The impromptu committee meeting that Mysterious had convened with me to talk about nothing did have one positive point. It brought a fresh, vibrant and repetitive series of insults from the stocky fellow in the doorframe. They cascaded over his confused lips, pouring out in an unfortunate series of jumbled verbs and mispronounced adjectives, coherent only by their ferocity and inevitable cyclical nature. As I again turned to leave, I heard the letters and loosely strung words finally breaking loose from the damn of incapacitation.
“I hate you so goddam much that I’m going to kill you! You hear me? I – am – going – to – kill – you!” The last part wasn’t dragged out for effect. The cow dung that he had placed in his body was proving to be a serious disruption to his breathing, not to mention the structure of his sentences, the grammar of his sentences, and even rudimentary sentence formation.
“Hey man.” Mysterious said, quickly deciding that his role was that of a professional negotiator who was going to broker a détente to the crisis. “My friend’s sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s get you a beer, and he’s going to apologize…apologize!” He hissed at me, “And we’re going to leave, and it’s all a big misunderstanding, and it’s all cool, so, let’s all relax…and everything’s going to be cool, ok?”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry.” I shouted again, but I really felt like adding, “For my face!” to be malicious. I did remember, as the latter words wet the tip of my tongue that I just wanted to be through with the idiot. So, I kept quiet and tried to look sincere. This might have been hard because of my face; after all, maybe it just couldn’t look sincere.
Things were quiet for about a minute. It looked like the apology was accepted and the peace accord had been signed by quiet assent. We shrugged our acceptance toward Mr. Short, each other, and then began to push towards the front door again. Two steps away from the invisible table, we heard the roar of insane rage and the inevitable stomping of feet in a rhythmic shuffling motion of personal affront. He scuffled along because running was simply too coordinated for someone that high. He could have crafted a new phrase for our backs, but he instead elected to go with the classic phrase that suited his rhetorical style.
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!”
By this point, the words had definitely and decidedly lost all meaning. I didn’t even turn around to look at him. I just wanted to be out of there. I wanted to be somewhere else. Preferably somewhere with an all-night kitchen, and that was incrementally cleaner. In that second before absolute departure, my ears abruptly nabbed a phrase that chilled my blood.
“He’s got a knife!”
It was uttered in that bad, horror movie teenage girl’s voice, and I wasn’t going to even give it credence but for the fact that everyone else in front of us suddenly began to move for the door double-time. As the exit was now stampeded shut, I decided to glance back just to check.
There was Mr. Short, empty doorframe, and now, empty wall behind me, slightly two feet off, and mid-center in the foyer. From his hand some sort of two inch folding knife protruded, blade extended and dangling. The situation was critical. Even I, who had been acting on idiotic instincts, was not dumb enough to again turn my back and walk away for the third time. All of this was ample fodder for my brain was to argue with my instincts about the next step. Instinctually, it was easy; fight or flight. As flight was blocked, it was fight. And yet, my brain insisted that it was unlikely that a total strung-out stranger would really try to kill me. It just wasn’t civilized.
“Hey.” I said, smiling graciously, and spreading my arms in what I assumed was a calming manner. “Let’s put the knife down, and just relax. I’m really, really sorry about what happened. But let’s let it go – let it pass this time, because, it’s not really worth this kind of trouble, you know?”