Before our less than equal eyes stand the four men, each one once a poet and scholar of no particular order or place; now runners. They used to have bodies but these have long been replaced by ghosts of souls long transcended back to a far more tolerable past. The shell that trembles on its stricken stilts thinks about keeling over but lingers on for the next moment in vain contemplation that one day body and soul might somehow reunite.
Fourteen surround us, each one with killing eyes fixed on us like the pointed bayonets ready to strike expecting us to strike. They are not men but boys in big coats with dogs like dinosaurs and hungry teeth. All this parades before me and I have to laugh because only two men will do the shooting today with the weakest guns.
I face the four. You turn towards me in the side of my head looking hopeful. Ghosts can’t speak you fucking idiot everybody knows ghosts can’t speak. Even in my mind the quotations are absent because I know I’d never say it to you. You are three weeks old and I am two years old. I am your great great great great grandfather and a bullet away from being your fucking meal ticket out of this bullshit.
I took my eye off the four. I haven’t eaten today. You may not know it but you fucking tricked me there. I don’t need to look at the fourteen for instruction as I know what to do and the punctuation begins to die away as I automatically press the trigger and start firing like a fucking madman none of the shots miss not even the ones my last shreds of a soul attempt to send askew and I see ribbons of red and pink bursting back and hosing out onto the milkshake snow and each of the four drop to the ground and now I can see its not all my work and your spraying those fucking bullets like a piss strewn amateur and I don’t look around because a single tear blundering from your sorry eyes is cutting into the side of my head like razor wire
A full stop. My composure is returning. There’s humanity in me I can sense it but all it does now is tells me that you’re one more burden one more mouth to feed. Knowing the four have been helped at my hand I feel it turning towards you in your mind. The hand stays still but in my eyes I’m spraying your fucking brains all over the fucking wall. Four is not four but five. If only the fourteen would not turn me into six my hand thinks and the punctuation begins wandering before I reign it back in under the merciful burden of experience and education.
… I can’t wait to go home.
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