There once was a gun named Tony. He was a sweet little gun, a please-and-thank-you sort of gun. He lived with his parents in a gun shop on a highway leading away from a big city. His parents were an Uzi and a sniper rifle, but you would never have guessed that. Tony was tiny. A popgun is what customers called him. As in, Look at that darling little popgun! Perfect for a beginner! Or for a lady’s purse!
Five bullets fit in Tony, and he liked bullets because they were smooth and made him feel less hollow, but since Tony lived in a gun shop, he had only been loaded a few times, and only in the back, by the owner, who sighed as he did it, saying, “Your time will come. Just you wait. Someone will find a use for you.”
Tony sure hoped so. Someone found a use for his parents. They were sold to a man in a camouflage jacket who came into the shop looking for some “pinpoint accuracy and elephant-stopping power.” Which left Tony alone, hanging in a display case next to pink holsters and pellet guns. Pellets guns were the worst. They all had names like Petey and Zeke and they thought that fart jokes were the funniest things, and Tony didn’t like fart jokes at all. Not because they were rude, but because they were rarely funny.
One day, a little old lady came into the shop looking for something dainty, and the owner said, “I have just the thing!”
He pulled Tony from the display case and handed him to her. With a trembling hand, the woman raised Tony and pointed him at a mirror that hung on the other side of the shop. The sight of this hunched, frail little person clutching his handle made Tony afraid. What if she dropped him?
She didn’t. Instead, she said, “I’ll take it!” and slapped a wad of cash on the counter.
From that day on, Tony lived in the old lady’s nightstand, next to a ball of rubber bands, a pill bottle, and her dentures (when she wasn’t wearing them). It wasn’t an exciting life, but it did have one advantage to life in the gun shop: he was loaded.
“I’m very important,” Tony told the ball of rubber bands as often as he could.
“Then why are you in this drawer with us?” the ball responded.
“She’s waiting. She’ll use me. She has to.”
It was a long wait. Or what felt like a long wait. In the drawer, it was hard to tell day from night. Especially when the old lady stopped opening it to take out her dentures. Months passed. Possibly years.
If you lose track of time, you lose track of your mind. You don’t go crazy necessarily, but your thoughts wander. They go on permanent vacations. So when the drawer finally opened one day, and light finally poured in, Tony had forgotten what light was or even what he was.
A hand reached into the drawer and pulled him out. The hand had nineteen fingers, and each finger had six knuckles. It raised Tony and pointed him across the room at a dusty and cracked mirror.
In the reflection, there was a creature the type of which Tony had no words for. Maybe it was an animal he’d never seen before. Maybe it was an alien. Maybe it was something he once knew of, but had forgotten.
Whatever it was, it was weird and gross, with a bulbous head and knobby knees. It turned Tony away from the mirror and pointed him at another weird and gross creature that stood on the opposite side of the room. The two creatures babbled gibberish at each other as Tony felt his trigger being pressed down.
A click.
A spark.
Then a bullet rocketed through Tony and the second creature fell to the floor.
I remember, Tony thought. I’m a gun. A glorious gun! And this is what I’ve been meant to do all along!
The first creature shrieked and turned Tony around to look down his barrel. The creature’s five eyes were wide with curiosity. They say curiosity killed the cat. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter because, at the very least, it killed this thing. With the barrel pointed in the center of its five eyes, the creature pulled the trigger again and another bullet came rocketing from inside Tony.
I’m a gun! A spectacular gun!
As the creature crashed to the ground, Tony flew from its hand and landed on a rotting dresser next to a window. The two creatures lay dead on the floor. In the bed, there was a skeleton, presumably the remains of the old lady who had bought Tony so long ago. In the yard, which was a sea of giant weeds, sat some sort of spacecraft.
For eons, Tony remained in that room. He never saw a man, woman, or creature again. But soon the dresser collapsed from the rot, and the weeds in the yard became trees, and the house fell down around him. The spacecraft crumbled too, and then oceans rose and covered Tony and the rubble. And when the ocean dried up, lava melted Tony and he became part of whatever was left of the Earth.
His last thought was a happy thought. Sure, he was dying alone, but he had served a purpose. He had shot a bullet from his barrel. Two bullets, actually, and both had hit their targets.
He had done his part.