I’m-”, she pauses to look me in the eyes. “-a bit of a mess right now.”
At the intersection we part company. I watch her for a while isolated against the industrial bleakness that surrounds us, before I turn away and head up the hill for home.
I’m glad we talked, even if it was only to exchange a few words. Sometimes only a few words are enough to change the way you feel.
Chapter Fifteen
Ethan
––––––––
1 2 November 2015. Sixty days after.
I buy a gun.
The old Ethan would never have done this, but the old Ethan died the same day my wife did, or later, the day I fastened that noose around my neck and tipped myself off the chair.
Alice was fiercely anti-guns. We both were. The idea of owning an instrument that had the potential to kill someone was not an idea we ever thought we would be likely to entertain. Perhaps if we’d done it earlier, Alice would still be here with us. I have these thoughts much more now. I guess that until something has been taken from you, you don’t realise what you could have done to protect it. What you should have done. If I was there, things would have been different. If Alice had a gun.
This isn’t middle America, and gun shops around here aren’t all that easy to come by. I find one though, just a little way out of town, and drive out there with no intention in mind other than to buy something suitable, I can guarantee will leave whoever I point it at certifiably dead.
I’m not interested in the latest models, or the biggest chambers, or any of the safety features, I want something lightweight, something I can conceal on my body, something that will destroy this thing that’s growing inside me.
I have never been in a gunshop before in my life. I guess if you don’t grow up around it, you never have a need to.
“Home protection?” the guy in the store asks me.
I tell him I just want something my wife can use to protect herself. That we live in a bad neighborhood and we’ve already been broken into once. That she needs something lightweight she can handle, but powerful enough to stop someone. I hesitate and he fills in the word for me.
“Dead?” he says, nodding slightly, rubbing the stubble of his chin, assessing me, giving me a story and a purpose and a future. “We can do that for you.”
Every American’s right. It feels colder in my hands than I thought it would, heavier.
“You ever fired a gun before?” he asks me.
The answer is clearly ‘no’, but I lie. I tell him my father and I used to go hunting. That I have a cousin in the police force, another in the national guard. It seems enough to convince him. I hold the gun up, aiming it towards the target he has on the wall behind him. I make a triangle with my legs, the weight shifted slightly to the back one, bend my knees and shut my left eye.
“ Pow!” he says with a smile, as I squeeze the trigger.
Chapter Sixteen
Jo
1 3 November 2015. Forty seven days after.
Over six weeks have passed. Sometimes I find it impossible to believe that no matter what happens, the world refuses to stop turning. Day by day, minute by minute, molecule by molecule, nothing sits still. There is no state of absolute inactivity at any point, anywhere in this world, and it all goes in one direction only. We don’t stop moving forwards.
I’m going back to work. I think it’s a good decision. I’ve spent too much time in the house and too much time alone. I feel like I can’t breathe in here anymore, suffocated by the world I’m carefully trapping myself in. I’ve been going out, but still never at night time, and not for more than a couple of hours at a time. I get scared if I’m out alone so I try not to let that happen unless I absolutely need to.
I’ve also seen some friends, both from work and from outside of it. They still don’t know about what really happened to me, or why I stopped work in the first place.
As much as I’ve told anyone, is that there was a family crisis, and I’m
At the intersection we part company. I watch her for a while isolated against the industrial bleakness that surrounds us, before I turn away and head up the hill for home.
I’m glad we talked, even if it was only to exchange a few words. Sometimes only a few words are enough to change the way you feel.
Chapter Fifteen
Ethan
––––––––
1 2 November 2015. Sixty days after.
I buy a gun.
The old Ethan would never have done this, but the old Ethan died the same day my wife did, or later, the day I fastened that noose around my neck and tipped myself off the chair.
Alice was fiercely anti-guns. We both were. The idea of owning an instrument that had the potential to kill someone was not an idea we ever thought we would be likely to entertain. Perhaps if we’d done it earlier, Alice would still be here with us. I have these thoughts much more now. I guess that until something has been taken from you, you don’t realise what you could have done to protect it. What you should have done. If I was there, things would have been different. If Alice had a gun.
This isn’t middle America, and gun shops around here aren’t all that easy to come by. I find one though, just a little way out of town, and drive out there with no intention in mind other than to buy something suitable, I can guarantee will leave whoever I point it at certifiably dead.
I’m not interested in the latest models, or the biggest chambers, or any of the safety features, I want something lightweight, something I can conceal on my body, something that will destroy this thing that’s growing inside me.
I have never been in a gunshop before in my life. I guess if you don’t grow up around it, you never have a need to.
“Home protection?” the guy in the store asks me.
I tell him I just want something my wife can use to protect herself. That we live in a bad neighborhood and we’ve already been broken into once. That she needs something lightweight she can handle, but powerful enough to stop someone. I hesitate and he fills in the word for me.
“Dead?” he says, nodding slightly, rubbing the stubble of his chin, assessing me, giving me a story and a purpose and a future. “We can do that for you.”
Every American’s right. It feels colder in my hands than I thought it would, heavier.
“You ever fired a gun before?” he asks me.
The answer is clearly ‘no’, but I lie. I tell him my father and I used to go hunting. That I have a cousin in the police force, another in the national guard. It seems enough to convince him. I hold the gun up, aiming it towards the target he has on the wall behind him. I make a triangle with my legs, the weight shifted slightly to the back one, bend my knees and shut my left eye.
“ Pow!” he says with a smile, as I squeeze the trigger.
Chapter Sixteen
Jo
1 3 November 2015. Forty seven days after.
Over six weeks have passed. Sometimes I find it impossible to believe that no matter what happens, the world refuses to stop turning. Day by day, minute by minute, molecule by molecule, nothing sits still. There is no state of absolute inactivity at any point, anywhere in this world, and it all goes in one direction only. We don’t stop moving forwards.
I’m going back to work. I think it’s a good decision. I’ve spent too much time in the house and too much time alone. I feel like I can’t breathe in here anymore, suffocated by the world I’m carefully trapping myself in. I’ve been going out, but still never at night time, and not for more than a couple of hours at a time. I get scared if I’m out alone so I try not to let that happen unless I absolutely need to.
I’ve also seen some friends, both from work and from outside of it. They still don’t know about what really happened to me, or why I stopped work in the first place.
As much as I’ve told anyone, is that there was a family crisis, and I’m
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