The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to understand all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we will either go mad from the revelation or run from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.
-H.P. Lovecraft.
Cartoons danced across the screen, flashing inconsistant light across the room. Piles of food cartons and empty bottles were pushed aside, into corners, under tables, behind counters, shelves. Tom Hanson, leaned against a small couch, listlessly eyeing the program with little interest, clenched and unclenched his jaw.
He turned his head, barely an inch, to see the ansering machine trewn across his floor. Despite his best efforts, it still beeped with unchecked messages of worry, concern, anger. It stopped beeping when he poured half a bottle of vodka on the speakers.
He wasn't very drunk now, anyway. 'Slightly tipsy' was what Penhall had called it. He'd slept off the violent outburst the day before, and now he worked on getting back to it. His hair, hanging in limp, greasy strands over his eyebrow, smelled something like a mox between a downtown bar and bad eggs. Not him, just his hair, for some fucked up reason he didn't feel like contemplating. He mindlessly licked his teeth, feeling for a chunk of crap in between them.
Am I loosing it? came the thought, out of nowhere, bursting through the unclear fog that his mind had become. This one thought, one simple question, seemed to be more clear then anything else he had done or said in the last week, month, even his entire life. It was like a slap in the face, across the face, in the crotch, everywhere. A brutal beating by a man with a golf club and a less then sunny desposition. It was, possibly, the best question he'd ever asked, and the worst, even though he hadn't technically asked it yet. It asked itself, more like. It demanded an answer.
His gun, he noticed, sat on the coffee table, right next to a wrapper for something he didn't want to think about. It wasn't shining, like it once had, maybe from lack of use.
Why do cops shine their guns? So guys have something pretty to look at when their brains are blown out through their eye sockets? So that it shines, glints off any light, and people know it's there? Like a little sign that says, "Don't fuck with me."
People could do that, Tom thought. Cops could do it, use whatever morcel of power they've been given and slap it in people's face, use it to get things they want.
If he did that, flashed his city-given weapon in every coffee shop he stepped into, he could do it to.
He could wipe out anyone, and just use the 'self-defense' shit that was never true. "Oh, he tackled me, I had no choice" "He had a knife!" "He was about to rape a little girl, but you can't see her cause she fled in terror'
He'd heard it all. It's been said it's all part of the system, and if you don't like it, that's a goddamn shame. The system works, Fuller had said, he'd seen it work. It works.
The system was fucked up.
He picked up the gun off the coffee table, admired it. It was a good gun, on paper. .36 caliber, fitted handle, practicly knew when it had been given to him. Could shoot ten a second.
But, then again, it had also been pointed into so many faces---young faces---he lost track. It had been fired, it had killed. It was dirty with residue, grime, dirt, maybe blood, but he didn't know. It had molded with the grooves of his hand over the years, knew just where to slide in, so he could take the perfect shot, 'defend' himself. Always 'defending' himself.
It'd be easy, he realized, it be quick, easy. Just press down, just a little, and the powder'd catch fire, and the fire'd flash the bullet, and the bullet'd fly out, and the bullet would fly from the barrel, and would break the skin, the tendens, muscle, the skull...
He put the gun next to the mystery wrapper and the beer bottles, sitting back on the couch and watching the cartoon charctors flash across the screen, feeling pretty sure he was loosing it.
A/N I don't know how guns work...
This is very ansgty/drabble-y, but then again I'm feeling very angsty/drabble-y.
Avoiding homework...
Painting nails...
Yepppppp