Ticket

It started out like any ordinary day at the line to the booth that sold the tickets to the home game for the local football club. It wasn't supposed to be anything spectacular or anything, just a regular line to a regular booth for a regular ticket for a regular football game by a regular football club.

The ticketing booth hadn't opened yet -- it opened at ten -- so the fifty or so people who were there were just lining up quietly, some having their coffee and doughnuts, others reading the newspaper that they had brought out with them, while the more tech-savvy ones were checking out things on their smart phones.

That restive period did not last long though. Across the street where the booth was, a small group of people had started to gather. First in twos and threes, then in fives and tens, till the originally innocuous group had swollen to nearly two hundred people. The road wasn't that wide, and that throng of people was quickly noticed by the original ones who were in the queue. Most didn't really see an issue per se, or rather, it was wholly possible that they had ignored the development given that they were lost in their world while waiting for something as banal as the opening of a ticketing booth.

What happened next was quite unthinkable.

Without any provocation, the two hundred strong crowd charged the line en masse, wielding the old newspaper club, a contraption made by rolling two widespread newspapers tightly before folding it into half, and started to hit at everyone who was in the line or didn't hold any of the makeshift weapon. Those who had been paying attention to the increasing crowd managed to sneak off before the assault fell upon them; they were the lucky ones. In less than a minute, the queuers were badly battered by the attack. Many suffered some form of head injury, with bleeding noses and mild concussion being the norm, but they will not find out about the concussion till the aftermath.

Once the lined up people realised what was going on, they started fighting back. Newspapers were thrown, phones were used as primitive battering rocks, hot coffee thrown all about like a chemical weapon, good old fisticuffs were thrown here and there. The assaulting crew suffered some damage, but what was the defenceless crowd of less than fifty mean to a throng of two hundred?

Some of the escapees had the sense to call in the police once their own safety was assured, and it was likely due to the efforts of them that the situation did not escalate to more than what it already had. The police charged in from the police station that was about a block away. Armed with truncheons, they entered the fray mercilessly, attacking anyone that did anything more than raise their arms in defense. Those who tried to run away were quickly rounded up by the supplementary force encircling the melee.

In the end, there was no ticket to be bought.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 06-May-2014 02:45:42)