The Raid

Neither my writing mate or I could get much done with this one. Sometimes the ideas don't come. The line is from John Grishom's short stories. One good thing about writing exercises when one is free writing, it doesn't have to be good. The pencil or in my cases, the fingers just need to keep moving. Like the ending, I didn't know what to do with it.

Whatever, I’ve seen worse but not by much.

I stood by the police wagon as the club participants were rounded up. There were mostly men and a few women, probably the waitresses considering their clothes. Ooops, there’s Betty, my neighbor. I’ll pretend I didn’t see her. I didn't know she worked here.

No one was really drunk, but they weren’t totally sober. Some seemed high on something, probably Coke.

Gabe, the cop who alerted me that the raid was about to happen, winked at me as he cuffed a man who kept saying, “Do you know who I am?” My editor, yelled at me as I rushed out of the paper saying I had a lead and I’d explain later.

What do I mean by worse? There was something C movie about the scene. One of the old cops was carrying out a roulette wheel. Who’d have thunk it. A gambling den in Bear’s Foot, Wyoming. 

What amazed me were the people. They weren’t local by any means. Some must have come over from the fancy dancy ski lodge down the road about thirty miles. Their clothes were much too brand name with brands no one here could afford. Our little town had grown when the ski lodge went up because prices of real estate meant that no one could afford to live there.

Meanwhile I was using my phone to snap photos. I got one of Gabe. The least I could do was to make him a hero in the town paper.

I wonder what I can do with the story. There has to be a moral in there somewhere, just not sure what it is.