hollow-points
I admired the hollow-point bullets in front of me on the table. There were four of them. I knew, deep down, though, that there was only one I could imagine piercing my forehead, and expanding itself to blow the inside of my brain out of every imaginable opening. I could imagine when it split into its six parts, peeling like an onion and spreading to triple its initial diameter—and the inside of my head wouldn't be able to contain this extra presence. Just one.
It was the one that was slightly faded and tinted a dark green just under the screaming sentiment of the shining copper and brass, or maybe a golden-colored steel, but it looked like it cost more money than my life would be worth, so I found it almost holy in its inanimate apathy. Why were they different? Options are important to me, and these bullets are hard to get—but one is plenty to cause mass destruction, even with one death. Mine, I would imagine, even though maybe I would not be forgiven for no longer wanting to live. Should we forgive those who want to die?—who are we to say?
I wonder what any casualty feels in the moment that death comes, and if their life flashes before their eyes just then, in the milliseconds that it takes them to succumb to the cold. Maybe I am already reliving my life in the moments of my death, and death lasts an eternity. And maybe the cycle is relative, and slows down proportional to which death you are experiencing. Maybe I have died a hundred times, and I’m stuck reeling from death number forty-three.
Maybe I am laying dead in a bed somewhere, or maybe I am leaning against a tree next to a creek unconscious and don't know anything. I don't know anything. I can’t—I can't, for I feel like I am divided and living and dead and I hear the voices that tell me which one is true, and maybe I only want equilibrium.
Now I should probably continue.
I admired the hollow-point bullets and I began to turn them in my hands and I felt like they were magnetized, conscious of the pull they exerted on me. I opened my desk drawer and gently laid them down in a line, not one of them angled, angels of death there to wait for me.
I have known for a long time that I cannot own a gun. I know that I simply cannot, it's as simple as knowing that the sun will set in the evening and rise the next morning on a world that doesn't deserve it. I tell myself every day that this is not for me, or it's rather much too much for me.
I cannot stand to be away from the hollow-points, so I open the drawer and I pick up the one I have felt called to, like its jacket was made from a late summer forest green and the most beautiful gilded plateau.
And all of a sudden it is not a plateau but a volcano, and I see the magma moving down the cylinder, and maybe the heat wafting away from it will be enough to cause it to erupt fully and explode in my hands. I think about putting in it my mouth for a moment but I refrain. And then it's gone but I can't help but continue to stare and hold it close to me.
When I blink I see darkness and a hulking shadow, and the shadow is shaped like the hollow-points, slightly wider at the bottom though with no arms and no discernible legs. It haunts me like a moseying monster that has failed to fall into hell.
Ah, but I peek over the edge of the desk I am hiding behind and it sounds like something is following me, and the sun beats on my neck but I do not know when I made it outside. When I look over the edge, I am approximately thirty feet up and now I notice my feet spread on gravel.
In my hand is a weapon I would normally call a submachine gun but it appears to be somewhat larger, more solid and grotesque than I could ever wish to hold. I know that I am going to come around the corner
(she’ll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes)
any time, but all so soon, so I must be ready. Unaware, I see his—my—eyes flit up to the railroad tracks that almost call him.
I load the weapon though I have never done this before, and I cock it and aim and the hollow-point sings inside to me and me alone, and I pull the trigger with no hesitation and the instant it punctures the valley between his eyes I feel a vibration that pulses from my shoulders and flows down my arms, in waves it pulses and I cannot speak, I cannot breathe, and my eyes close for longer each time I blink and the hollow-point is illuminated and in my mind I see it peeled apart and expanded, for now it is not stiff and slender, but it sings its used up eulogy to a solitary residence.
I open my eyes to water surrounding me. I am now on a sort of peninsula with a gray blue sky hovering, unstable but vicious in its brightness. The angel approaches me but has no wings, and I know that I am in hell. Though unfamiliar, she wears a cloak that is the most lovely forest green and her skin is golden, enough for me to know she is not real. Or not real in any human way.
“My love, you no longer need to suffer,” I am told.
I am told, or I just feel this deep within—her lips did not move, and maybe my eyes are closed anyway and I forgot to look when I heard the voice, that voice of a God or Goddess claiming me as theirs. Or maybe I am in between now, and I have fallen back to when I was born, back when I was formed in my mother’s womb and through no fault of my own was heaped upon the earth, like I was vomited out of the depths I so desperately feel drawn to. Maybe this is not hell after all.
My eyes are still closed as I hear the song begin playing, and it feels green, it sounds fragrant and bright, and looks on me softly. She sings me to sleep and I am there no more. I cross into nothingness and I feel the warmth of God even after all I have done. I've salted the earth and dance now in the flames, I become ash and rise until I come to rest on the water. I will become like Jonah in the belly of a fish.
This is what I have seen.
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