Mister Bump UK

Collateral Damage

“Get me twenty cigarettes, too, will you?”, called Pop’s gravelly voice from upstairs.

“What am I? Your slave?”, responded Eugene Horowitz.

“Just do it, wiseass. Marlboro Lights”. As if Eugene did not know his father’s brand. He pulled the front door shut behind him.

It was warming, and the evenings were getting lighter. There were still kids playing on the street, and Eugene caught and kicked their ball back to them when it flew too close. “Mind you guys don’t go breaking my windows”, he quipped cheerfully.

As he sauntered toward the Q-Mart, reflecting that life wasn’t so bad after all, his phone buzzed into life. “Hey Lou, how’d it go?” His new girlfriend had had a test at her night school class this evening, a big step toward that diploma she wanted so badly.

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure you did just fine.”. Despite only having met a month ago, Eugene had already been shocked at how worried Louise could become over even the slightest issue.

“Just don’t fret about it anymore. It’s done now, anyway. There’s nothing more you can do.” A pause. She was obviously speaking to him. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to seeing you, too. I reckon we both deserve a good night out, and besides, I want to finally meet your friends.”

A further pause. “Me? Oh, I’m just walking to the shop. I needed some air, it feels really stuffy tonight. And as soon as I said I was coming out, this freakin’ shopping list just materialised out of thin air!”. He sighed. “I guess they had hard days at work.” Mom pulled shifts at the local laundromat. I suspect every day was pretty hard.

“Anyway, on that note, I just arrived. I gotta go. Yeah, I can’t wait for Friday, either. See you then, honeybuns.” He almost cooed into his iPhone, pocketed it and pulled open the door to Q-mart.

Bread, milk, some cheese, soda. What else? Eugene selected everything mom had asked for, then joined the queue. “Can I take a pack of Marlboro Lights, please, and a lottery ticket, too?”, he requested when he reached the cashier. Why not? His luck had been pretty good lately.

But Eugene’s luck was about to change.

A sharp crash came from the doorway, and a man approached them, at speed, pointing a gun at the cashier.

“Everybody, keep absolutely still! And get your hands above your heads. You!”, he singled out the tubby youth standing behind the counter, “empty the register into that!”. He pushed an empty McDonald’s takeout bag toward the cashier’s chest.

They obeyed, of course. What else do you do when someone pushes a pistol into your face? But not before the cashier hit the silent alarm.

As the shaking youth emptied the cash register, blue and red lights could be seen outside.

“Quick! Quick, fatboy!”

They were interrupted by a slow drawl from a loudspeaker. “You with the gun! We have the place surrounded, and we have a marksman following your every movement. Put your weapon down, lock your fingers together, place your hands behind your head and lie down on the ground.”

The gunman’s haste was replaced by anger.

“Fuck you, cop”, he cried, simultaneously striking the nearby shelf, sending cans flying throughout the shop.

As the scattered merchandise clattered to the ground, nobody heard the shot.

Momentarily, time stood still. As the customers began to realise what had happened, a dark red patch began to appear on Eugene’s tee. Lifeless, he slumped to the floor.

Two hours later, a knock rang out at the house. “Mrs Horowitz? I’m Officer Phillips. May I come inside, please?”

Mrs Horowitz showed the man into the sitting room, and there followed a brief conversation.

“Pops! POPS! GET DOWN HERE! It’s Eugene!”

Mr Horowitz burst into the room, clad only in shorts and a vest. “Eugene? What about Eugene?”. And Officer Phillips repeated his grizzly tale.

“So, this cop who shot him, he’s gonna pay for his fuck-up, right?”

“No, sir.”

“NO?” Mr Horowitz was almost screaming at this point.

“I’m sorry, sir. Your son was just unlucky. Collateral damage. We have to target criminals, you see? Otherwise, crime in this city would spiral out of control…”

Couldn’t happen, right? You could imagine that there’d be some big investigation into whoever pulled the trigger, couldn’t you? Was it a genuine accident? Did they show due diligence? Will the cop themselves face justice, if they were thought to have acted unlawfully? You know, just like that guy Chauvin did, when he murdered George Floyd.

Wrong. It happens almost every day.

It bothers me that over in Gaza, Israel fires a missile, or a bullet. It kills some bystander.

Israel’s excuse is that it was targetting some Hamas operative.

As though that justifies the killing???? How would you feel if you were Eugene’s parent? The people killed in the headline were children, doing nothing more threatening than queuing for water. This story emerged just last Sunday, and that’s just the latest occasion when this excuse has been used.

And queuing for water? In this day and age, why are people queuing for water? I’ll think of that next time I go through to the kitchen and turn on my tap.

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Published by Mister Bump UK

Divorced, grown/flown daughter. In life, I designed IT systems, taking a career break as a bicycle mechanic, until interrupted by a stroke in 2016, aged 48. As I convalesced, I combined the development of health-related apps with voluntary work, and began writing. After a stint working again in IT, I now write full-time, and use my blog space to let my hair down.

27 comments

        • The one key nation is the USA, which bankrolls the operation. Bit it has been happy enough to say to Ukraine, “you can have defensive weapons, but not offensive weapons”. So why not say the same to Israel?

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            • it’s a pity they don’t see it objectively, and I think that harms their own reputation. But all governments have a long history of acting against their people’s wishes, so we can’t really make any assumptions. Only that a few rich, white men in Washington actively support the killing. I suspect to most Americans, it is too far away to care deeply enogh to stop funding the weapons.

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              • Very true Pete. I was listening to a talk where the speaker was saying that to Americans, this conflict has no direct impact on them so they don’t think about it. That’s the state of our world today.

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                • How many times have you heard people say, “I’m not worried about X, because I’ll be dead by then”? E.g. global warming. It’s the same thing. Unless something worries us directly, we can look the other way. Governments encourage that, too, because it makes us more docile as citizens.
                  Americanscan get away with thinking that way until something like 9/11 happens and it hits them hard.

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  7. I know. This also happened in the Philippines. People were killed on mere suspicion of drug pushing, without due process, some were completely innocent, even just bystanders. Worse, when the public voiced outrage, authorities planted evidence and smeared the reputations of teenage victims who were wrongfully killed. So disgusting and scary at the same time. We cannot simply accept being treated as collateral damage. People must be held accountable.

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