Shots Fired in the Melting Pot

by T. C. Clover

crack.

  “So, the next thing I know, the CIA is flying me off to safety in India,” Fassim announced with tears falling onto her face. “I was told that Kujhad would meet me there the next day after completing his mission, but it was the last time I saw him. The terrorists sent my fiancé into the hotel café where all of the journalists were enjoying coffee and speaking with their crews. Kujhad ran into the crowded place as fast as he could and pushed a button to trigger the bomb. When it went off, it sprayed confetti and glitter all over the patrons in the café. There were even a few of those…what do you call them? Trick snakes? These yellow trick snakes flew out of the backpack, and the CIA was filming the entire incident. Apparently, they wanted to use this failure to humiliate the Bojihat leaders. And their plan worked, except the CIA had to evacuate when the Israeli army started a raid. They didn’t have time to get Kujhad on a plane.”

  “Wait a minute,” CKB began with an enthusiastic gleam in his eyes, “your fiancé was the confetti bomber? I mean, the confetti bomber that everyone was laughing about in their video feeds?”

  “Yes, but-“ Fassim tried to elaborate more details, but the rest of the cast began to laugh and howl with memories from the viral video.

  Fassim kicked over the coffee table and shattered the glass near the legs of her three male co-stars. The drinks that were balanced atop it spilled on the gray shag carpeting, soaking it around their feet. She then stood with a look of pride and stomped off toward her bedroom with a demeanor of incredulous hatred.

  “Fassim, Fassim!” Mike called out from the corner of the room. “Everyone be quiet, and please show some respect.” The room returned to silence as the other five cast members took a few seconds to gain control of their laughter. “Fassim, we apologize for this response and mean no disrespect. Please finish the story.” He pleaded with a gracious hand gesture to the Muslim woman.

  “Well, the CIA achieved their goal,” she stated with a posture of deep sorrow and looked down at her hands while rubbing them together. “Kujhad had made a fool of Bojihat to the whole world. It was such an embarrassment to the terrorists that they planned to change their name. But when they captured my fiancé, they decided to end him using the four hells. In the tradition of ancient laws, he was eviscerated, emasculated, drawn and quartered. They ripped him apart with their trucks, and that’s how…the love of my life died.”

  Fassim looked pale and nauseated when these words escaped her lips, and she almost fell over from telling the story. The panicked woman grabbed her abdomen and stomped away from the television set to the safety of her bedroom. From their seats in the living room, her co-stars could hear a wail of terrible agony and longing. They each closed their eyes and made an effort to show some belated respect.

 

  Highway Junction – Brooklyn, New York

 

  Litz moved with a spirited gait through the slums of Brooklyn toward the overpass where her friend Oslo was staying. Although the men from her security detail had tried to make excuses to stay away from this neighborhood, she reminded them who was in charge. It had been less than an hour since she had witnessed Fassim’s heartbreaking revelation, and Litz needed to have some laughs with an old friend.

  The young woman froze in her tracks when she saw a homeless black man sprawled out in Oslo’s thick canvas hammock. The man was relaxing and reading the pages of a tattered magazine. He was wearing an orange winter hat and a green army jacket with matching cargo pants.

  “Where is Oslo?” Litz asked the man with a confounded expression as she walked up to the makeshift sleeping area. “Why are you in his bed?”

  “What do you want from Oslo?” The man replied without looking up from the pages of his magazine. “You don’t belong in this part of town.”

  “Oslo is my friend,” she declared with contempt and stuck out her chest to indicate an unshakable resolve. “When will he be back?”

  “They took Oslo…to Camp Paradise.” He replied with an icy stare. “But there are plenty of poor white folks around here that would like to be your friend. As for me, I’m out of the friend business. You have yourself a good day.” The man suggested with a dismissive wave of his right hand as he reached up and turned a page in the magazine.

  Litz spun around and put her hand over her mouth. She stepped away from the abrasive homeless man as though his negativity could smash her into the asphalt.

  “Are you okay?” Bulky Kevin asked when he saw how distraught the television star appeared. “Do you need to-“

  The security guard stopped speaking when Litz began to sprint away from the overpass at top speed.

  “Where’s she going now?” William asked his colleague as he saw the athletic woman ambling across the asphalt with incredible force.

  The two men looked at one another in bewilderment and pursued their client with haste. However, she was in much better shape than them and ran like a championship boxer until they lost sight of her.

  XIII. Angry Potatoes

  The air over Zackenberg, Greenland had relaxed its lethal, freezing grip from the mountains for the afternoon. This small window of time had allowed fourteen-year-old Holloss to put on his wool facial coverings and go exploring the majestic mountain springs. He had argued with his mother when she forced him to take their American Husky, JoHann, for protection, but Holloss was thankful to have the dog as company. The brown-haired teenager was thin for his age, which meant that he had to cover himself with more insulation to leave the house. He checked his right pocket for what must have been the third time, confirming that he had everything required to build an emergency fire.

  When Holloss and the dog reached an altitude of only four hundred feet above their small town, the rare grandeur of the landscape began to reveal itself.  There were formations of ice over which fresh waterfalls spilled into a valley of immaculate beauty.  The land here had remained untouched for thousands of years, and only the most brazen settlers would call it a permanent home.

  Holloss admired the divide where the mountain landscapes gave way to solid ice formations, and he found his favorite nook to be unoccupied.  There was a tall stretch of solid rock that jutted out atop a brilliant waterfall.  He and the dog climbed the rock formation with ease as though it were a natural concrete staircase.  This area was a perfect vantage point for sightseeing since reflected sunlight from the rocks had a warming effect, and he could spy on the glacier without endangering himself. 

  The inquisitive youth knelt down at the top of the rock formation and admired the frenzied energy of water escaping over the smooth edge of the white ice.  There was a massive bowl of glacial ice with unusual jade green colors at its center that became pure white at the outer edges.  The water swirled and gurgled in this ice bowl with a hypnotic appeal, and Holloss began to meditate above the tranquil scene.

  Something caught the young man’s attention in his peripheral vision to the right, and Holloss focused on the movement, turning his body toward the grand valley.  He opened his mouth in awe as a small storm of fiery debris rained down from the heavens.  At least two dozen objects were leaving smoke trails as they appeared through the low clouds and shot toward the earth.  The sheltered adolescent licked his dry lips in fascination as the flames burned hot all the way to their impact with the ground.  To his delight, a thirty-foot-by-thirteen-foot section of steel smashed down on the mountain ridge just a hundred yards from where he stood.  The massive blackened object was still smoldering when it landed, and white smoke emanated from every corner of its surface.

  Holloss gazed with regret at a logo embossed at the center of the steel, which read ‘USA’ in big, bold letters.  The light show took only fifteen seconds to cascade down from the upper atmosphere, but it would take the boy much longer to understand what he had just witnessed.

   

  Your Stay Inn – Brooklyn, New York

   

  Litz Eliza Rack sco
rned the New York City skyline through the eighth-floor window of a cheap hotel.  Her eyes had become dead and frigid with sorrow, which had been a preeminent theme in her life since she was a teenager.  The troubled woman watched the Memorial Towers as the sunset passed behind their hulking black structures.  There were over a dozen skyscrapers built in Jersey City to take on the burden of New York’s portion of an event known as The Passing.  Litz thought that this simple phrase was a clever and tidy way to describe something wretched in the history of mankind.

  The orange sunlight cast long shadows across the bay, and at times they passed over The Statue of Liberty.  She felt trapped by the power of the shadows, and it seemed cold in her lonely hotel room, although the temperature was adequate.  Litz used her right hand to explore her face and inhaled with apprehension.  She plucked her right eye from its socket with the same delicate movements someone might use to diffuse a bomb.  There was a familiar discomfort when the bulbous glass became unstuck from the clingy surfaces inside of her skull, and Litz was careful to handle the aesthetic placeholder.  The glass eye felt light and fragile as she turned it over in her hand.  It looked pale in the reddish hues of the sunset that protruded through the cheap blue curtains.

  “Ten cups of dust per urn and ten urns per