Cold. All he felt was cold.
Not the warmth he’d felt as a child when his father
pretended not to see him still awake, crouched in the shadows of his doorframe.
Watching as his deft hands slipped the old dirtied rag that hadn’t seen water since
the early 70’s up and through the machine. His father didn’t believe in bleach,
claiming the mixture of oil, grease, and that thick spit that formed in the
corners of your mouth while thinking of water when none was to be had was the
best way to clean a gun. The forever fingerprints that tarnished the gold
plating on the side contradicted that saying, but he was his father. Of course
it was right.
Nor the warmth the first time his father clapped him on the
back, hard, blood rushing to the ghost of a handprint, stinging, but a good
kind of stinging. The stinging of a man’s approval. The two of them had gone to
the range for the first time and he’d watched in reverence as his father spread
his legs shoulder width apart, aimed, and fired. He’d felt the heat of the
explosion in the chamber, seen the blast of fire at the tip of the gun,
followed the trail to the target where the led had hit, three millimeters short
of the bullseye. He tried to hide his jump at the foreignness of the sound but
his father had just chuckled, saying he’d get used to it.
No, it wasn’t the warmth of hot tears trailing down cheeks in
the back of a closet, forever asking why. Then the soft knock of his mother,
light overwhelming him, a black box being handed over, he’d have wanted him to
have it. That feeling of awe as his hands finally trailed over the old gold
plating, felt the click of the safety, cocking and un cocking every night. Then
repeating the holy ritual every night.
Instead he was cold. There was heat all around him. The
lingering pressure in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger from metal
kicking back. The warmth of the barrel from expelling light. Hot blood swarming
where metal molded flesh. The writhing back and forth of the microscopic hairs
in his ear drum, responding to the screams. The sun beating down upon the scene
leaving nowhere to hide. With heat surrounding him, all he felt was the cold.
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