Gestalt
''Things, as black as they seem, change.''


Saturday, June 08, 2002  

"Things, as black as they seem, change...."


Tiny shards of broken glass picked up the afternoon sunlight and scattered it across the room. The deep red carpet glittered, and the black and white linoleum was an alternating pattern of night and day. The green and amber shards of wine bottles decorated the kitchen table like a deadly scattering of autumn leaves, throwing refracted patterns on the ceiling. The glass that remained in the doors, the windows, hung down like spiderwebs in their frames.


Cassandra thought, for just a moment, about how difficult it would be to clean it all up, but, refocusing her eyes on the gun barrel, she decided it didn`t really matter.


Her mind started the automatic litany it had been chanting for the last fifteen minutes - But what will people think what about mom and who`ll feed the dogs when will they find me but probably no one will look for me after all who really cares...., which grounded itself in the black self-pity with which she was already intimately familiar.


The gun was one she`d bought three months ago, an automatic which was what the gun shop owner suggested. He`d said it would be less complicated for Cassandra, who`d never owned a gun before, but she suspected he pushed it because it was more expensive.


"Of course, there`ll be a seven-day waiting period," he`d told her, "but a nice lady like you shouldn`t have no trouble." He grinned, displaying his own disturbing lack of teeth.


"No problem," she told him. "There`s no rush."


A week later, she was in the range behind the gun shop, firing a weapon for the first time in her life. She`d worried vaguely that the shop owner might try something as he adjusted her stance, moved her grip slightly, but she found he wasn`t dumb enough to try that sort of thing on an armed woman.


He`d praised her for her marksmanship - "You may not kill the guy, but he`s not getting out without perforations" - and made her go through the process of loading and readying the gun once or twice.


As the man was making her load it herself, Cassandra felt revulsion settle on her shoulders, a cold, damp cloth of doubt that made her shiver and drop the clip.


"You okay, ma`am?"


She nodded. "Yes. Fine." She pushed the gun away from her. "That`s enough for today," she said. "I`ll take it home now."


He actually managed to look concerned for a moment. "But we really should go start to finish one more time, just so you`re -"


"No," she said, a bit more sharply than she`d intended. Cassandra took a deep breath. "No. That`s enough for today."


The man shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, then. Just don`t try to use it without a few more hours on the range." He grinned again, showing his gaps. "You might wind up shooting your foot off."


Cassandra forced herself to return his smile with a small, brittle one of her own and said she wasn`t really worried about that.


He packed up the gun and added a coupon for a free hour on the shooting range - "I`d hate to think of a pretty lady like you getting hurt" - and walked her to the door.


Cassandra thanked him and drove home, her radio off, her hands gripping the wheel.


She wasn`t exactly sure why she`d bought the gun. The reason she`d come up with to justify it to herself was the incident with the woman downstairs, a neigbor who`d nearly been killed ni her own apartment by a man who`d been stalking her for months. Even then, it had been at least three weeks before she started falling asleep to a small, still voice that said, "Buy a gun."


It had felt... right, once she`d made the decision. Safety. Security. And, she admitted as she sat in her bedroom, passing it from hand to hand - Power.


Cassandra blinked to clear her vision and reset her wandering attention to the bore of the gun. She imagined that she could see the bullet at the other end, sleeping, waiting for the call to action. Her finger was on the trigger. She kept her breath steady. Nothing for it now but to -


The phone rang.


Her finger tightened on the trigger, acting of its own accord.


Cassandra screamed, a short, terrible yelp, and dropped the gun. Her careful, steady breath was now rushing in and out of her lungs, scraping as it went, and her hands were wrapped around her head. No bang. No bang, she thought.


The phone rang again, and she stole a glance at it. Should`ve unplugged it, she thought. She picked up the gun and turned it over in her hands, letting the phone ring a third time. In a moment, she saw - the safety was on. Careless.


Careless, she thought, or just... not ready?


The phone rang again. Cassandra dropped the gun onto the carpet of broken glass. Not now, she thought. I yelled. I cringed. I wasn`t ready.


She stood and walked to the phone, glass making crunching and scraping sounds under her sneakers. She picked it up mid-ring and closed her eyes.


"Hello?"


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posted by Chris Gladis | 6:48 AM
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