dervish of windmilling limbs. He punched high while his legs lashed low, jackhammering bodies and legs. Then he went down under a manic mob.
Steve ripped from the grip of a guy that had him in a headlock. He stuck the guy in the eye and blood erupted from a major cut, half blinding the brute. Steve rammed into the rioters tearing at Tony. His surprise strikes whacked back two attackers. Then the owner, Dave himself, showed up with a Taser. A glass crashed on Tony's head and he dropped dazed. The merciless mob jumped in to trample him underfoot.
Dave's Taser fired and the lines smoothly swooped out in tendrils that pelted a punk's chest. The metal clips gripped his skin and the volts jolted into him. He jerked upright in frenzied spasms before hitting the floor, where he flopped like a fool. Dave aimed at another assailant and fired his second Taser line. It flew true, tagging another torso. The clips nipped skin and again volts jolted hard, making the man fall and flounder on the floor.
Tony and Steve seized and squeezed fighters and flung them out the doors. They had to drag the two that Dave juiced. Steve had to go to the hospital from the glass that slashed his scalp. Blood was pouring out. Tony was pretty beat up with cuts and bruises. The owner closed up. Tony offered to drive Steve to the hospital. But first he walked the stripper girls to their cars to be sure they left safely.
Afterwards Tony was helping Steve to his car when three of the thugs darted from the darkness of the alley. They had their hoods up and bandanas low, tied below their eyes like robbers from the old West. One had a gun. That pistol popped and the bullets buzzed like a hive of hornets stinging Steve's chest. He bull rushed through the battering bullets to grab the guy's gun. They spun struggling. Steve made a wrist twist that gave him the gun and it strobed a shot sideways that sledged his foe's head. DNA debris exploded all over. They fell together.
Tony was skewered in the side by a knife. He kneed the guy in the nuts and elbowed his eye before flipping him off his feet to sprawl on the street. Another knife burrowed in his back lacerated his lung. He spun and snatched the silvery blade from his foe's fingers. Tony's new knife thrusted through the gangster's throat. The guy gagged grotesquely as he went down to drown in his blood.
The pistol popped several shots that clocked Tony. The rounds pounded through his ribs. It was from the first knife guy he disarmed and dropped. The guy had grabbed the gun near Steve. But the kid wasn't an experienced shooter. He just jerked the trigger and was confused when the weapon stopped shooting. He was too close to Tony as he acted. Tony's knife swipe hacked his hand, so the gun clattered on concrete. The guy tried to break away. Tony knife smite licked lethally low to gut the guy. He folded up in a fetal position and rolled around on the ground moaning.
Once again Tony found himself holding a bloody blade above bodies. He dropped to his knees and looked down where several bullets had chewed through his chest .He'd also been impaled by the blades that bit in his back and side. He fell face down. He died before EMTs arrived.
Steve and two of the three masked men were dead also. The guy Tony gutted survived and went to prison with twenty years to do before parole.
It was all so senseless. Tony’s American dreams died on his first dead end job. Ironically Tony’s lottery ticket was a winner for fifty thousand dollars. Tony’s cousin collected the winnings.
Bio:
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in The Horror Zine, J Journal, Chiron Review, Churches, Children and Daddies, Down in the Dirt, Freedom Fiction Journal, Short-Story Me, Blood Moon Rising, Dark Harbor, Flash Phantoms, You Phantomaniacs Anthology, The Listening Eye, Evening Street Review, Conceit, Spotlight on Recovery, Outdoor Life and Muscle and Fitness. His play Jailhouse Confessions was performed at the Kennedy Center in 2019. He has numerous novels and audiobooks available. You can read more of his writings at https://tomkropp.wordpress.com.