Jesus Saves
"Not a chance! Shut up," he ordered.
They shut up.
A ways down the road, there was a house on fire. The top was dry, but the sides were completely soaked in fire. Their necks turned to rubber as they passed.
"You know, I could probably save–" she began, before being cut off by Bailey.
"What did I tell you yesterday, and the day before, and every day before that?" he snarled. "If you try to fucken do that even one more time, I swear I will shoot you." The one of the car's wheels crossed the yellow line as he pulled out a gun, the metal a dull silver the color of nails.
"Bailey boy," she moaned.
"Shut up!"
She shut up.
As they left the scene, a single heartrending shriek could be heard.
"Sound like an exorcism," June Star commented.
The Grandmother began rattling the handle on the door. "Let me out, let me out," she complained, "I could save them."
Silent as death in the middle of the night, Bailey brought the car to a halt. He opened his door, stepped out, and opened the Grandmother's door too, before giving her a hand out of the car. Holding her hand, he pulled her over to the side of the road, and sat her down. Pulling the device out of his pocket, he held her right hand to it, and as she began to whimper and make a fuss, he cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. The bullet sailed easily through her hand and out the other side, making a sound like the doors to heaven creaking open.
The Grandmother began to cry. "B-Bailey boy," she wailed. "B-Bailey-boy, let me save them. I could save them."
Cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger, he shot her through the other hand, too.
"But why, Bairy boy," she screamed through the pain, trying to pull her hands together and finding she couldn't. June Star and John Wesley, who had gotten out of the car to watch, peaked around their father, as if the Grandmother was only slightly less interesting that a boy getting beaten up at church.
"Pull off her shoes, John Wesley," Bailey commanded evenly, like a corporal going about standard procedure.
"Yessir," he replied. Pulling off her white pointed shoes, he tossed them to the side of the road, and took aim at her right foot, before shooting it, with similar results to previously.
"Why, Berod, why?" she asked, her voice choked up with pain.
"I told you I would shoot you if didn't stop, and you haven't stopped," he informed her casually, searching around in his pocket for another bullet. He loaded another bullet, and pulled back the hammer.
She feebly pulled back her left foot as he reached for it, and moaned, "Save . . ."
Quickly, he shot her through the foot, and she let out another yell of agony, making a nice harmony with the one from the burning house.
"Alright, alright, I'll stop!" she begged. "I'll stop trying to save people!"
With a smirk, he nodded, and as she face the ground, not bearing to look her son in the eye, he shot her through the heart with his last bullet. "John Wesley, take off her dress and throw it in the scrub."
Like a professional repossessor, he pulled off her dress and put it down in the bushes. As Bailey walked back to the car, June Star picked up a rock the size of her fist, and placed it over the hole in the Grandmother's chest, before returning to the car. The family drove off.
Blood pooled at her chest, red as the fire of hell, and the rock that June Star had placed over her hole was gently pushed off, before the Grandmother rolled over, still dead.
This is my first piece with really blunt symbolism. I retain a little bit of her symbolism (the dress for one) but I get significantly more into the Jesus references than O'Connor ever did (in this story at least). Some of her stuff was pretty oblique, and I tried to hit you over the head in this. Yes, I am working with a very narrow interpretation of the story. If you look really hard, I think I can convince you.