Music City Monologue

Friday evening’s consist of crowded bars, restaurants and bistros lining the sidewalks in big cities like New York, Chicago and Atlanta. Nashville's Music City was no different. People milling around, moving in and out of shops, up and down the busy Broadway ironically named in a country music town that dominated the city's night air with shrill controlled pitches of love songs, break your heart songs, and cheating heart songs moving like thick molasses on a cold blustery night for this southern city.
Cell phones were blowing up in the pockets of passerby’s as news feeds auto updated events around the world taking place. ISIS hit France three times in the past year, Europe was hit early summer by Muslims flowing in from refugee centers

The air was crisp and clear. One block up a commotion could be heard when Chappy stepped back two steps from the entrance of the Blue cafe and strained his neck as if that would help him hear better in the noisy, vibrating air filled with music, laughter and soon dread. What was being yelled two blocks away? No, sounded no more than a block away as the crowd seemed to abruptly grow silent, as if someone switched off a light in a crowed junior high school cafeteria, grabbing their attention for a message or just to reduce the chatter…then the words came through plain to Chappy ALA AKBAR, ALA AKBAR he faintly made out the words as the wave of silence reached him and then it was very clear, his gut wrenched just as it had done so many times in clearing buildings, houses and alley in Iraq war . At that very instance an explosion shook the buildings around him, as simultaneously Dallas shoved forward with instinct, glass flew across and upwards as crystals of luminous spray floated in the distance, he could feel small shards pepper his hair but, not penetrating his skin. The poor guy behind Dallas, fell backwards; away from him and to his left as Dallas felt a wet splatter of liquid run down his neck and alongside his face, not stopping the forward momentum he had created falling into the Blue Cafe doorway along with three others standing in front of him in the threshold. As Dallas’s head turned to the right he caught a glimpse of the person who was probably behind him, his blonde head looked like a pin cushion where three metal screws were visibly sticking out of the right side of his head, one buried so deep that the Phillips head showed from the side of his temple as if placed there with a screw gun being perfectly level. Eyes were wide open with a mock look of surprise which Dallas had seen to many times in war. Several gasp inside the cafe, and shrieks of horror outside on the street