Through The Valley by Yates, B.D. (feel good books .txt) 📕

Funny, he had thought darkly, nervously licking at the inside of his cottony mouth. If I had really planned to kill someone, a life-or-death decision would hinge on something as uncomplicated as the length of their line.

It just so happened he had selected a bank teller who looked like a typical soccer mom, a heavyset woman with a "Karen" hairdo that was various spikes and wings of brown and blonde. She had been wearing a puffy pink sweater despite the scorching heat outside, her right breast adorned with a gaudy pin that said, "ASK ME HOW YOU CAN SAVE FOR RETIREMENT!" Her mask, which had also been pink and appeared to say the words "North Carolina", had been crumpled up and pulled down where it would do no good for anyone. Apparently, she had preferred it tucked safely between her multiple chins.

  The little placard on her desk, sitting at an angle beside the chained pen, had read BETSY SHAW in engraved lettering. Her nasally voice, although friendly and cheerful, had sounded unbelievably loud and overwhelming to Emmit as he waited. He had done his best impression of a statue, his hands folded neatly in front of him like a good little boy scout.  Just a man about to conduct a simple transaction.  Nothing to marvel at.

  "Alright, that takes care of ya, honey!" Betsy Shaw had trumpeted to the little old man in front of Emmit, a grandfatherly type with a severely hunched back who was wearing one of those smushed-looking caps that cab drivers always seemed to like.

  "Great", he had muttered quietly under his mask. "Whole bank full of tellers and I pick the megaphone."

  The little old man had shuffled away even as Betsy was screaming her love and best wishes to his curved spine, his cane tapping quietly on the thin carpet. There had been an empty void left in front of Emmit that waited to claim him, and the husky little bank teller had suddenly become as imposing as a cruel death-penalty judge as her bright green eyes fell upon Emmit. He had stepped up to meet his fate, unfolding the crumpled note. It felt like the gun had quadrupled in size, and Emmit had felt everyone staring at it like he had a third arm growing out of his ass.  He had seen the fat, bald security guard for the first time then, waddling out of a door in the rear of the bank and wiping his shining forehead with a black bandanna.  He took up a position just inside the front doors, scanning the inside of the bank and looking bored.

  "Well, hi there, sweetheart!" Betsy had exploded at him, her lipstick grin matching his Joker mask as she leaned forward. "What are we doing for you today?!"

  Emmit had swallowed hard, croaked out a sound a man dying of esophageal cancer might make, and handed her the note.

  "Oh! I see, that's just fine baby doll! I keep saying I need to learn sign language, but I never seem to get around to it!"

  She had snatched the note up eagerly, as if it had come from her secret admirer.

  "Oh, ya got it sweaty!" She had shrieked, guffawing laughter and shaking it back and forth to dry it out. She hadn't been laughing for long.

  Emmit had watched her eyes shift back and forth as she read the scrawled lines he had written, growing wider and wider as she neared the bottom. As she finished, looking up to meet his steady gaze, a single tear had begun the long journey down her delicate cheek. It took her mascara with it, leaving a dark streak behind it like a skid mark from a tire. Her other cheek had been streaked with crumbling black soon after, her nose running to catch up.  Her face was melting off of her head.

  "Is... is this a prank?" Betsy had asked in a shaking whisper. Emmit had shaken his head gravely.

  "Big bills. Make it fast," he had growled, slowly putting his hands behind his back. He hadn't even touched the gun, but Betsy hadn't known that. She pressed her hands to her ample bosom.

  "I'll do it," he had added menacingly, his mask completely saturated with sweat and suffocating him. That had snapped her out of her shock. Her eyes locked intensely on his, she had moved to reach under her desk.

  "I wouldn't," Emmit had snapped, making her jump and gasp. "You read my note."

  "I did, sir," she had said breathlessly, desperately longing to raise her hands above her head and beg for his mercy but also knowing better than to call any attention to herself.  She seemed frozen in a panicky limbo, her body going haywire from all the mixed signals her brain was sending.  She began to stutter like a faulty typewriter. "But all the b-big bills, the hundreds and such, a-are in a deposit b-b-box down here."

  Emmit had fallen for the ruse in his haste and inexperience. He had nodded his approval; anything to get the show on the road and moving along, and Betsy had promptly slid her hands under the desk— and pressed what Emmit now guessed was a small panic button mounted beneath it. Each desk probably had one, and he had been too rushed and foolish to consider it; too desperate and hopeless to even try to formulate a coherent plan.  Christ, it wasn't like he made a regular habit of armed robbery.

  There had been no flashing lights, no braying alarms, and no screaming people. Ironically, he had gotten exactly what he had asked for, minus the lifesaving money he had come for in the first place.

  Apparently, the panic button had been linked directly to the bank's team of security guards as well as the police department.  The fat security guard had been in motion in what felt like nanoseconds.