Wiped Out In One Shot

It's late and dark. I'm standing on a gravel parking lot in a crowd
of people. Most of them I don't know, their just strangers filling the
void. The people closest to me, at the edge of the lot, I feel as
though I do know. I can't place their shadowy faces with names but they
feel familiar and comforting in the sea of strangers. The murmers and
quiet voices merge together from all that have gathered, creating one
great jumble of slurred sound. The lot is surrounded by a tall
chainlink fence. Attached to the chain link fence is a piece of rotting
wood, supported by a post to create a sort of make shift bench. It's
about a foot across, three feet out from the fence and five feet above
the ground. On it is a manilla folder. I search the crowd as I try and
pull out words or phrases from the jumble of voices and noise. I see a
man near the manilla folder, a man I know. I can't tell who he is, his
back is towards me, but I sence that I know him. I know him well, I'm
sure of it. Before I can go to him I hear someone in the crowd say
something about some political party being wiped out in one shot. A man
appears on the other side of the fence. He has blonde hair and dirty
jeans. He leans against the fence and watches the crowd for a moment.
No one but myself has noticed him.


He has a gun, a gun with a long barrel and a light blue tip
on the end. He orders everyone to the ground. The crowd obeys with
cries of panic and horror. He shots a girl near the fence. And he
laughs. He shots another girl, a girl with a red shirt who sways back
and forth on her knees. He shots a few more girls. After each shooting
he laughs and the crowd grows more defeningly quiet. He pauses. No one
moves or breathes. The entire time I watch him, somehow I feel safe. I
feel that he can't see me, that I'm an unseen spectator. He looks over
the crowd, no one knows what will happen next.


His eyes lock on mine. I don't move or avert my stare. A
second passes and, in what feels like slow motion, he raises his gun.
He points it at me. I realize suddenly that I am in serious danger. In
one moment mind gripping, heartwrenching fear consumes me. I feel
something sail past my head, it pushes hot air on my face as it goes
by. He shot at me. The man in the dirty jeans just barely missed my
head with a bullet. My fenzied mind bends to absorb this as it happens
again. I feel another woosh of hot air, this time on my left arm. I
fall to the ground with a lifeless thus, like the other girls. Only I
am not dead, I am not even bleeding. This scares me most of all, if I'm
not bleeding he'll know I'm pretending to be dead. Then he'll shoot me
in the head, point blank. The last thing I'll ever see is his boots.



But he doesn't come to check. And he doesn't shoot anyone
else. I lay motionless, straining to breathe as shallowly as possible
to avoid detection. I lay like that for a long time. Too scarred to
move, to breathe. Almost too scarred to live. The crowd is so silent
that you'd think they were all dead. Eventually I look up. The man with
the gun is gone. The man with his back to me, the man I know, is gone
as well. So is the manilla folder.