Deep In the Heart of Darkness

It's been a few weeks since I've started my exile here in Texas. During that time I've exhausted my copy of Jorge Luis Borges Collected Fictions and Machiavelli's The Prince. My time here has been completely devoid of my precious stilts, my familiar comfortable bed and almost completely deprived of the Internet. I say almost because about once every two or three days I can get on for about fourty-minutes at a time. We are so far out in the country that the land itself seems to resist the influence of technology; we need a special wireless adaptor to connect to some distant unseen antenna. Even then I have to use Internet Explorer of all things. Youtube completely refuses to work and pages load like molasses slowly oozes out of it's jar or cup or whatever molasses comes in. To entertain myself during the rest of the day I've been watching The Jeremy Kyle Show. It's like Maury with all the paternity tests and lie detector tests, it's always great fun to look down on the guests and scorn their lack of honor.

If that's not terrible enough already, I've been forced to share a bedroom with my sister. This in itself is bad enough, but to add insult to injury there's a perfectly good bedroom right next door that I can't use. Why? Because mother actually converted it into a giant walk in closet. The actual closet inside this ad-hoc closet is devoted to her unmentionables, purses, evening gowns and swimsuits she tells me she's never even worn. So I can sleep easy in my inflatable matress knowing her alphabetized collection of shoes is nice and snuggly in their closet while I'm laying a mere few inches from my sister's luggage full of her unspeakables. To be fair, I'm probably not the easiest person to be in the same room with throughout the night. According to my sister I actually talk in my sleep. I can tell when it happens because she always wakes up with this horrified look in her eyes. What I actually say is a mystery, but apparently she's heard me mutter "Exterminate." a couple times. Two nights ago I said something like "It's okay, she has different genetics from us." I wish I knew what I was talking about because that sounds important.

So basically what's happened is that everything I love in life, my stilts, my computer, my solitude have all been stolen from me and the mental stress of it all is slowly bubbling to the surface. I don't know how much longer I can hold out. I feel like eventually I'll just snap and go on a crazed bullet riddled rampage.

Oh wait, too late.

That's right, yesterday Lou decided to bring some guns home for us to shoot. Because apparently now that I'm in Texas it's high time I learn how to shoot real guns instead of the pretend videogame kind. (Note to Mackdombles: See? I am not left-handed!)

I'm not really sure what was going on here, but I think I was doing my best imitation of a question mark. Either way that gun looks like it just walked out of Cry of Fear.

Even Mother fired a few rounds. And none of them were at me!

Here's a cartoon man after I shot him to death.



My sister requested that her face not appear on this post, probably because she kept telling us about how she doesn't like guns and that it went against her ethics. We did get her to relent long enough to shoot a single bullet though. But after that she ran and hid behind the truck. Still this should be enough to use against in incase she ever decides to join the Peace Corp or something. I'll just send these pictures to the right people and bam, no scholarship for her.

But then this happened...

...and suddenly things got a little too real for everyone.

Just so you know that's an assault rifle. I was shooting an assault rifle.

The funny thing is anyone who knows me in real life knows I am a naturally very twitchy, nervous little person. Mother's always complaining about how on-edge I am. She keeps saying that I have nothing to be afraid of, so why do I panic at every little thing? Anything people do, even the smallest most innocuous motion easily startles me. I can't count how many times by grandparents have almost given my a heart attack just by walking into the room. In fact, when we were all in school my friend's favorite hobby was making lunging motions at me and watching as I jump backwards several feet as I try to keep my heart from jumping out of my chest. Even I'm surprised at how jumpy I am sometimes, so you'd think the loud explosions and violent recoil of the guns would send me into some wild panic attack, right?

Bizarrely, no.

I'm sure this happens to a lot of people. But I went into some kind of zone. It's like time slowed down around me, for that brief moment I was able to forget myself. I became a frame, like a turret who's sole purpose was to keep the gun in place as it fired. The thunderous report of the rifle drowned out any other sound.

"Yes," I muttered to myself. "I am a killing machine."

The skies started to darken and I noticed little rain drops in the corner of my vision. There was thunder in the distance, as if it was trying to echo the sound of the rifle. It was just me out in the rain. Mainly because everyone else was cowering behind the truck.

When the dust settled and everyone started to realize that it probably isn't a good idea to give me a gun we all decided to go inside for cheeseburgers. Afterwords we were able to catch the ending of The Fifth Element. That night I laid in bed making gun sounds, shooting the ceiling as I drifted into some lovely, ultraviolent dreamland.