65. (Writing Exercise #2 - I'll be doing this more often.)

There's nothing I can do to convince you that what I'm about to tell you is true. In fact, you'll probably laugh at me and tell me I'm full of shit or that I've read too many comic books.

But it actually happened. I was there. You can see it on the security cameras if you're lucky enough to find a copy. Go to the First National Bank in L.A. and look at the floor if you don't believe me--under the rug, where barely you can see the palest of red splotches, resiliant even after hours and hours of scrubbing. You'd better do it soon, 'cause they're just gonna replace those tiles eventually.

It started out like any other bank robbery. There we all are, standing around in line, tired and bored and frustrated when these two fucks--let's call them Big Fuck and Little Fuck--no, wait, I'm going to get tired of dropping the F-bomb before I'm done writing this down, so let's call them Big Boy and Little Man--slam the doors closed and draw a couple of huge-ass handcannons from their pants, fire two off at the cieling, and start yelling. We all drop to the floor.

Except this one guy. This... man. Six foot two, African descent, broad-shouldered and smooth-domed. He just stands there staring at them. "Put the guns down and walk away," he says, his voice a kind of low rumble.

"I said get on the fuckin' floor," Little Man screams. Women scream. I can't remember, maybe I screamed too. "Or I'll blow your fuckin' brains out!" See what I mean about getting tired of the F-bomb?

The man just keeps standing there, hands at his side, staring at the smaller of the two idiots as he striders cockily over--and then it happens. Little Man shoots him nearly point-blank right in the chest. Right in the heart. I swear his blood splattered all over me when the bullet came tearing out his back. The man shakes from the impact, his right shoulder rolls back, he stumbles back a couple of steps, eyes squeezed closed--

And then he balances, and opens his eyes, and you can see on the camera all his muscles go real tense.

"The fuck?" I hear Big Boy mutter, his voice surprisingly high-pitched for such a large body.

Little Man's got these huge eyes now--they're all we can see with the ski-mask or whatever--and his hand's shaking. Then--BAM BAM BAM BAM--he's panicking and squeezing the trigger over and over and emptying his entire gun at the man, and each one hits with sickening accuracy, most hitting him in the chest and stomach, one clipping him in the forehead, all tearing out the back and spraying blood all over anyone behind him--and all this time the bloody man is striding quickly across what little space is left between him and the gunman, barely phased by the gunfire, muscles rippling--

He grabs Little Man by the throat--he's riddled with bullet holes and it doesn't even phase him--and hurls him across the room but by now I'm not even watching the crooks, I'm staring at this big man's back, soaked in blood, and I can see with my own disbelieving eyes the exit wounds closing themselves up. Little Man crumples in a heap against the wall.

"Fuck me!" Big Boy shouts, then roars as he sprints across the room at his partner's assailant--but the black man grabs both of Big Boy's wrists and pulls down and twists--and I can hear the bone snapping and crunching even over Big Boy's screams of agony--and now he's on his knees in front of the man, our defender, our hero, tearing flowing out of his big, stupid, ski-masked eyes--and the hero wraps one hand around his other fist and slams them, together, across Big Boy's face. The crook goes down without a sound.

Hero just stands there for a moment, panting, grinding his teeth. His wounds--even the one on his face, which tore half his head off--are already closed and he just looks like some big dude in a badly fake-bloodied Haloween costume. His muscles relax. He runs a a hand over his smooth dome of a head.

And he walks out the doors and away.

The rest of us just stare as he leaves. We don't get up off the floor, out of sheer shock and disbelief, for at least a whole minute.

Hero's blood is still all over the floor. The janitorial staff can't clean it up. There has been talk about destroying the surveilance tapes. I bet the Feds are involved. But it really happened. I know you won't--don't--can't believe me, but it really happened.