CHARGE!

Ashli Giles

A male tourist and a drunk man walked into the Colosseum at noon, witnesses say. 
        Nobody knew how the drunk man got in – perhaps he flaunted his charm to the security outside and they thought, ‘Oh, it’s only an hour tour, let him have his fun.'
        How he got in didn’t matter, for within fifteen minutes, he had stumbled his way to the centre of the arena, falling against pillars and walls of stone, and bumped into the tourist. 
        The tourist had only come along because his wife deemed the Colosseum a ‘necessary tourism spot, and we’re only here for three days, so let’s make the most of it, yeah?’ If he had had his way, they would have been in sunny Barbados, but no, there he was taking photos of his wife in front of some rocks.
        So, when the drunk man collapsed onto his back, he spun around with the fury of a disturbed lion and unleashed the verbal attack he had been waiting to offload. 
       ‘You fucking idiot, watch where you’re going, eh?’
        The drunk man swung his head round to face his attacker, almost falling over in the process. He failed to lock eyes with the opposition. ‘You bloody Romans, stay in the past where you belong.’
        And thus began the almighty war of British anger versus the effects of heavy day-drinking. Staff members recall witnessing the altercation and stating that they did not get paid enough for this. One considered breaking the glass cases in the museum and grabbing the closest weapons. If they happened to toss them in the arena, and if the fight happened to become physical, well, they could just say it was a modern-day reenactment of the Ancient Roman battles.
        Unfortunately for them, the fight ended after five minutes when the drunk man proceeded to vomit what looked like an entire puddle of blood with thick chunks of cannoli, and pass out on the stone floor. In disgust, the tourist turned around to his wife, only to find she had run away five minutes ago to the gift shop. 
        Ten members of staff quit their job that day.