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Randy wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the curb and staring at Benson’s body when the coroner finally draped a sheet over it. He felt a blanket falling over his own shoulders not long after, and the shout of the officer draping the fabric over him was the only thing that got him out of his own head. He looked up at the sound of her voice, speaking into her walkie that she needed another ambulance for “another survivor”. Randy certainly didn’t feel like a survivor. He couldn’t even fully fathom the things he’d seen and experienced today; to say he survived almost felt presumptuous.
Behind the officer next to him, Randy saw another beginning to unspool a roll of crime scene tape by the door of the restaurant. “Wait! My coat!” Randy stood up and started toward the door.
“This is a crime scene. You can’t-”
“No, please, I just need my coat. It’s in the bathroom. I forgot it in there, but i-it’s really sentimental.” For once in his life, Randy wished he could cry. It had always come easily - too easily- when under pressure, but everything was simply too much at the moment, and all of the moisture his body could spare was being used to keep his mouth and tongue functional.
“I can’t let you-”
“I want my fucking coat!” Randy shoved his way past, ramming his wounded shoulder against the man, and barged into the building. When he burst through the bathroom door and grabbed the coat off the floor, the tears finally spilled out, a geyser of emotion bursting forth from deep in his belly as he held the green trench coat to his face, inhaling deeply and sobbing into the rough fabric.
The door opened slowly, bumping into him as it did, and the officer who’d offered him the blanket greeted him. “Mister Bradley, I understand you’ve been through a lot today, but we need to get you to a hospital.”
“I want my stuff from the car, too.”
She sighed and held the door open for him. “Anything in the vehicle really should be cataloged as evidence.”
“Why?” He muscled past and headed toward the door of the diner. “Are you going to convict a corpse?”
“There’s a process we’re supposed to follow.”
“I want my shit.” He marched out of the building and toward the car, still hugging the coat to himself, and flung the creaky door open before climbing in and grabbing as much as he could before the ambulance showed up to collect him.
This wasn’t who he was. Randy didn’t even own black clothes, but he figured he’d need them anyway for the funerals he’d decided to attend - Hardy’s and Benson’s. He’d insisted to his mother that he go shopping alone. The last thing he wanted or needed was his mom dragging him around and playing dress up at a time like this.
The jeans and hoodie weren’t for the funeral, and the balaclava definitely wasn’t. Neither was the crowbar or the cigarette hanging from his lips as he walked toward Burgers Burgers Burgers at two in the morning, his car parked down the street and obscured under the cover of night. Once the restaurant was in sight, he dropped the cigarette, stubbing it out under his toe as he tugged the mask over his face. He still wasn’t quite used to the taste and burn and rush of nicotine that came with his new habit, but he already enjoyed it.
Once at the door, Randy took another cursory glance around before shoving aside the crime scene tape and wedging the crowbar between the doors. He used his whole body to wrench against it, finally feeling it give and open up. It was no secret that the security system was non-existent, including the dummy cameras that hung above the door and cash register, but Randy intended to move as quickly as possible regardless. He stopped for a moment, staring at the booth where Chris had died. The dining room still smelled like the cleaning chemicals he and Benson had slathered across every surface, and aside from a divot in the wall from the buckshot that had exploded through his bully’s torso, it didn’t look like the scene of even a petty crime, let alone a massacre. His eyes lingered for a moment before he jogged back toward the break room, past the freezer where the bodies had piled up, past Hardy’s office where Randy half expected to still see some raunchy 80s pornography playing. His eyes scanned the wall quickly, skimming over notices about break times and labor laws, before finally landing on a series of framed photos. He grabbed one, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and ran all the way back to his car.
When he got home, Randy went straight to the shower, not wanting his mom to wake up and smell the smoke on him from the handful of cigarettes he’d smoked while he drove slowly and took the long way home. Once out and redressed in his pajamas, he sat down on the floor and pulled a box out from under his bed and opened it up, delicately removing the contents one by one and examining them. He felt tears stinging his eyes, all pressure and burning from the inside out, as he looked over everything, just like he had multiple times a day since he’d collected them, a small hoard of treasures he’d taken from Benson’s car before he was forced into an ambulance and shipped to the hospital.
A pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Benson’s Burgers hat. The cutoff t-shirt he’d worn under his button down work shirt that day, some indecipherable text scrawled across the chest and his smell still embedded in the fibers. A couple of crumpled dollar bills. A half-empty Mountain Dew bottle. Randy stood up and walked to the jacket hanging on the back of his door to retrieve the photo from the pocket and brought it to the pile of trinkets on the floor, adding it to the collection.
Hardy had stopped his failed Employee Of The Month program before Randy even started, but the pictures had never been removed from the wall. Randy ran his fingers over the frame, along the small bronze plaque on the bottom with Benson’s name on it, over the dusty glass protecting the photo of him, mid-eye roll and face shadowed by the low, curved brim of his hat. Randy had spent several breaks staring at the pictures on the wall, and his eyes always seemed to begin and end on Benson’s.
Benson was kind. He was good. He kept to himself mostly, but whenever he spoke -low and gravelly, his voice like impending thunder and ever-lingering menthol scent like petrichor- Randy listened, because any words he had to say were worth hearing. But if Benson was a thunderstorm on a normal day, on his last one he was a hurricane. Randy knew for all intents and purposes that he was a victim. He’d been taken hostage, assaulted, verbally berated, fucking shot, but he knew underneath it all that Benson was still good. And his insistence on that did little but infuriate the people around him.
It was during one of the many moments of his mother inviting herself into his room upon hearing yet another wave of body-wracking sobbing that Randy, for the first time, raised his voice to her. “Mom, I’m mourning, alright? I just- please. I need some time to myself. I love you, and I appreciate you guys being concerned, but I’m just-”
“You’re not mourning him are you?” The cocktail of concern and condescension on her face immediately set Randy on edge, grinding his teeth and digging his fingernails into his palms to keep himself in check.
“He was my friend.”
“He would’ve killed you if-”
“You weren’t there! You don’t know! He could’ve, and he didn’t!” Randy was nearly as shocked as she was at the sheer size of his voice. Resigning himself to not being able to take it back, he continued, voice stronger and louder than it had been likely his entire life. “He wanted what was best for me! He wanted me to be able to be a… a functioning fucking adult.” He sucked in a deep breath before dropping his voice back to a speaking volume. “I’m a grown man, Mom, I need to- I need you to treat me like one. And I deserve to be sad that he’s dead, even if what he did to me was wrong. I still cared about him.” His throat suddenly clamped as his eyes welled up with a fresh batch of tears. “He still cared about me.”
They were quiet for a moment before she dropped her eyes to her feet with a nod. “Take all the time you need, sweetie.” With that, his mother backed out of the room and clicked the door shut. Part of Randy felt bad for yelling. But another part of him felt worse for not feeling as bad as he thought he ought to have.
Randy didn’t really know how to mourn. He was an infant when his father had died. And at no other point in his life had he lost anyone close enough to him to cause any sort of stirring in his spirit that would lead him to needing to discover ways to manage the accompanying feelings. He’d never even seen a dead body until that day, when he saw not one but four go from people to corpses in front of his eyes.
He supposed that’s why he watched Benson’s body until he no longer could. It was hard not to blame himself. If he hadn’t called the cops, maybe they never would’ve shown up. Maybe he and Benson would be on the road right now, and Benson would be doing better. Calmer. The kind Benson he knew who’d volunteer to clean the bathrooms because he knew Randy had a weak stomach. The good Benson he’d watch punch in his employee discount as soon as he’d see someone start counting out pocket change to pay for their food. The Benson who’d seen more potential in him than anyone else in Randy’s life ever had. And Randy hoped that if yet another bad decision on his part had led to the world losing him so soon that at least it was quick and painless. But to make sure, Randy had focused on his silhouette, ready to leap the moment he saw any sign of life. Benson dying young was one thing, but Randy’s actions leading to Benson dying slowly would be a sin for which he could never atone.
And so Randy took his time holding each object, trying to absorb any remnants of Benson through his skin, desperate to make himself a vessel for any whisper of Benson that remained, begging the universe to let some part of him fuse to Randy’s own life force to let him have the time he deserved. He stood up and went to his dresser, rifling through a drawer until he dug far enough to the bottom to find what he was looking for. He’d taken his time washing the blood off of the old, worn Motörhead shirt Benson had given him before stitching patches onto the bullet holes to prevent the threadbare material from fraying. He collected all of the items in the shirt, folding it up around them before placing the bundle in the box and sliding it back under the bed.
Randy crawled onto the mattress and pulled the duvet over himself before settling comfortably onto his back. He closed his eyes, but in lieu of falling asleep, opened his eyes back up to gaze at the ceiling. Before he let himself think better of it, Randy spoke, a notch above a whisper. “Benson… I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have- I know you only wanted to help. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry Benson, I-” Randy nearly jumped from the bed under the force of the sudden jerk of his body as a box at the top of his bookshelf tumbled to the floor. Once the initial shock wore off, Randy resigned himself to cleaning it up when he woke up. But his anxious brain wouldn’t allow him to rest, instead going through the Rolodex of possibilities for what had fallen. He finally stood and walked over to the mess on the floor, kneeling down and allowing his eyes to adjust before he started cleaning the mess.
Randy couldn’t help but laugh to himself once he got a beat on the situation. His mother had succumbed to the Beanie Baby craze of the nineties, and when it became apparent that the investment was going to have no financial return, they’d been piled into a box and given to Randy to play with. As he got older, the box had gotten moved further up and out of the way on his bookshelf, finally reaching the top a couple months ago when Randy added a handful of new books to his collection. He could only imagine what he’d say, practically hearing Benson’s voice in his head, his characteristic cynicism predictable and oddly comforting: “There’s no such thing as fuckin’ ghosts, Randy. You’re either alive or you’re dead. No one is wasting their death being hung up on their life and trying to do some Patrick Swayze bullshit.” Randy shoveled the toys back into the box before moving back over to the bed. He sat on the edge of it and rested a single worn Beanie Baby against the table lamp before clicking it off, blanketing the small plush giraffe in shadow and allowing it to watch over him as he settled back under the covers to sleep.