“Well, this will be just fine,” Father Häuser said, surprising the family.   

He took a seat between a mother and father.  Smiled.  Slapped his hands on his knees. 

The father objected.  He asked Father Häuser what he thought he was doing.          

“Thought?” Father Häuser said. 

The couple’s daughter had left for a box of Mike and Ikes.  She would be back any minute.  Was he nuts?  Who does something like this?  He had no right to ….

Nearly everyone in the theater was overweight.  Many of them obese.  Should he allow something like this to alter his plans?  Father Häuser shook his head no.  Of course not.  

The mother and father began arguing.  As if he weren’t there.  Because the theater was very dark, it took the mother a few minutes to notice Father Häuser’s Roman Collar.  The man said he didn’t care.  What’s him being a priest got to do with it?  It was that sort of thing.   

Father Häuser politely waited for a break in the couple’s conversation.  For them to tire.  Then, smiling, he asked the man where he might find the theater’s public restroom.  “I don’t get out much,” he added.   

Everyone was edgy.  The husband, who looked like a state senator, acted as though he had not heard him.  Things were moving quickly now.  In fact, Father Häuser began to see what, within reason, was going to happen. 

“Where are the bathrooms,” he repeated. 

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “but I’m going to need to ask you to leave.” 

“Going to,” Father Häuser said.   

The couple grew increasingly uncomfortable.  Good.  Father Häuser took out his phone and drafted a text.  The husband looked from side to side.  If not a state senator, he was a local businessman.  A man who literally thought that he mattered.  Considered himself a pillar of the community. 

Even better. 

Father Häuser stood, excused himself as he passed down the aisle, and began lifting some seats.  Lowering others.  Short of urinating, he did whatever came to mind.  Father Häuser looked around him.  Incredible, really, the level of complacency.  Well, this was the world they created. 

The child returned with a box of Skittles.  Huh.  Father Häuser approached the family. 

“Who do you think you are?” the man said. 

Father Häuser gave a first, middle and last name, using the last names of three different parishioners.

“John.” 

“Michael.”

“Harris.” 

“John Michael Harris,” the man said.  

“Yes.”

“You got any ID?” 

When the man called for an usher, Father Häuser showed the teen his driver’s license, and explained that he was simply looking for the restroom.  Perhaps he might be kind enough to point him in the right direction?  A few moments later the couple stood, gathered their things, and said they were leaving.  Their daughter demanded to know why. 

Well, Father Häuser thought, following the usher up the aisle.  They’d certainly have a story to tell.

***

After the film started, Father Häuser waited twenty-five minutes.  The theater pitched in darkness.  He rose from his seat.  No one noticed.  Before long, Father Häuser was sitting on the ground, sliding off his loafers.  The action was particularly tense.  Everyone was waiting for what would happen next.  Father Häuser slowly spread his arms.  With as much force as he could muster he clapped the heels of his shoes together.  By the fourth clap, a woman screamed.  Father Häuser watched those around him.  A woman with a child in her arms elbowed her way up an aisle.  Smart cookie.  When she saw Father Häuser (sitting on the ground with his shoes in his hands) she shielded her child and screamed, “He’s got a gun.”   

Gun?     

Word spread.  While Father Häuser slipped on his shoes he was stepped on and he was kicked in the ear.  But this was to be expected.  He felt nothing. 

He began to walk out of the theater, pushing and shoving women and children when possible.  An usher (not the one from before) removed a Glock 7 from his maroon cummerbund.  Father Häuser crouched behind a row of chairs.  When a frightened man asked him if he had seen anything, Father Häuser told him not to worry, that he was a priest.  And then he said, “Yes.  Two young children and their nanny have been killed.” 

And then, “At least.” 

And then, “Run.  Hide.  Fight.”     

A citizen with a gun spotted the usher.  He freed his firearm.  It was now that the lights came on.  This made things worse.  Before, the exit signs glowed bright red.  You really felt that you could leave.  Now, everything felt contained.  The same.  The doors blended into the walls.  Shots fired.   

There was screaming.  There were cries of pain.  The usher fired at the citizen, missed, the bullet passing through the screen.  (The usher would be shot and killed by a police officer.)  The men exchanged fire.  Now things were really happening.  The audience, while disturbed, had, surprisingly, retained a general sense of order.  This was no longer so. 

Father Häuser thought that if everybody sat down and took off their shoes he would be able to watch the rest of the film, which he had begun to find interesting.  But all anyone was capable of doing was the same thing.  Which was one of a very few things.  Father Häuser watched people reaching for what could only be weapons.  This was going to be a real bloodbath.  But it did not matter, the body count.  There was no way the media could label this a “mass shooting.”  I mean, Father Häuser thought, once most of the facts are sussed out.  They were really covering new ground.   

The movie played.  As expected, the child had been abducted.  But this no longer seemed significant.  Father Häuser blamed the lights.  Movies were meant to be watched in darkness.  In communal solitude.  There was order in everything, or there was order in nothing.  For instance, the soundtrack, which had not been turned up, seemed particularly loud.   

Now this was something.  The exits were blocked.  First with fallen and trampled moviegoers.  And then with first responders.  In other words, those trying to get out were blocking those trying to get in.  But they would sort it out.  Even accidentally, someone would stumble upon a solution.  They had nothing but time.   

Father Häuser removed a razor from his tunic and popped his median cubital vein; rich red blood erupted in a great stream, covering the faces and arms of those around him.

The effect was instantaneous.

Richard Leise writes and teaches outside Ithaca, NY.  A Perry Morgan Fellow from Old Dominion University's MFA program, and recipient of the David Scott Sutelan Memorial Scholarship, his fiction and poetry is featured in numerous publications.  His debut novel, Being Dead, was published fall, 2023, and is available where books are sold.  His novel, DYING MAN IN LIVING ROOM, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions, 2026.  He is @coy_harlingen on Twitter.