At a bar, just as on TV, the crowd cheers as an NBA player dribbling the ball while leaving behind
all his opponents, shoots at the basket from the middle of the court, when one woman sitting across the
TV sighs, “man, it could have been the perfect shot.”
With all the background noise, she continues speaking, “he had the perfect shooting stance. The elbow
of his shooting hand straightened up in the air once the basketball was lifted past his shoulder height.
He had a good balance. The TV captured... “
When suddenly she was interrupted by a man wearing a bow tie, “not good enough.” The man said as
his hand held his drink tighter, lifting it closer to his mouth. The glass almost touching his mustache.
“The perfect shot is yielded by a mixture of adrenaline mixed with a sip of perfect timing in this deadly
cocktail of life.” He drank from his whiskey as he placed the drink back on the table. “See, that player
had adrenaline rushing through his body, but he missed the perfect timing to shoot that ball dead upon
arrival. He left the basketball alive to bounce off to other players.”
The woman blinked once, then twice, as if taking a mental picture of the entire bar, when a tough
looking guy with a sniper tattooed on his arm, began to laugh at the corner of the bar.
The tough guy then proceeded to say “No. No” while shaking his head in disapproval. “The perfect shot
is yielded when the balance of the moment is captured alive without leaving a single visible trace of
injury whatsoever, opaque the life of the targeted image. Then boom! With a shot, you kill it.”
He spoke as he approached the man with the bow tie, and as the woman watched attentively, the man
with the bow tie, stood up from his table.
Within seconds, the man with the bow tie walked behind the counter to offer the man with the tattoo, a
free drink. As the man quickly prepared the drink, the tough guy pulled out his camera and shot a
perfect photograph of the bartender. Within the flash, the bartender felt a needle-like pinch strike his
neck. With one arm, and with a smirk on his eyes, he handed the drink to the photographer, while with
his other hand, he grabbed his neck. Meanwhile, the woman calmly grabbed her bag from under her
table, and as the photographer raised his drink to the bartender then drank it, she walked out of the
establishment unhurriedly towards the old building across the bar.
Minutes later, policemen and an ambulance arrived at the bar. While the woman displaying a
smile and watching from one of the top windows of the old building, said, “say cheese!” as she looked
through the lens of her sniper.
Both, the bartender and the photographer, laid down dead at the bar.
The perfect shot, killed them both.
Note:
I got this writing prompt from a Reddit Thread:
“A sniper, a bartender, and a photographer meet at a bar, unaware of each other’s occupations. They talk about “the perfect shot.”
