Naugatuck Valley Community College
Six Down Erick Zuniga*
One down five to go.
Victor shot into the roof of the bank, and with that cue, Johnny knocked the security guard out. Just as hard as last time. The more they did this the more he acted independently. He glamorized their lifestyle. Although it was still a game to him. Victor was ashamed of Johnny. This was work not play. Victor aimed the revolver at the small crowd. There they were again, judging eyes some of those eyes hid behind fear, but they still judged nonetheless. The walls enclosed, his heart was all he could hear. He forgot to yell for a moment. Anxiety and withdrawal subdued him. Their judgment pierced him, unnaturally, strangling him. He tried to yell once more, but found nothing escaping his throat. “If it ain’t obvious now, it’s a robbery folks!” Johnny covered for him, too theatrically. It chafed him, how he was acting. He still thought he was in a movie. But Victor only had himself to blame. Johnny looked up to him. He used to act this way when he first started. Johnny was following in his footsteps, without the cocaine, he could see that clearly, through the constraining walls. He was a bad influence, the worst one possible. Victor remembered his job now, why he was here. He pointed his gun, his tool, at the crowd. “Throw anything you got at us and get on the ground.” He pointed the revolver at the crowd moving side to side, rapidly hoping the sweat wouldn’t make the gun fall right out of his hand as he did so. The crowd complied, but not without cost. They stared down their chief aggressor, a madman with a gun, a madman who was a failure, things he himself already knew. He felt all their eyes repeating it. His heart pounded. It was rhythmic talking, no, screaming at the judgemental eyes. “Look at the floor!” He cocked the revolver and waved it about wildly. It deterred most, but just because they weren’t looking at him doesn’t mean they didn’t think of him any differently. He looked away from the crowd, and at the teller, who right about now should look absolutely terrified, but to his surprise, he found a coolly composed bank teller, staring through the glass. He was a rotund weathered man with a mustache that gave him the likeness of a walrus. His likeness was familiar, of another walrus that used to be in Victor’s life, his ungrateful father, a pompous man who turned away “dirty money”, as if how the banks earned their money wasn’t dirty. The resentment and fear boiled within him simultaneously. Victor aimed up the weapon ever so shakily. “Open up in there or me and my associate are gonna have to hurt 57
