Unfortunately, this isn't a metaphor.
A few days ago I went to the bookmakers near my house to place some bets on the weekend football. I really enjoy doing a few bets here and there and then watching the scores and live goals on Sky Sports. Anyway, I went into the shop quite late knowing that it would be quiet and that I could focus on and study the football coupons. There was just me as a customer. Two cashiers. One of them was playing a demo on the machine so she was on the shop floor. This particular machine being right next to the counter. She was very big. The size of a small new born baby elephant. Though not as nice looking. The other cashier was about 200 years old.
It was about 8pm and it was very quiet apart from the awful American commentator on the races and the machine the elephant was playing. In come two people. Fully dressed in shell suits with masks and a strip across their eyes. You couldn't see their eye colour, their skin colour or the colour of their hair. Nothing.
Oh and they had guns.
"Everyone co-operate and nobody will get hurt."
This bookmakers is very small and everything happened really fast. To get to the counter they would have to go past me and I had completely frozen. They did go past me. Right past me and straight to the counter. The elephant started screaming for her work colleague who was behind the counter and who then proceeded to run into the back room locking herself in. I could still hear the elephant scream as I dashed out of the shop while the armed robbers had their backs to me.
My heart was thudding like crazy in my chest. I couldn't leave the pachyderm and the 200 year old there like that. I probably should have ran and got as far away as possible but as soon as I got out of the shop I turned the corner and called 999.
Before I even got through, the robbers had come out of the shop and had ran to the other side of the road that I was on and then they saw me and screamed at me to "drop the phone."
I've always been crazy stubborn. My whole life I have ALWAYS been crazy stubborn. I didn't drop the phone. At first.
I put the phone away from my ear and tried to put it on speaker phone so if anything had happened at least then it would be heard.
One of them pointed his gun at me and again screamed at me:-
"Drop the phone or we will fucking smoke you."
I'm not really educated on street talk but as he was still pointing his gun at me, I assumed 'smoke' meant 'shoot'. The other robber started running towards me. He wasn't pointing his gun at me. He had it held down but he was coming at me really fast. So I slipped the phone in my pocket and put my hands up.
The other one who was pointing the gun at me then shouted for his accomplice to "let's go." And so they did. Running down the street and disappearing into the rainy night just as fast as they had appeared. I went straight for my phone again and walked the ten metres or so back towards the bookmakers whilst calling 999 again just as a car was pulling up and the shutter was coming down.
A guy came out of the car and asked me why the shutter was down. I asked him how he could have missed what just happened. He didn't understand what I was talking about. I told him and he said "Fuck that" and got in the car and disappeared into the rainy night just as fast as he had appeared. The shutter stared opening just as I got through to the police. I proceeded to tell them what happened and when I told them the address, they couldn't locate it on their computers. Then they realised that I had been put through to a police department 200 miles away. The 200 year old let me back into the bookmakers. The elephant was on the phone to the police so I just hung up. Nobody was hurt. Everybody was shaken up.
The police eventually came. Along with CID and CSI and whatever else. I think there were about 14 of them in total that came and went. One had a huge gun himself. I gave two statements. It took 3 hours. A couple of the questions I got asked were ridiculous. Questions like "what did the armed robbers do when you ran out of the shop?" How the hell could I answer that when I had ran out of the shop?? "What kind of guns did they have?" I know nothing about guns. Small. Pistols?? Ones that shoot bullets that could kill??
After what seemed like a long time, one of the police women said it was nice to meet me and said I cold go home and that they would be in touch. It was only when I was halfway home that I couldn't even believe that they didn't offer me a lift. Classic police I guess. A lot of things written down in notepads and not much use at all.
When I did get home I was shaking. But I have no idea why. It wasn't as if a gun was fired. I had a shower. Ate. Still shaking until I opened a big bottle of Tiger beer. It is amazing how beer can make things better. A few days later and I still feel a bit strange. The police had told me I would be feeling some post trauma shit for a few weeks and if that I ever wanted some counselling then to blah blah blah etc.
The bottom line is I am alive. Life is Life and Death is Death. Life is something and Death is nothing. A couple of people have said it is a new lease of life. But I really don't feel like that. Weirdly I don't really know what or how I feel.
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