Jack House
Regular Member
I have two recurring nightmares, being surrounded by spiders and being in a life or death situation needing to pull my gun and call the police, being unable to do either. It's never the same situation but always the same thing. Either my trigger wont pull, my gun wont fire or it's missing. Trying to call the police either the phone is dead, can't get the numbers dialed or the phone is dead.
This story is a long one as it is not about what happened or that I would prefer to do things differently. Rather it's about my thought process, what I saw, what I heard, what I felt. What I experienced right there in the moment it was happening.
It started Friday morning when my brother and his fiancee were in town for the weekend. I wasn't expecting company and I'm a night person, I'd been up all night and hadn't had a chance to charge my phone. We spent all day running around and by the end of the night, my phone was dead. We all decided to head to the bar to shoot some pool, spend some quality time together as a family. Pool is one of our favorite hobbies, we used to all play together all the time.
So we load up and head out, the bar is a 51% bar. So, even though I wont be drinking, for the first time in a very long time I made a decision I don't like making. I decided to lock my gun in my the car.
We go in, shoot some pool, I meet some of my sisters friends, they all seem cool enough and we're having a good time. The night goes by, no problems everyone is laughing and having a great time. But we have to get up around 10am because we all have plans. So my brother and his fiancee call it a night and go back to their motel. I haven't slept in two days, so I'm pretty exhausted, but I still have plenty of energy and my sister wants to stay. So I decide to stay with her. I'm meeting all kinds of new people and having a lot of fun. It's a pretty good night so far. It's getting late and people are leaving, the bar is getting quiet and my sister starts playing darts with one of her female friends(Amanda). They are behind me and I am joking around with some drunk guy. He's pretty cool, the mellow chill drunk type that just wants to laugh and enjoy the night. At some point during the night, my sister wanted to grab something out of her purse in the car, so I gave her my keys.
But the peace doesn't last. Suddenly out of nowhere, I hear an argument starting. I turn around and see a bunch of girls and a guy arguing with people. There's about 4 girls in this group with the guy, the owner, and well everyone, is telling them to leave. The guy chimes in something about calling some bikers to attack the bar and threatening to not let anyone leave the bar. In what must have been only seconds, Amanda darts behind my back and the crowd of thugs rushes towards her. I throw up my arms blocking their path and I hear Amanda pleading with them to leave her be, to just leave. She doesn't have beef with them and doesn't want a fight. Before I can get a full grasp on the situation however, the girls in the the aggressive group start clawing at Amanda, I try to push them back to break up the fight before it has a change to really get started and out of the corner of my eye, I see my sister. She's bent over and one of the aggressors has her by the hair pulling her into the middle of the group while viciously punching her head. At that moment I forget about Amanda(sorry Amanda) and rush in to get them off my sister. As my instincts were going into overdrive and without thinking I landed a punch on one of the girls, but I was looking to fight, so I started grabbing their arms trying to make them let go. I'm yelling "let go of my sister!" when suddenly I hear the guy threaten to kill me. Didn't really hear the whole threat, only "I'm going to kill you blah blah blah."
His voice trails off in the chaos and time slows down to a crawl. This guy is about a couple inches or so shorter than I am, he's almost as big and pretty muscular. He is a serious threat to me. There's no way I can fight him and get my sister free at the same time. There are at least three girls punching my sister in the head, thus making it a life threatening situation for my sister. The male is now threatening me, if I continue to help my sister, I may have to fight him. If I have to fight him, I wont be able to help my sister and there's a pretty decent chance he could best me in a fist fight, nevermind what he can do if he has a weapon of somekind.
This is it, this is that moment we all fear. The moment we feel the need to pull our sidearm. I begin to reach for mine only to recall with horror that my gun is locked up tight.
I have no choice now but to continue doing what I've been doing and pray for the best. I don't really know what happened between that moment when my sister got free. I don't know how she got free. All I remember was that I continued to help her until she was free, then acted as a shield and wouldn't let them get passed me. Once she did though, I kept telling her to give me her phone so I could call the police, but she just stood there with a thousand yard stare, clearly in shock. I turned back to the crowd and at this point they kept trying to hit me, I honestly think they were trying to provoke me as they kept shouting "let me go" "stop hitting me" and "stop grabbing us" even though I was doing none of that and had my hands open and in the air. they wanted the male to get involved in the fight. But I wasn't having it. One of them grabbed a bottle and threatened me with it. Just as I thought it was about to get ugly again, someone managed to get her disarmed. I think the bar owner saw her going for the bottle and grabbed it from her hand, not sure though.
I hear people shouting in the background, but I'm not really paying any attention to them, right now I'm focused on the group in front of me, finally they promise to leave and I let them go. I watch them as they head towards the door. At this moment I realize that after my sister got free, I lost track of her. My only concern at the moment was keeping those people away from her. I started to freak out, I'm worried about my sister. I run out the back door where we parked, hoping that someone had gotten her outside. She wasn't there. In the scuffle I managed to get my keys from her, so I retrieved my sidearm from the car and holstered it. A lot of people were clearing out, I asked everyone I saw if they had seen my sister, but no one had. I went back inside the bar and asked there, they hadn't seen her. I was really ******* scared. Someone said they saw her with some girl and that they went out the front door. The same door the mob left out of. I braced myself for a possible confrontation and went out the door, I was asking about her and the people out there said she left.
I finally found her, apparently the bar owner got her and the other girls into the bathroom while I held back the mob. She was crying, asked where I was. Wanted to know where are her friends were, why she got jumped like that. She was really shaken up. The cops asked if she wanted an ambulance, and she said no. I tried to get her to go to the hospital just to be safe, but she wouldn't have it.
She's still sore today, over 24 hours later. She had a terrible headache all day yesterday and she complained that her neck hurt pretty bad still today. Other than that, though, she seems to be okay.
In the end, I'm very happy it ended seemingly without any serious injuries. I personally feel like it was pure luck it ended this way. But even so, for at least a few moments, I faced one of my nightmares head on and it was terrifying
This story is a long one as it is not about what happened or that I would prefer to do things differently. Rather it's about my thought process, what I saw, what I heard, what I felt. What I experienced right there in the moment it was happening.
It started Friday morning when my brother and his fiancee were in town for the weekend. I wasn't expecting company and I'm a night person, I'd been up all night and hadn't had a chance to charge my phone. We spent all day running around and by the end of the night, my phone was dead. We all decided to head to the bar to shoot some pool, spend some quality time together as a family. Pool is one of our favorite hobbies, we used to all play together all the time.
So we load up and head out, the bar is a 51% bar. So, even though I wont be drinking, for the first time in a very long time I made a decision I don't like making. I decided to lock my gun in my the car.
We go in, shoot some pool, I meet some of my sisters friends, they all seem cool enough and we're having a good time. The night goes by, no problems everyone is laughing and having a great time. But we have to get up around 10am because we all have plans. So my brother and his fiancee call it a night and go back to their motel. I haven't slept in two days, so I'm pretty exhausted, but I still have plenty of energy and my sister wants to stay. So I decide to stay with her. I'm meeting all kinds of new people and having a lot of fun. It's a pretty good night so far. It's getting late and people are leaving, the bar is getting quiet and my sister starts playing darts with one of her female friends(Amanda). They are behind me and I am joking around with some drunk guy. He's pretty cool, the mellow chill drunk type that just wants to laugh and enjoy the night. At some point during the night, my sister wanted to grab something out of her purse in the car, so I gave her my keys.
But the peace doesn't last. Suddenly out of nowhere, I hear an argument starting. I turn around and see a bunch of girls and a guy arguing with people. There's about 4 girls in this group with the guy, the owner, and well everyone, is telling them to leave. The guy chimes in something about calling some bikers to attack the bar and threatening to not let anyone leave the bar. In what must have been only seconds, Amanda darts behind my back and the crowd of thugs rushes towards her. I throw up my arms blocking their path and I hear Amanda pleading with them to leave her be, to just leave. She doesn't have beef with them and doesn't want a fight. Before I can get a full grasp on the situation however, the girls in the the aggressive group start clawing at Amanda, I try to push them back to break up the fight before it has a change to really get started and out of the corner of my eye, I see my sister. She's bent over and one of the aggressors has her by the hair pulling her into the middle of the group while viciously punching her head. At that moment I forget about Amanda(sorry Amanda) and rush in to get them off my sister. As my instincts were going into overdrive and without thinking I landed a punch on one of the girls, but I was looking to fight, so I started grabbing their arms trying to make them let go. I'm yelling "let go of my sister!" when suddenly I hear the guy threaten to kill me. Didn't really hear the whole threat, only "I'm going to kill you blah blah blah."
His voice trails off in the chaos and time slows down to a crawl. This guy is about a couple inches or so shorter than I am, he's almost as big and pretty muscular. He is a serious threat to me. There's no way I can fight him and get my sister free at the same time. There are at least three girls punching my sister in the head, thus making it a life threatening situation for my sister. The male is now threatening me, if I continue to help my sister, I may have to fight him. If I have to fight him, I wont be able to help my sister and there's a pretty decent chance he could best me in a fist fight, nevermind what he can do if he has a weapon of somekind.
This is it, this is that moment we all fear. The moment we feel the need to pull our sidearm. I begin to reach for mine only to recall with horror that my gun is locked up tight.
I have no choice now but to continue doing what I've been doing and pray for the best. I don't really know what happened between that moment when my sister got free. I don't know how she got free. All I remember was that I continued to help her until she was free, then acted as a shield and wouldn't let them get passed me. Once she did though, I kept telling her to give me her phone so I could call the police, but she just stood there with a thousand yard stare, clearly in shock. I turned back to the crowd and at this point they kept trying to hit me, I honestly think they were trying to provoke me as they kept shouting "let me go" "stop hitting me" and "stop grabbing us" even though I was doing none of that and had my hands open and in the air. they wanted the male to get involved in the fight. But I wasn't having it. One of them grabbed a bottle and threatened me with it. Just as I thought it was about to get ugly again, someone managed to get her disarmed. I think the bar owner saw her going for the bottle and grabbed it from her hand, not sure though.
I hear people shouting in the background, but I'm not really paying any attention to them, right now I'm focused on the group in front of me, finally they promise to leave and I let them go. I watch them as they head towards the door. At this moment I realize that after my sister got free, I lost track of her. My only concern at the moment was keeping those people away from her. I started to freak out, I'm worried about my sister. I run out the back door where we parked, hoping that someone had gotten her outside. She wasn't there. In the scuffle I managed to get my keys from her, so I retrieved my sidearm from the car and holstered it. A lot of people were clearing out, I asked everyone I saw if they had seen my sister, but no one had. I went back inside the bar and asked there, they hadn't seen her. I was really ******* scared. Someone said they saw her with some girl and that they went out the front door. The same door the mob left out of. I braced myself for a possible confrontation and went out the door, I was asking about her and the people out there said she left.
I finally found her, apparently the bar owner got her and the other girls into the bathroom while I held back the mob. She was crying, asked where I was. Wanted to know where are her friends were, why she got jumped like that. She was really shaken up. The cops asked if she wanted an ambulance, and she said no. I tried to get her to go to the hospital just to be safe, but she wouldn't have it.
She's still sore today, over 24 hours later. She had a terrible headache all day yesterday and she complained that her neck hurt pretty bad still today. Other than that, though, she seems to be okay.
In the end, I'm very happy it ended seemingly without any serious injuries. I personally feel like it was pure luck it ended this way. But even so, for at least a few moments, I faced one of my nightmares head on and it was terrifying
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