FicWad

It's Hard to Say "I Do" When I Don't

Jen's hands grabbed at the handle as the door swung shut behind a business man. It was four in the afternoon, but since it was winter, the sun was almost already setting. The bank had an hour before it closed, and Jen was lucky that she had made it on time.

She was halfway through college, and her rent was due. She had exactly seventy dollars in the bank, but you couldn't tell this from her appearance. She was tall, and average-sized, with long, shiny brown hair that had natural highlights and lowlights. Her face was pale, and her outfit was a jean with a black t-shirt and a thigh-length white coat. She looked a bit young for her age (22), but a big purse tan made up for it.

The purse was not big for any special reason, other than she had a lot of stuff that she tended to carry around with her wherever she went. She wore minimal makeup, and was only passing pretty. Jen was not bad to look at, but she didn't really turn heads.

She walked into the bank and found it pleasantly cool, as most of the buildings she had been in today were roasting, trying to keep out the cold. She walked to the shortest line (there were always lines in this bank, she thought) and waited patiently.

As she did so, three men entered the bank from the glass doors. All three were wearing black turtlenecks, pants and boots, held black bags that looked somewhat like backpacks, and all three had on masks. They weren't ski masks or Zorro-type masks, but Halloween masks that were deformed and disturbing. To her credit, Jen did not scream when she saw the three men.

She rather felt like laughing. But of course, the tallest pulled out a large gun from his bag and began shooting into the ceiling. Then, Jen screamed along with the twenty other customers and the five tellers. Everyone dropped to the ground in a panic, covering their heads with their hands.

Jen did the same, out of mere instinct, but kept her eyes set on the three men, her heart beating very loudly. The shots were loud, but they seemed somehow much more silent than they would normally be. She glanced at the guns they had and realized all three had silencers on.

"Stop screaming! You five, come out here!" One man yelled, waving around his gun, and the five tellers came reluctantly out from behind the counter. "Is there anyone else here?" He asked, prodding the nearest teller (a woman with round hips and large breasts).

"Just the guards..." she whispered, her voice trembling. The three men, who were in the center of the room and very near Jen, pulled a random hostage. It was a preteen boy with a pimpled, but not unpleasant, face and greasy head. He was shaking all over, and his braced teeth rattled noisily. The robber didn't seem to notice.

"Guards! Get out here or I blow the kid's head off!" Two men in uniform rounded the corners of the room, coming from doors behind the counter. They had their guns drawn, but didn't look as though they were in any shape to use them. Jen watched quietly, hoping that she would not be noticed.

I speak fast
And I'm not gonna repeat myself, no.
So listen carefully to every word I say.

"Put down your guns and handcuffs and slide them over to my friend," the man in black yelled. The guards did as he said almost willingly, sliding their equipment like pucks over ice. They skidded across the floor directly into the hands of one of the men in black. Jen felt a fluttering in her chest when the man picked them up—he was the only one who had not yet spoken, but something about the way he bent over and picked up the items seemed familiar to her.

"Everyone, stand in the corner of the room NOW!" Screamed the man in the middle, and the customers and tellers alike scrambled together in a tightly-packed group, shivering and crying together. Jen was on the outside of the circle, and watched carefully as the men began to whisper to themselves. Two of them walked over to the counter, and the third (the one who had not yet spoken) walked to the hostages with three guns and two pairs of handcuffs in his hands.

"Listen up. Everyone shut the hell up, stand still and do what I tell you. Backs against the wall, single-file." People shoved each other and practically ran to the wall, pressing back against it as if they could melt into it and never return. Jen was still near the corner of the room, being shoved aside by many nervous people.

"Hands in the air, and don't move."

The robber's voice was instantly familiar to Jen. She knew it all too well, too well even to pretend she couldn't recognize it. Without thinking, she blurted out his name to the shock of just about everyone in the building. "Patrick?" She spat before she could stop herself, and his head snapped in her direction.

His comrades watched silently from behind the counter as the man, who she knew was Patrick, walked and stood in front of her. "Jen," he said coldly.

Shit, thought Jen, any traces of warmth seeping from her almost instantaneously. She had hoped that seeing her again would be comforting, but he was obviously annoyed and still very angry. This probably wouldn't end well for either of them.

And I'm the only one who's gonna get away
With making excuses today.

"Jen, this is a surprise, but it's kind of neat. Now I get to pay you back for what you did." Jen felt her heart flutter, and she wished that he would take off the mask so she could look him in the eye. All she could see in the eye holes was darkness.

"Patrick...come on...you're not still mad...?" Patrick's shoulders tensed and his head shook in anger. One of his cohorts came over to subdue the other patrons while the third continued emptying money into a sack.

"Mad? Still mad?"

His friend put one hand on his shoulder, and Patrick seemed to calm down somewhat. Of course, it was probably not because his friend had reminded him that he was in the middle of robbing a bank, but because he had looked down, into his hands, where he held several pieces of hard weaponry.
Patrick smiled, and though Jen could not see his mouth, she knew he was.

"No, Jen, don't worry about it. I don't care that you slept with my best friend. I don't even care that you lied about it. It's all in the past, right?" Jen was not so stupid as to believe that he had honestly forgiven her just like that.

"Honestly, Patrick, I was stoned—"

Patrick took one of the guard's guns and shot it a foot above her head. Plaster came raining down on her and she coughed, keeping the substances out of her lungs. Patrick smiled a patronizing one, but she could not see it. "No excuses, Jenny. I have the gun now. I have the power. And you're going to pay."

When he called her "Jenny," Patrick usually was either in a horny mood, or in a very furious mood. Jen was betting on the latter. She was not half wrong. But Jen wanted to try once more, using some pity this time. "Patrick, I'm sorry. You know that, right? I'm so sorry...I'm just a moron, I always have been. I'm so sorry..."

You're appealing to emotions that I simply do not have.

Apparently Patrick did not seem to care one bit. He wasn't affected by her pleas, and his heart was encased in solid stone now. She wasn't getting through. "Sorry, Jenny, but I stopped feeling sorry for you a long time ago. Shut the fuck up."

Blackmailed myself, because I ain't got anyone else.

Patrick stood about three feet in front of her and just watched her. As he stood there, and one of his friends stole money from the bank and the other made sure to keep his eye on all of the hostages, Jen remembered a time when she and Patrick had thought that they were soul mates. He had proposed, and she had accepted, and they had been in love.

Of course, a few months after that and before the wedding, Jen had gone out with some friends and woken up in bed with Patrick's best friend and roommate, who she had not particularly cared for anyway. The friend, Tony, had told Patrick and Jen had denied it.

Patrick had kicked Tony out of his house for, he believed, lying to him about Jen. Then, of course, Jen had admitted what she had done and had sent Patrick into a rage. He had run out of his house, gotten into his car and never came back. Of course, that had been years ago.

This is a stick up!
Give us all your inspiration.
And I've got the red carpet blues, baby.

"I still loved you for a long time after that, Jenny. But not anymore." And though his voice was strong, Jen's knees felt a little weak. She hadn't dated anyone sense then. She hadn't taken a drink of alcohol, either. And some part of her had always wondered what Patrick would do or say if he came back...now she knew, she supposed. He'd tell her...

"Not anymore. Now I hate you. And I really want to make you hurt, just the way you made me." Jen actually feared for her life now. Perhaps they would let the other people go, perhaps not. But there was a slim chance of her survival, and right now, her survival was the only important thing to her.

"All of you get on the opposite wall!" Screamed Patrick, pointing his guns at the customers past Jen. They all ran to the other side of the room, and the man in black that had been watching them followed, aiming some more shots over their heads. The guy grabbing all of the cash was now patiently working on opening the safe, which would take a while, to Jen's displeasure. Patrick stood in front of her, happy to be toting so many firearms.

"Jen, get off the wall and stand here in front of me." She did as she was told, and stood, scared to the bone, in front of her ex-fiancé. He pointed the gun at her stomach and poked her with it once or twice. She could hardly feel it; her entire body felt numb, and besides the fact that the bank had seemed so inviting when she had come in, it now felt one hundred degrees and she was actually sweating in January. "Put your hands up, Jen, and don't move. Don't scream or make a sound, either."

She raised her tired arms submissively, looking into the mask. His was a gray-blue ogre's mask, the nose large and dominant over the rest of the ugly face. She got some sort of sick pleasure out of taunting the mask itself, knowing that under, Patrick was probably as gorgeous as he had been when he'd left. But even if she could have seen him, the old emotions his face might have brought up could have thrown her into hysterics. "But please don't kid yourself, Jenny. You're going to die."

So put your hands in the air and don't make a sound.
But don't get the wrong idea;
We're gonna shoot you
We're gonna shoot you.

Jen's world seemed to come to a halt, though she had thought before that this might be the case. Tears began to flow from her ordinary brown eyes, and she shook uncontrollably, but Patrick just stood there and watched, amused.

She could tell he was so by his head; it was tilted back a bit, as it was whenever he found something funny. She couldn't believe that outside, traffic continued on down the street and seemingly no one noticed the robbery going on right there.

She couldn't believe that she would die here and other people would still go on breathing and laughing and living without her. It threw her through a loop. "Yeah, you're going to die and there's nothing you can do. How do you feel about that?"

And there's nothing in your head or pocket,
Throat or wallet that could change just how this goes, no.
We're gonna shoot you
We're gonna shoot you.

Patrick pressed the gun to her stomach, and she felt the action rather than witnessed it. "Scared," she whispered, and Patrick laughed. His friends were preoccupied, and it was just them now. Just Jen and Pat, together again, wasn't that sweet? Reunited, but it didn't feel good at all. It felt like lead in the brain.

"You're scared? You? Jenny the ass-kicker? Jenny, the cheater? Jenny the whore? NO!" Laughed Patrick, and despite the fact that it wasn't funny at all, he seemed to be having a generally honest laugh.

"Please, I can't take it! How else do you feel?" He jabbed her with the gun again, and she practically coughed out the word.

"Helpless," she muttered. He laughed again.

"Helpless sounds about right. This is good, Jenny, my girl. We are making progress here. I can't just shoot you in the face and walk away, you know. I can't do it that quickly, because you didn't. You dragged on my pain by lying and making me doubt my best friend and making a fool out of me. So now I'm going to make a fool out of you."

When I said that I'd return to you
I meant more like a relapse.

He poked her again in the stomach with the gun. "Take off your shirt." He spoke calmly, but his voice was full of smug pride.

"W-what?" Jen protested.

One of Patrick's buddies laughed, but neither stopped doing his duty. Patrick nudged her with the gun. "Take it off, or I shoot grandma in the head." He aimed his gun at one of the hostages behind her.

Jen looked into the eyes of the old woman and inhaled quickly, again and again. She felt herself getting ready to faint, but tried to breathe normally again and steadied herself as her shoulders slumped, allowing her coat to fall off, and her fingers found the edges of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Both of Patrick's friends spared a glance but one was trying to open a second safe and the other was pushing a little boy back into line with his gun.

Now and again, I think.
His and hers,
For better or worse.

"It's kind of like old times like this, huh?" Laughed Patrick. Jen folded her arms across her chest, shivering, and Patrick jabbed the gun into her stomach.

"Hands up," he snapped. She put her hands in the air once again. His eyes surveyed her bra and looked only faintly interested, while she stood humiliated and beaten, but not yet broken. Patrick sensed this.

"I never wanted to marry you, you know that? Never. I hated you, and I always will. I was just marrying you for your money. You're ugly. You're disgusting. I hate you." He was rambling, repeating himself in his anger, but his words were harsh and cut through her heart like a hot knife through wet paper. They didn't so much as cut as tear apart her soul, really. Her cheeks burned.

But the only ring I want buried with me
Are the ones around my eyes.

"Take off your pants." Jen just about fainted then, but couldn't. Sleep wouldn't come to her now, when she wanted nothing more than for him just to shoot her. Here she was, taking off her clothes for three bank robbers, five bank employees and twenty complete strangers. And she had a feeling that it would only get worse. She obligingly unzipped her jeans and let them fall to the ground. She stepped out of them and left them on the floor, but her eyes were watering again and she felt more alone than she had ever felt before.

"You're breaking my heart, here, Jenny. Oh, wait...you already did that." He spoke the last part malevolently, his voice full of anger and hatred for her. Whether or not he was crazy, he was right, he didn't love her anymore. Which was sad, because she kind of still loved him.

"You know what the stupidest part of this whole thing is? The most idiotic, ridiculous part?" It appeared to be a rhetorical question, but he slapped her cheek when she did not speak, so apparently he had been looking for an answer. His hand stung, but she had expected the gun to come sailing up to meet her, so she was not sobbing yet.

"What?" She asked, keeping her hands in the air.

"The most moronic part is the fact that I wasted so much time with you. Three years of my life wasted dating you when I could have been meeting girls who weren't whores." He spat this, and this was by far the worst thing he could have said.

It was one thing to hear that he no longer had feelings for her or thought that she was immoral, but to hear that he thought that they had never had any connection, and that all of their good times together was a waste, was just horrible. Jen cried freely now and was honestly sorry for the first time. Of course, by now it was too late.

You're appealing to emotions that I simply do not have.
And I've got the red carpet blues, baby.

"All right, Jenny. I don't think you've had quite enough embarrassment, so I want you to take off your underclothes." Her bra and underwear had been her last thread of hope. Perhaps if he had let her have some dignity, she would be able to live. Now that he was telling her to take that off, too, she was sure she would die.

The thought did not free her mind at all, but rather terrified and even angered her to a point where she could not even think. The idea that she would die without any influence or control over it was just impossible. It couldn't happen that way. She was a pretty controlling person, and when she didn't have control she freaked out. On this occasion, she felt frustration stronger than fear that she could not do anything to control her own future. It was out of her hands.

By the time these thoughts passed, Jen stood completely naked. Patrick looked at her like one looks at old photographs of painful times, the other two robbers looked at her like a slice of meat, and the hostages didn't look at her, preferring to gaze off out the window or at the wall way above her head, their shame showing on their faces in the form of tears and blushes. Jen felt sorry for them in a pathetic sort of way. They would have to watch a girl get naked, and then die.

Luckily she knew that Patrick had no intention of raping her. This was humiliation, and while that would certainly upset her, it would be more like meeting an old friend than being embarrassed. And she doubted that he would get one of his friends to do the job—they were quite busy.

The one getting all of the money was working on a final vault—in several minutes they would be gone. She probably had three minutes to live. And she would spend them feeling like the slut Patrick thought she was.

So put your hands in the air and don't make a sound.
But don't get the wrong idea;
We're gonna shoot you
We're gonna shoot you.

"You're fatter than I remember," chuckled Patrick. She shivered but did not lower her hands, which felt as though they were going dead from holding them in the air all this time. She longed to lie down, pull a blanket over her face and wait to be shot. But of course Patrick would not give her this satisfaction. He would not kill her until he had no choice, or until she asked for it. Should she ask for it, then? Have some influence on her life?

But she assumed that if she did, he would find something else to torture her with and wait until the very last second to kill her. As it was, she figured he would milk this all he could.

And there's nothing in your head or pocket,
Throat or wallet that could change just how this goes.
And everyone shakes to the beat with a barrel down their throat.

Patrick stood directly in front of her and put one of his guns in her mouth, which he opened with his own hand. "Now, dance, or I'll shoot you in the head," he grinned, and she could see his eyes this close up, full of hatred and laughter.

This was just about as bad as it would—no, as bad as it could get. She had never been a good dancer. Patrick rather enjoyed it, but she had hated it, and refused to dance whenever he asked her. She supposed that this was his final revenge. His finger gripped the trigger, and she saw it, and so she picked up one foot and put it down, and picked up the other and put it down, and did this alternatively.

She bent both elbows and shimmied, her shoulders moving up and down with her feet, causing her breasts to bounce around randomly. If that wasn't bad enough, he took his second gun and poked her in the stomach again and again, trying to make her thrust her crotch.

He laughed wildly at her attempt to dance in the buff, and so did his friends, and Jen felt as if the entire world was laughing at her and making fun of her and calling her a slut and a whore and a cheater and a bitch and ugly and damned...

So put your hands in the air and don't make a sound.
But don't get the wrong idea;
We're gonna shoot you
We're gonna shoot you.

The laughter continued until Patrick's friend came out from behind the counter with several duffel bags full of cash. "Let's go, Pat," he warned, and helped the other robber to get the customers and tellers lying on the ground with their faces down.

Meanwhile, Jen fell to her knees, sobbing wretchedly and holding her face in her hands. Patrick smiled and watched her, patting her on the head. He had remembered that she hated that whenever he did it, she said it felt like she was an animal that he was petting.

He slid his hand down her head over and over and laughed while she cried into her own hands and shivered and blushed, the shame overtaking her. She looked up into his eyes and he lifted his mask so that she could see his face. It was practically unchanged from the last time she had seen him, except that then he had been angrier than ever, and now he was almost calm.

"Maybe I should take you with us," he pondered out loud. Jen shook her head, crying and pleading. "Just kill me...just shoot me, please Patrick..." she cried. He watched her for several more seconds, pretending to decide what to do.

And there's nothing in your head or pocket
Throat or wallet that could change just how this goes.
Everyone shakes to the beat with a barrel down their throat.

Jen knelt down again, her eyes on the floor and her mouth still mumbling words of begging. Patrick took pity on her; she looked so feeble and pathetic crying at his feet. He put his gun to her forehead.

But don't get the wrong idea;
We're gonna shoot you
We're gonna shoot you.