/yesod

Tag: guns

  • the right to bear arms

    …I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance.

    He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared, completely alone. I wonder where his Secret Service protection has gone.

    He apologizes for the intrusion and removes his tattered coat. I notice he has a shoulder holster beneath.

    My mother comes into the front hallway and is clearly displeased to see him in her home. She informs us that his interruption is right in the middle of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and that she doesn’t “feel comfortable with that man having a loaded gun in the house.”

    Her glare is withering.

    I protest, saying it’s our duty to give him shelter and protection. But it’s clear that she’s unimpressed, perhaps because she didn’t vote for him. She returns to her program, leaving me to apologize to the President…

  • an uncomfortable visit

    …shocked at how seedy the old neighborhood looks, I feel a pang of survivor’s guilt over my own relatively comfortable life now.

    Through the open door of the apartment, I can see that our old neighbors are sitting down to dinner. I’m stunned for a moment to find that the little boy my son used to play with is now a paraplegic. I’m already regretting the visit as I knock.

    Shuffled of chairs inside, dishes and silverware clatter on a tabletop. I’m interrupting dinner. Idiot.

    The husband opens the door, still chewing.

    I’m puzzled by a poster of an old comic book character on the wall behind him.

    He’s puzzled by my visit, doesn’t recognize me at first. Then his eyes light up and he calls his wife out to say hello. He tells me to wait for a moment, that he’s got a gift he’s been saving for me. I do my best to demur but he’s already rummaging around in the chaotic jumble of old toys and rubbish in their little apartment.

    At the door, his wife asks about my kids. We trade polite pleasantries for a few minutes. She tells me that crime in the area has made it almost impossible to raise a family. Uncomfortable, I joke about dressing up like Batman and clean things up.

    In the stairwell behind me, I hear a door slam. Mutter of voices, a low level of panic. A woman cries somewhere up above.

    A man with a handgun makes his way door to door, collecting this week’s rent and/or protection money.

    She does her best to hold on to her fear. I do my best to hope that the thug didn’t hear my ridiculous crimefighter comment.

    Her husband comes out into the hallway to confront the thug. I can feel the anger building in his wife, that he would jeopardize their safety with this pointless bravado.

    Things get complicated, convoluted . . . the sands of dream shift under my feet and slides into another, disjointed direction…

  • home invasion

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997]

    I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob.

    On their fourth pass, I make eye contact with the driver and I know then that this is no normal robbery. They want me to see them.

    We stand there, watching the pass and I realize that we’re being diverted.

    Misdirection.

    Someone is already in the house, I know. Someone came in the back — the car had been empty? The car had been full on the first pass, but the last few times, I could see that the men inside were not so cramped; one of them was gone.

    They were already in the house.

    Through the house I go, searching.

    Passing by my room I see that the french doors have been kicked in.

    Someone is in the house.

    In a back room, my teenage daughter’s room, I find them. He is sitting at the piano, holding a gun in her face. She sits on the bed, crying.

    With a broken crystal candlestick, I stab him in the back — just to the left of the spine — before he can turn.

    Push the splintered end deep into him, glancing off the shoulderblade, scraping against the bone.

    He breathes once, heavy, and then dies.

    When the car passes by the window again, I am there — his head in my fist, raising it high, my fingers in his hair.

    I see the eyes widen as they see his glazed, empty gaze.

    I meet the eyes of one in the car as it speeds off — that is the one, I know, who will return for revenge.

    The car drives off into the night and I drop the head, realizing that — for the first time — it is snowing in the Midlands.

    [2013 Addendum: This is a odd one to look at now. In 1997, I did not have a daughter. Now I have two. And, for what it’s worth, my bedroom (four houses and sixteen years later) has French doors. That’s not going to help me get to sleep any easier.)