Gun Smoke
Title: Gun Smoke
Genre: Tragedy
Setting: Current day, unspecified forest.
Rating: PG-13/T, I suppose.
Summary: Hard to summarize. I wrote it for a contest on my forum site, the prompt for the contest being the emotion anguish. It sort of outlines the effects that an abusive parent can ultimately have on a child.
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There wasn’t any other way. I knew there wasn’t then and I know it now. It would have come to my mind earlier if there had been, before this. This had been the only way.
Dig. Dig, that voice is telling me. There’s no telling whether or not the neighbors heard. They called on complaints of domestic unrest and they would have jumped all over this, the nosy white trash that they were. I hear it speaking frantically, frenziedly, as frenziedly as I’m digging. A lit cigarette falls onto the damp ground, and as I’m shoveling it out, I can already hear the click of the Zippo lighter and smell more smoke. It smells different than the smoke from earlier. My hands shake on the handle of my shovel and it falls from them as I feel another wave coming over me, a tsunami of guilt, foreboding.
The shot rang out so loudly. If the neighbors heard the yelling and the fighting every time, the breaking of glass and screaming and crying, then there’s no doubt they heard this. The walls of our singlewide were thin and deteriorating, making it all the easier for them to hear everything that went on inside of our house.
It wasn’t me this time. Mommy has always been so afraid of him that she wouldn’t have tried it if it was me. It’s not ever been a matter of love. Mommy has always loved me. I know she has. She’s just always been so afraid of him, so much weaker than him. Tonight, it was her that he went for, and I had to do it. I remember climbing his dresser to get to the high shelf, where he always keeps it, his prized possession. His daddy owned it, he would say sometimes, and someday it might be mine if I’d “man up”. I don’t want to “man up.” I’ve never wanted to do anything to make him happy. He never deserved to be happy, when he always made us suffer so much. He never loved me and if he hasn’t loved Mommy for as long as I can remember. We would be so happy without him. I knew we would. That’s why I took it, why I brought it to the living room, why I aimed at him and pulled the trigger.
The sound is still echoing in my ears now, pounding steadily against my sore eardrums. The smell of the smoke from the heavy steel barrel is stuck in my nostrils. I’m not sure how long ago it was. One hour, two hours, a whole day. It couldn’t have been that long ago or the police would be here already.
We’re going to be on the run, I’m told as the shovel is pushed forcibly back into my hands. I’m digging again automatically, because I know what will happen if I don’t, but I can feel the lump in the back of my throat that keeps seizing my muscles every few minutes anyway, making me drop it. Maybe I want to be punished. I know I need to be. But at the same time, I hurry, tossing shovelful after shovelful of dirt over my shoulder until my arm feels ready to unhinge.
The police will find us if we don’t hurry and I’ll be arrested. I’ll be arrested and thrown into that dark place where he always should have been thrown.
This should be deep enough.
The other shovel stops digging and I hear it land on the ground above our heads. The other pair of feet lift up, one at a time, and they’re back on the higher ground. Once again, I feel frozen, my eyes unable to even blink as my shovel falls from my hands. Another cigarette falls into the hole, burned down to its stubby filter, already stamped out, and I hear that voice again. The voice I’ve always heard, the voice I tried so hard to get rid of.
Get out, pansy.
Man up and climb up here and help me with this damned bag.
Don’t make me come in there and get you, you little bitch.
I’m slung over a broad shoulder the next thing I know, being carried back up. Dropped on the higher ground from almost six feet in the air, the wind is knocked out of me, but I can still feel the sobbing escaping my raspy, tightened throat, the little baby screams that had long since been beaten out of me, that had longed to come out for so long.
A rough hand grabs my wrist and pulls me to my feet, and I look up, the tears blurring my wide, fearful eyes. He’s looming over me like he always does, and speaks to me in a quiet, venomous tone.
“Unless you wanna be buried in that hole yourself, I suggest you quit your crying and do what I tell you.”
For a moment, I want nothing more than that, if it would mean never seeing him again. But I swallow my final sob, eyes still blurred with tears, and follow him over to the black bag. Even tied up tight, I can still see the angel face, framed with matted bloody hair once the color of shimmering gold. We roll the bag into the hole and cover it back up as quickly as we can.
Climbing into the rusty old truck somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes later, I guess, I see the gun lying on the dashboard. Unloaded. The bullets are in his pocket. The shot still ringing in my ears and the gun smoke still stinging my nostrils, I can’t make sense of how I missed, and I know I’ll never get the chance again.
Now I wish I had kept crying on the forest floor, sobbing like a “pansy,” and let him put me in the ground too. Then I could have been with Mommy forever.
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And that's how that goes. I doubt it'll win the contest, but I figured I'd take a crack at it anyway. Not to mention when the idea for the prompt came to my mind, it wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. The age of the narrator, I'll leave that up to the speculation of the readers. I didn't want it to be specific, except that he definitely isn't an adult, and probably not a teenager. Guess that's all!