Bar Room Brawl

Thanks, but yeah, that's it, 5,941 words, which is way more than I originally planned on. It did give me an idea, however, of redoing it under a new title with more background leading up to the events of that day, rather than squeezing them in as I did. That is the drawback to writing like this, being unable to go back and edit anything. It's like working live on stage.

 

As I have noted before, one of the hazards of writing in this format is the inability to edit beyond a brief period of time. Sometimes I am forced to take the story in an unintended direction due to something I posted the week before and am helpless to change.

Most often the short story becomes longer than I anticipated and just as often, as in this case, I wish I had anticipated where the story was leading me and made it even longer. I feel like I cheated the reader somewhat with not only the lack of background, but also the abrupt ending.

I have attempted to redeem myself somewhat by rewriting the epilogue, which follows this post. I hope you enjoy.

 

Epilogue

Josh spent the night at the New Iberia General Hospital for observation and was released early the next morning. His buddy Tib and his new friend Natalie took shifts sitting by his bedside. Upon his release, he drove home to Arkansas to be with his family. Shaken by his experience and having a newfound perspective on his own mortality, Josh made some notable changes in his lifestyle.

He never returned to coastal Louisiana, receiving his final paycheck via direct deposit. He promptly married Caitlin, his longtime girlfriend, taking a job at his father-in-law's construction company at half the pay he was earning on the oil rig. They lived happily for years in a single wide trailer deciding the nice new house would just have to wait.

Natalie was the only one not surprised at the arrival of the DEA agents at the GatorTail Grille & Lounge. After calling the toll free tip line weeks before she had been in daily conversation with them. Too bad for the Sheriff he hadn't been monitoring her phone as he had Clete's.

She only wished the raid had been scheduled the day before, no one having foreseen Clete's disappearance. Friday was chosen for the surity of his presence, not to mention it being the most lucrative time for drug sales. It remained a mystery as to what, or whom, precipitated his sudden departure.

Having never traveled beyond Shreveport her entire life, Natalie was ready to spread her wings. Leaving half of her reward money with her mother, she drove off into the night in a rented Impala. It was rumored she was working at a Starbucks somewhere near Seattle, where she fell in love with a Naval officer.

The biker who had the misfortune of colliding with the former LSU linebacker died where he lay on the fithy barroom floor. The medical examiner determined it wasn't his head slamming onto the floor that was the fatal blow. These matters can be decieving he explained. The good doctor further explained that either the fact that the poor man swallowed his tongue or the evidence of his splintered ribs puncturing his lungs, filling them with blood, was to blame. With the two events occuring practically simutaneously, it was irrevalent which one was the culprit. No charges were filed against Tib.

Stark never spoke a coherent sentence again and it was never determined if he ever understood what was being said to him as he spent the rest of his days in the State Hospital for the Mentally Insane in Lafayette. He could never appreciate the irony of his undoing being dealt by the very object he so proudly created in the back of a motorcycle repair shop.

Clete was spotted by an undercover agent three weeks later in a Memphis bar, one reportedly controlled by the Outlaws MC. His body was discovered ten days later in an abandoned cotton warehouse outside of Tunica, Mississippi when two men tracking a wounded wild boar noticed the foul smell emanating from the old building. He was hanging from a rafter by a meat hook inserted into his ribcage, his intestines trailing to the floor. His eyeballs and tongue were found among empty beer cans and smashed out cigarette butts on the floor.

True to his heritage, Marcel Boudreaux had covered his tracks well. He had never dealt directly with the Outlaws, in person or otherwise. The Outlaws not only didn't know who he was, they had no idea he was getting a cut from Clete, who wasn't around to testify. His phone records indicated a series of phone calls with Clete, whom he convinced the Feds he was building a case against. He admitted to breaking in the man's house without a warrant. He said he was concerned over Clete's unexplained disappearance, thinking it was somehow connected to illegal activity. Marcel remains the Sheriff to this day.