Waking up to the steel barrel of a Ruger 357 staring deep down into my soul isn’t exactly a normal way to start the day. But I didn’t mind. Hell, it’s been a while since I’ve seen what the inside of a barrel looked like. Guns have never scared me.
“Well, good morning to you too”, I said as I reached over for my pack of Camel Menthols sitting on the coffee table next to the worn out sofa I was laying on. If today was going to be the day, I was determined to put action to the phrase ‘smoke-em if you got- em’ and enjoy one last cigarette before I spent eternity without one.
Most people would normally freak out in this type of situation. Begging for their life in an effort to prevent their soon to be killer to re consider his thoughts. Not me. Those thoughts never crossed my mind. With the type of life I’ve lived, I’ve long been awaiting this type of moment to arrive for quite some time.
As I chipped away at that cigarette, I took one last drag and blew a cloud of smoke onto his age eroded face. Full of years of lack of personal hygiene, his face really showed it. Pulling back on the lever, I could hear the 6 shot chamber rotating counter clockwise as it got into position.
“Any last words?” Of course he had to pick the most common phrase used in movies and books as his final statement before taking this waste of a life away from me. Closing my eyes awaiting the light that would soon come, my cockiness took over, as it normally did in situations like this. “Yeah,” I said as I began to get comfortable waiting on the grim reaper to grab ahold of me. “Get fucked.”
The shot rang out. Echoing off of the empty walls scattered throughout this piece of shit studio apartment I had been renting for the past few years. But the light never came. The firm grip of deaths angel never snatched me up. Opening my eyes to figure out what the fuck went wrong, I then realized I was the one holding the seventeen ounce Ruger firmly grasped between my fingers, and I had just awoken from a disappointing dream.