The Glass Gun

At the other end of the tunnel there was a voice-but no face. Moonbeams barred on either side, casting forth from the old foggy windows. It was the only light source illuminating the narrow corridor, that is until there was a quick flick of a lighter and lengthy drag and the tip of a cigarette
fell to the dusty floor. It was softly dotting on the floor-gold and orange and then the eclipse of a boot smothered it.

Did you not think...I’d not be waiting here?

The figure of one of the hallway’s occupants entered into a bridge of moonlight. He was tall and broad and particularly stiff jointed, but young. His blonde hair, which had been parted to one side, fanned in dirty strands as if two cowlicks had caused it to stand acutely on end. A black suit, scuffed dull boots, vein ridden hands-shaking and thumbing at his thighs.

I knew, I knew.

The other man entered the light as well, tossing the rest of the cigarette at his feet. He was similarly tall and lengthy, however his hair raked down like thick black branches, over his shoulders and back someways until it became almost one with his black overcoat. His eyes were glass-rimmed and tinted champagne. And his hands were tightly gloved burgundy leather, his finger running the thin edge of his trigger guard.

Twelve years blue now. Cold and tired and pale with illness. You enter my home in my final days, empty handed and weak. Nothing to speak of between us-its all too clear to be said aloud.

The blonde man calmed as he listened to the voice slip off the walls.

Understand, beginning where we were, what world would wrap we wretched souls now. Have-I- and you, not told them-this mirror vengeance-would in the end bring them crashing down? I can think no different of where we are right now. Angel on my right, the devil on my left both calling for judgment upon we the lost.

Both men grinned. A bead of sweat fell down the blonde man’s brow onto his eyelid and again onto his bottom lip. The other man thumbed the revolvers trigger guard slowly, but he was no longer calm.

Betweenst the bars of moonlight and midnight haze the small silver glimpse of a bullet ran its way to the blonde man. It plunged its way just below the rib cage, chewing through the warm pink organs, rendering them useless at once and opening them wide. The man gripped his wound with a motherlike tenderness and a fatherlike protection.
Painted red he buckled slightly in awkward pain and then a moment later was level and stiff once more.

You see, the devil has won. There is death for you alone in this most sacred channel. You and I have always been trapped in this plaguing moonlight, bars of pale majesty policed by fate and destiny alike.
As the last few words came from the black haired, grinning man, the hallway moaned, perhaps just to remind them both that this was the apparent truth.

At angel’s end the wings are as dew in the morning light. I fall upon this world once more onto the ferns and leaves and sunflowers...and you too shall fallow in this...

The blonde man hunched and stood-his arm hard out. There was a sharp refraction of light as the moonbeam entered the body of the glass gun to which the man was holding. Had the moon not danced through its many transparent layers-down the fragile barrel and through the many chambers, the gun would have had no clear definition.
It was a ghostly thing, intricately carved into a fine lace of swirls and arcs and rings. The hammer had been tipped with a white flint and upon its strike it forced the round out with such tremendous strength that the gun shattered at once.

It was as an ice doll dropped to the floor, bursting into thousands of shards. The momentum of the shot had wet the pieces backward and at once the man was torn to ribbons.

That was...it was, the glass pistol?

It was the overture-

But now, you shall die as well

For you and I there was nothing else

The men fell through the prison bars that had held the hallway segregated and onto the smokey floor
where they lay silently. The dawn spilled in through the windows and the hallway was vibrantly lit in the finest hues of a new morning, and they were both blue and pale and dead.

This is the end of us both.

Our life, our struggle, the pistol

All are gone.


Fin