Up against the wall.

By Ben C

Imagine this:

You get up from the supper table, to get something to drink, and someone breaks into your house. He has a gun.

You’re all against the dining room wall, lined up, and your mom is crying and screaming at the same time, as quietly as she can, her weeping slowly descends into a whimper.

The gun is against your dad’s skull first, the man standing like an upside down L in the dark, motionless, confident, with his arm fully extended.

“Please God, Please God no…no… oh… no… god..no...” You can hear your mom under her breath. Everything else is quiet, except for your dad’s short, nervous breaths.

Why is he here?

Your mom screams at the same time as a loud shot tears through the silence, and fucks your life over. Your mother’s voice is torn and incomplete, like she’s been screaming for hours, but she remains standing, she has to.

The man with the gun shifts positions, your mother shrinks up against the wall, now completely rigid with silence.

BANG. She slumps down the flat wall. You close your eyes.

You turn your head to the left again when you feel the hard barrel tip against your hair, and you open your eyes again, but you can’t see a thing through the tears.

You hear a click, and the bullet has ripped halfway through your brain before you know what’s happened, and then you don’t know. You don’t even fall; everything’s just black. Like when you close your eyes to fall asleep, you don’t feel a thing. The slug pops out the back of your head, and digs into the brick wall behind you. And you don’t even fall down.

But don’t think God caught you. Don’t think that after such a full and thick physical example of reality, that anything will happen after you close your eyes and everything goes dark. What? You think there’s a spirit inside you, that will float up out of your body after you’re dead?

You actually believe that?

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