The bullet has my name on it, literally.
I'd say she lacked imagination, but that isn't true. If anything she has too much and too many years spent sharpening it, whittling it down into a sharp sleek weapon she could use when the worm finally turned. A weapon like the bullet.
It stands, rim flush with the ground, in the middle of my enclosure. It rises above me like a bronze silo glistening under the bare bulb sun that lights my world. I can see my name scrawled into the casing in rough letters each larger than I am.
It is the only time I ever see or hear my name anymore.
The bullet dominates the small space she's set aside for me. There is no good angle for me to see all of my name at once even if I go to the ring of diatomaceous earth that barbwire fences its way along the border. I have to walk around the bullet silo whenever I want to remember what I was once called.
I know the tool she used to drill the letters into the brass. It begins with a “d.” The word half forms itself in my mind, but vanishes like a fist when you open your hand every time I try to force it to form on my tongue. I can picture it hanging in my former work room, but it's been so long I've forgotten what it's called.
There's food in the bowl and water in my trough: proof that she had been here while I slept. How can I never hear her when she does that? Every other sound sends me into a panic, waking or sleeping.
I don't know the answer; I just know that I am going to win.
I've tried mathing out the odds, but I was never good at figures, even with a calculator. 1 in 6 was more than 10%, less than 20%, but I had no idea how to apply that against all the days she made me play. Even if I could remember how many days it's been.
She didn't wake me for the game today. Sometimes she does that. Like I used to wake her up to play when I could still hold the gun. She'll be back later. I don't know when, just that she will. She plays her game on her schedule, not mine.
With nothing better to do I walk laps around the bullet putting as much space between me and it as the sharp earth will allow.
It's a .38 Special. I bought a box when I inherited the antique Smith and Wesson V my great grandfather had with him when he liberated Buchenwald. They let him use it as his sidearm when he became a cop after the war. He wore it with his dress uniform when he married my great grandmother. I remember all the stories he used to tell me sitting there in his garage cleaning the damn thing.
I should never have used it to threaten Mary.
I'd gotten halfway around my name for the 58th time when she arrives. I can see her face above me where the clouds should go. She doesn't look happy or sad or angry. She looks like she wants the math to finally work itself out.
I don't think her eyesight's strong enough to see my face. I know my voice is too weak to reach her ears. I don't think that matters; there's no point in her seeing or me talking now.
A shadow falls over me as her giant hand reaches down blotting out the lightbulb sun. She grabs the top tip of the bullet between her thumb and forefinger, exerting the minimum pressure needed to keep it from crashing down on me. I don't think she likes guns or bullets, she just hates me more. Hates me enough to play the game every day.
She lifts the bullet up without changing its orientation. What had been a silo is now a rocket slowly lifting off. Sauntering into space as if gravity was only a minor inconvenience. Plucked up by the hand of an indifferent god.
The barrel of the gun is longer than my enclosure. The whole of the gun is heavier than I could possibly imagine. Mary holds it with a still firm hand. The cylinder is out. She handles the gun steadier that the bullet. I wonder if that's because my name isn't on the gun.
There were days that I used to pray she'd drop it down on me, accidentally or on purpose, and end it all as I got crushed under its battleship weight. I stopped praying when I decided that I was going to win.
The rocket ship bullet docks with the mothership gun, sliding into the cylinder in one smooth motion. She flips the gun to the side with a practiced action that locks the cylinder back into the body of the gun and aligns the bullet with the chamber. She uses the tips of three fingers to roll the cylinder until she's lost track of where the bullet comes to rest.
Something about the way she spins the cylinder reminds me of a con man playing the shell game. Does she really not know where the bullet is, or is she playing a deeper game with me? Keeping me alive day after miserable day thinking every time I step into the barrel will be the last.
I can't think that thought for very long. Not if I want to stay sane.
She doesn't say anything, which is probably best. Her voice hurts my ears now. She told me what I had to do in thunder word decree a very long time ago. Remembrance and obedience of those edicts is expected. If I don't she'll let things into my enclosure. Things as large as my fingers that burrow through flesh laying their eggs as they go. Things that take days to hatch and worm their way out of the host.
As bad as the game is it's still better than being an incubator for monsters.
She is dressed in white. She always dresses in white. When she lowers herself down onto the chair beside the table my enclosure rests on she reminds me of an iceberg toppling down upon itself and crashing into the sea. If the iceberg were Mt Olympus sculpted into a giant Galatea and the sea was just the unseen sky below the table.
She rests the barrel of the gun on the flat of the table facing me. I'm already standing between her and the place I sleep and eat. It's where she wants me to be. The open end of the barrel extends onto my side of the enclosure resting on the jagged earth that pens me in. She told me once that this was the only way I was ever going to leave this place.
An old fashioned egg timer materializes from some pocket cave somewhere deep within the white dress. It's placed beside the gun. The dial's facing her: I never get to know how long it's been set for and it's never the same time two days in a row.
It won't start counting down until I'm inside the gun.
I'm barely tall enough to climb into the barrel. I have to extend my arms as far as I can to just get my fingers onto the rigid lip. The cold steel bites into my delicate hands as I slowly pull myself up and into it. My cut and calloused fingers barely feel anything anymore after the hundreds of times I've abused them playing Mary's game.
I fight the urge to collapse inside the gun once I've managed to pull myself in. It's too painful. I used to think the barrel of a gun was so smooth back when I was 5'10”. Now that I'm the size of an ant I know better. I can see thousands of cracks in the barrel and its rifling and that's just in the opening of the steel cave: the parts the lightbulb sunshine can reach.
There won't be any light where I'm going.
Smooth or jagged the cracks are sharp with metal splinters the size of acupuncture needles jutting out. There is one safe dull path down the barrel. It's not much, but it's enough to keep me from bleeding out before Mary takes her chances with me.
Mary starts the timer ticking down. The sound is magnified inside the steel. If I close my eyes I can pretend that I'm normal again and that this is the subway and the tick of the timer is some distant train getting closer.
I follow the safe path into darkness. My sleeping mat, food bowl, and watering trough, everything that I have left in the world are framed in a dot of light over my shoulder and behind me. I navigate by touch and hearing. The ground beneath me is vibrating more and more with every step closer to the timer I take.
I know that I'm far enough in when the vibrations make it almost impossible to stand.
Behind me I can see the dot of light showcasing my new, smaller, existence. From here it looks like the moon on a starless night. In front of me there is impossible darkness and a question – is the bullet in the chamber?
There's a 1 in 6 chance that when the timer counts down and Mary pulls the trigger that the bullet with my name on it will rocket through me on its way to the moon.
Mary had the same odds when I put the gun to her head all those times.
I am going to win.
I keep telling myself that, but what does winning look like when you're nothing? Will I ever be normal again or do I just live out my time as the man on the moon?
The tremors continue to tick down.
It's not like she ever said we'd be even after she pulled the trigger a 100 times. Or a 1,000. Or 10,000. But there has to be a way out of this; one that doesn't involve certain death.
Are the tremors coming faster?
Was it certain? There are furrows in the barrel bigger than foxholes. Like the niches in subway tunnels linemen use in an emergency. If I could just beat the timer.
The tremors are definitely getting worse.
I'm stupid. It's a rocket, not a subway. If I'm not dusted instantly I'd be smeared along half the length of the barrel. If I was lucky it would kill me. I don't want to think about how long I could survive as a living stain. Or if I'd be aware.
I'm crying. I can't remember when I started.
The timer goes off. I clasp my hands over my ears to keep the sound from drilling through my brain. I lose my balance on the shifting metal and fall prone. I feel several a sharp pain, smell copper blood oozing out onto the metal filings.
“i'm sorry” I say over and over again.
This is when she pulls the trigger. She always pulls the trigger now.
Only this time she doesn't.
Everything goes silent as the gunquake subsides. A manic laugh bubbles up and out of me echoing in the steel cave.
“I won.” My words echo back at me and I answer them, “yes, I won.”
The cut in my leg isn't deep. Nothing a little time won't fix. I begin the long crawl to the moon.
Will she grow me back today? Or was there more I had to do to earn back my old height? It doesn't matter. I've won. I'll jump through the next set of hoops when I come to them.
“SORRY.” This is the first thing she's said to me in months, possibly years. Even her whisper is thunder.
“but I won”
CLICK