The stench of gunpowder

(a short story about sticking to your guns)

This is a true story. This event, all names and people involved are real. Although my brother denied it this christmas.

When a was a runt, about 7 or 8 i imagine, i had a small cap gun on a key ring. It was a revolver. It didn’t work very well as it was one of those cheap as shit things you used to find in happy shopper/post offices or some shit. Although once it did work when i was aiming it at my cat merlin and it scared the shit out of him, probably sounded like when he got hit by that car and some of his skull came off a few years erlier, honestly, ive never seen a cat that scared, i felt like a right cunt.

Anyway, I had a box full of caps that didn’t work in the gun, hell, maybe they were the wrong type. So one saturday afternoon when my cousins Mart and Em were over, we went up to the shed in the field next to my house. I can’t remember much else except being around this work bench my dad used to fix shit. Matt, my brother produced some of the caps from his pocket and grabbed a hammer and nail, as the gun didn’t work he was planning on setting them off himself. I got nervous because i was a fucking wiener, I said “Don’t do that, it could explode and hit someone in the eye”. Obviously being older and attempting to be bad asses Matt and Mart told me to shut up and stop being stupid.

At this point, i should have walked away. I didn’t want to be a part of it, i was stood about 2-3 meters away watching to see the flash and smell the intoxicating smell of cap guns that i enjoyed so much. Matt slammed the hammer down on the nail into the cap, a piece of plastic flew off and hit me in the white of my right eye. I started balling like the chubby annoying twat i was. They told me to shut up because it wasn’t funny, then realized i wasn’t joking and told me it was ok, it just bounced off. Bullshit.

A couple years later i find out my right eye has this weird blood thing at the back of it… possibly natural but they had never seen it before. Since then, i’d like to say i didn’t play with guns but there was that incident last year with the revolver and the police. I’d like to say i stick to my guns and boycott things properly, but i never live up to my own expectations let alone follow through with what i say.

Moral of the story is,

Squint more.