– Daddy didn’t lock it away
Thud thud. Have you ever been shot? I thought not. Or maybe you have, and my arrogance has immediately annoyed you. Well, for those that don’t know, I have, and the searing pain never came as I collapsed in a pool of my own blood.
Two rounds. It’s surprising actually how little it hurt, just two heavy impacts and then nothing. No cry or shriek of pain, no burning sensation that filled me. You know when you wake up with a tight chest after sleeping on your stomach? That – that is the extent as to which I can describe it.
In the chest. That’s where I was shot. I mean I might have already made that obvious, but I’m just clarifying you know, I’m not a writer or some English student with a mastery of vocabulary and speech patterns, I’m just trying to tell you a story.
Shock passes between us. It wasn’t in an alleyway late at night, a mugging gone wrong, nor as collateral damage in a war zone. I wasn’t pulling a gun on the offender, and the intent behind each brass coated lead dagger is uncertain.
A few silent tears fall. I think what really got me was the realisation that I couldn’t speak, that my fingers were covered in red as I lost consciousness. The realisation that I might have just died without any real final words, no fanfare or witnesses, just the murderer and me. Okay, man-slaughterer.
The smoking barrel extends past my three year old brother’s hands, clasped together tightly on the barrel, finger still on the trigger, unsure of what to do.
I’m still scared. I don’t know how long ago that was, or how long it would even take for my little brother to run and get help.
When I collapsed, that is when he dropped the gun, a third round discharging as the chassis slammed into the ground. This one splintered the wood of the fence leading to our neighbour’s garden, empty, luckily.
My Mummy’s eyes were red raw as she screamed at my brother, practically throwing him into the house as she carried me to the kitchen. I know she would have done what she could whilst the ambulance came, pressure, cleaning, keeping me as conscious as she could.
All I could keep thinking was, why didn’t Daddy lock it away?
– At least, all of that is what I imagine my three-year-old brother saying, thinking, the story he would tell, as I wept into my hands at his funeral. The brother I shot.
