Beginnings:
Matt Hammond massaged his right side just above his kidney to get rid of the never-ending pain. He'd just spent another 8-hour shift watching the monitors and sitting on his ass at the department store in the Minneapolis Mall of America.
"OUCH! Well... Fuck Me!" he shouted, as a sharp pain shot up his side when his front tire hit a large pothole. He drove on past into the Holiday Inn parking lot. "They need to fix that damn thing!" He grumbled and pulled in front of the Grizzly Inn bar, which was part of the hotel.
Matt had just turned 38 the month before, but these days he felt like he was 60. He got out of his old Dodge truck and headed for the door of his favorite bar. Not because it was nice, but because it was convenient. He'd been stopping by this watering hole every time he got off shift for almost three years.
Matt was average in most ways with black hair, brown eyes, and he used to be 6'1", but now he walked a bit hunched over because of the never-ending pain in his right side. He pushed open the door and trudged up to the main bar.
He spied Julio, who was drying a glass with a white towel behind the bar and waved at him when he strolled up to an empty stool.
"Hey compadre, you look like shit!"
"Fuck you, Julio, and get me a shot." Matt grimaced as he slowly sat down on the barstool.
"That bad amigo?" Julio said, looking concerned as he put a shot glass on the bar and poured it full of Jack Black.
"Yeah, worse than usual."
Matt tossed back the shot and felt the burn of the liquor travel down his gullet. It erased his pain for a few seconds. But it came back quickly when the fire in his gut dispersed.
Julio slid a draft of beer in a frosted mug towards him on the bar, and Matt drained half of it as Julio watched him.
"Ah, that's better," Matt said, "Give me another shot, bro."
Julio threw the damp towel over his left shoulder and topped off Matt's shot glass.
"You want me to call you in a room for tonight?" He asked, "Looks like it's going to be one of those nights."
"Please do, I don't think I can take the drive home."
"That dude really fucked you up, didn't he?"
"Yeah, but he paid the price for it," Matt answered, and downed the shot.
Matt had joined the police department at 21. Full of piss and vinegar, he had rolled the streets of Minneapolis for years, busting crime until one day fate had reared its ugly head.
Three years ago, he'd stumbled into a robbery gone wrong at the 7-11 near his apartment when he'd stopped for a 6-pack of beer after his shift. He'd been thinking about his marriage troubles. Matt had not been paying attention to what was going on in the store.
He no sooner had walked into the store when a dope head saw his uniform and started shooting. He shot Matt first, and the bullet had gone through his side and knocked him to the floor. Then there was more shooting as the thug shot everyone he could see, killing four innocent shoppers.
Matt had struggled to get to his gun, but his right side was numb. Blood was pouring out of his uniform and made his gun hand slippery as he tried to draw it. The perpetrator leaped over him when his gun was empty and ran for the front doors. Matt managed to pull his sidearm finally, and even though his vision swam, he fired off a couple of rounds before he passed out.
The first 9mm slug caught the man in the back of his left arm, the force of it spinning him around, and the second slug hit the crack head dead square in the middle of his chest. It burst his heart like it was a water balloon.
The crook had hit the concrete like a sack of wet flour. His head, cracking open on the cement with a loud crunch of bone. It didn't matter to the shooter because he was already dead.
Matt had woken up a week later in the hospital and a hero to the city of Minneapolis. A month later, the department gave him a medical retirement and sent him on his way. As soon as they said he would live, his wife had papers served to him in the hospital. She'd divorced him taking his 15-year-old daughter with her to Wisconsin with some man she'd seen for months.
"Sometimes, life is a shit sandwich!" He thought, "And then it gets worse."
"Hey, man!" Julio said again, "You in there?"
Matt came out of his zone, "Yeah, buddy."
Julio slid the room key card to him, "Room 1101, you're all good."
"Thanks, bud," Matt replied.
The hotel knew Matt and helped him out with a free room when he needed to kill his pain. That is if they had an empty room, and they always did. Matt often thought they kept one in reserve since he was spending what little money he had with them.
Julio leaned over and lowered his voice, "Man, I can hook you up with some real pain killers, not this shit." Pointing to the shot glass.
Matt smiled back, "A man has to pick his own poison."
"You change your mind, let a brother know."
"You got it, and thanks for being such a good friend."
Julio shrugged it off, "Man, you are a hero, and I respect that!" "Nobody else does," Matt replied and got up.
Matt went back to his favorite corner booth and prepared to get shit-faced drunk. Mainly because that was the only time he felt good anymore, mentally or physically.
After the first year, his daughter had even stopped calling him when she had called all she could do was tell him how wonderful her step-dad was. That's when he started hitting the booze even harder, and it was getting worse. When Matt sat down, Julio brought him a fresh beer and shot as his cop training kicked in. Matt scanned the crowd in the bar.
He picked them out quickly. There were some salespeople, some construction workers, and not much else, but the average hotel guest on their way to one place or another. They were sitting in various locations talking and pounding back the drinks of their choice. With his back to the wall and satisfied he was safe, Matt worked on getting the pain to leave his body with booze. Well, it never really left; he just covered it up with alcohol if he was honest.
Ten minutes later, as he sipped his beer, Matt noticed a group of women when they entered the bar. They looked like any other group of working-class office people having a meeting of the minds. They had stacks of papers and laptop computers piled on the one big table in the bar.
He almost chuckled as they sat around drinking and waving hands in the air as they argued over something. Yeah, life was normal in Minneapolis that night. It didn't even matter if the snow was starting to fall again.
Matt smiled and sipped his drink. He had accepted the fact that he was nothing more than an old busted down cop with a drinking problem. Some of the women at the big table across the way looked attractive in their fancy office clothes, and in his day, Matt would have introduced himself and hoped to get lucky. But these days, he felt fortunate if he made it through one more pain-filled night.
Matt wondered if he could even fuck a woman anymore. The pain in his side would probably kill his hard-on, and that would be it.
"Fuck it!" He grumbled and downed another shot.
Matt soon gave up watching those folks and didn't notice a tall blonde as she took a circular route to the bathroom. She had slowly walked around the barroom, acting like she was looking at all the memorabilia on the walls. He had no idea that she was scanning the crowd like she always did everywhere she went.
You see, she was "Chosen" and had a mission to complete. A task that was relegated by the very blood that flowed through her veins. Blood that carried millions and millions of alien nanobots.
Matt was staring at his latest shot of whiskey and contemplating the shitty hand of cards fate had dealt him when suddenly he heard the swish of a dress. It made him raise his head and look up. In front of him stood the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
