Friday, June 12, 2009

What is the sound of no guns firing?

So I just helped my ex-girlfriend rob the payroll train, and now she has a gun pulled on me; I should probably be feeling surprised, but really I'm more confused than anything else. It just all seems so... complicated. "Did you really need all these people, Sandra?" I ask, not really expecting an answer. "You probably could've done it with just two others, why involve everyone else if you were only planning to shoot them afterwards?"

Sandra's calling me naive, and an idiot, and a whole lot worse, but I can see the Old Woman of the Desert kneeling over the dead henchmen and nodding at me. {Would have been simpler to do it like that, boy, but there's something even simpler, isn't there.} I know I'm hallucinating, but this is nothing like those months I spent high on painkillers and alcohol. This feels right.

I try to work it out. "Wouldn't... wouldn't it have been simpler to just get work that makes you happy, instead of wasting all this time and energy on overly complicated plans?"

Sandra's waving her gun at me and yelling something about how I'm nothing more than a tool and how the money's all hers, but I can hardly hear her above the Old Woman's whisper: {And there's something even simpler than that, isn't there? Wouldn't it be simpler to just be?}

Suddenly the Old Woman's gone and Sandra tunes back in and everything seems so damn clear and so painfully loud I can barely stand it.

"When I met you, you were just a delusional hick, Sam! I turned you into a killer! I made you, and then you abandoned me for that lame-ass caravan of yours." The gun stays trained on me while she rants, but I'm not afraid. For the first time since I got shot in Malachi Flats, I'm not afraid. I can hear her pistol breathing; its breaths are my breaths.

"I made you, and now I'm going to unmake you!" she spits out.

It's true.

Faster than she can see, faster than I've ever moved before, faster than thought, I shape my hand like a gun and point it at her head. But really I'm pointing it at mine, aren't I?

"Bang," I say. But I can't hear myself above her gunshot, and then I'm falling, and then Ellen's there. Turns out she was always there, I just didn't notice.

"Oh, hey El, you're getting blood on your face. Let me get it." She's freaking out, and I'm just making the mess worse, so I stop.

"I'm... fine, El." It's getting kind of hard to breathe, but this seems important, so I push the words out. "This is... way better than... the last time... I got shot." I try to chuckle, but it comes out more like a gurgle. Then she injects me with something, and

0 comments :


 
Hermes 72 - Heavy Gear RPG - Most artwork Copyright 2002 Dream Pod 9, Inc.