A Dark Moment

***Trigger Warnings***

Graphic violence, firearms, offensive language

To the memories of John Knight and John Mansfield, you are missed by your children who have been sources of light in my times of darkness.

A Dark Moment

The sleek angular lines of the blue steel glinted in the dim afternoon light that shone through the tilted slats of the venetian blinds. Little flecks of dust danced in the blades of light. The cool steel of the gun felt good in Eric Taylor’s hand. He was sitting in his father’s study, and he was holding his dad’s pistol, a Heckler and Koch .40, and thinking about doing something…

Eric had come home from school that day noticeably upset, or rather it would have been noticed if anyone had been home to see it, but the house was empty, as usual. His mother was working, probably picking up an extra shift at the hospital, and his father, Vince, had passed away two months ago when he was struck by a drunk driver coming home from work one Friday night. He didn’t like to think about that night. He remembered the way his mother wailed in agony when the police officers told her what had happened. How she had slumped to the floor, almost catatonic, for several moments. It scared him and he didn’t want to think about that.

He and his mother were doing their best to pick up the pieces after he died, but at times, it felt like they were trying to push a boulder up Mount Everest. His heart hurt all the time and sometimes he felt like nothing would ever fill that hole inside him. He had seen his mom sobbing on a few occasions since the funeral, but she always gathered herself quickly when she noticed that he was around and tried to act as if nothing was wrong. She was trying so hard to be strong for him.

His mother, Brigh, was a nurse at the hospital and she picked up extra shifts to make ends meet, but that didn’t leave them much time together. Eric didn’t mind though. With two working parents he was no stranger to taking care of himself, but even so, there were a lot of times recently when he would have liked to have her around. Times like today. He rationalized that his mother was simply throwing herself into her work, and how could he fault her. She was his mother, after all, and she had lost the love of her life. How could anyone tell her how to act, least of all him.

The metal of the gun felt cool against his skin. He turned it over, back and forth. It looked formidable in his hand. “Experimental rounds,” he muttered and let out a soft giggle.

He started thinking about once when he and his father had gone to the local gun club to use their shooting range. His dad was a lifelong member of the club and brought Eric with him quite a bit. He remembered his father introducing him to everyone when he was just a little boy and how he had beamed with pride when he told them that he was going to teach his son all about guns and all the fun things they could do minding safety of course. Just like all the other little boys his age that had seen television shows like the A-Team or S.W.A.T. or cartoons like G.I. Joe, Eric wanted to see all the guns and try them out, but now, he suspected that his father really just enjoyed spending time with his little boy. Like a father who sits smiling contentedly while his son wears out the last of his energy at the park or is determined to catch one last fish. At that thought, he began to cry.

It was one of those trips to the range that started the whole experimental rounds inside joke between them. They were standing in stall seven, his father’s favorite, and they had just watched the man in stall eight let off what sounded like a canon. Eric could have sworn that the stalls rattled when he fired. They watched him empty the clip of eight shots, thankful that they kept their earmuffs pulled tight while he did so. Then the man turned to them with a queer look of satisfaction on his face. A look that said, That’s right.

“Experimental rounds,” the man said and gave them another exaggerated “that’s right” look. His dad turned to him with wide eyes and mouthed “okay” and they both shared a hearty chuckle. From that day until the day his father didn’t come home from work that Friday, they would burst out into hysterical laughter whenever one of them would say those words.

“I miss you so much, dad,” he muttered to the empty room and began to cry again. After a few moments, he wiped the tears away from his face with his free hand and he looked at the gun again in the other. The blackened blue steel looked even more formidable, somehow, perhaps even sinister.

The reason that Eric had come home so upset today was because of something that one of his teachers, Ms. Meek, had said. He hated her. She reminded him of his most hated teacher, his second grade teacher, Mrs. Emerdinger. God she was an old bitch, he thought. They were the kind of teachers that you might see in the nightmares of little girls and boys. The kind of teachers that made children dread going to school, and he hated going to school. On most days, he could deal with the morons and troglodytes that called him fatty or tubby or chubby or any number of humorous anecdotes cruel children can think of, but today, Ms. Meek had made a comment that made him so mad, infuriated him, that he was surprised that he was able to keep himself from punching her right in her bulbous, crooked nose.

She was stalking down the aisle handing out last night’s homework assignment near the end of class and she put his paper on his desk with a large red F in a red circle at the top. She stood over him, her hulking shape blocking out the fluorescent light that was above his desk. He could hear her wheezing breaths. “I expected better from you, Mr. Taylor.”

He glared at her with a look of pure fury. It said, Don’t you know that my father just died, you insensitive cow?

She glared right back at him as if she heard his silent and not to mention, rhetorical question. “We all have our problems. You just need to apply yourself, young man,” she said, smugly, and walked back to the front of the class.

Eric only sat in the chair without responding. He was fuming with rage. He could still hear her wheezing breaths when she got back to her desk. He thought about how good it would feel to smash her face into hamburger, and he even zoned out for a minute while he visualized it. It was very satisfying. Like when he used to imagine himself as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando or Bruce Willis in Die Hard and he was the hero protecting his school from terrorists. That was back when he liked his classmates. Now, he wouldn’t piss on most of them if they were on fire and he could think of a fair few that he wouldn’t mind seeing with a slug or two from his father’s gun…right between the eyes, he thought.

He looked down at the gun again and turned over several times in his hand. The blades of dancing flecks of dust had thinned into razors. He closed his eyes and fantasized momentarily about what it would feel like to squeeze the trigger and watch as the bullet tore through the flesh of Ms. Meek’s chest or through her head, spraying a deep red mist through the air. Little chunks of bone and brain sticking to the dry-erase board. Then he could turn the gun on some of the others. Bullies like Zane Peterson who always thought that he was better than everyone or Ray Sanchez who broke his nose and took his jacket in seventh grade. How satisfying it would be to see their collective brains splattered all over the wall next to Ms. Meek’s. A wide, sinister grin spread across his face at the thought. He wondered for a moment if he would actually be capable of doing it and he wasn’t the least bit surprised when he decided that the answer was yes. Eric looked at the gleaming gun again in his hand while his mind blazed with malignant thoughts of revenge.

Suddenly, and he didn’t know why the thought occurred to him just then, but he was thinking about something that his dad always used to tell him. It was a lesson from one of his father’s movie heroes, Rocky Balboa. His father loved the Rocky movies. They did many fun things together like going to baseball games, fishing trips, and the aquarium, but one of this dad’s favorite things to do with his little boy was watch a good movie. A truly inspiring character, his father used to tell him when they watched the movies together, what he suspected were his father’s favorite movie nights. Eric’s favorite was the one where he fought the Russian, but his father was always partial to the first two films. The quote he was thinking about wasn’t from the first series of films though, it was from one of the later installments, and his dad was no stranger to quoting Rocky in those tough moments, but this quote in particular became something of a motto for his father.

He could almost hear his father saying the words. “It’s not about how hard you hit,” his father had said. “It’s about how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” Words to live by, he thought, echoing his father’s own sentiment. Eric could hear his father’s voice now as the words repeated over and over in his mind, and he closed his eyes, a single tear rolled down his already tear stained cheek.

After a long moment, he put the gun back into its velvet lined wooden box and closed the lid. He slowly started walking back to the door of the study and he paused for a moment. Was it possible that his father had spoken to him somehow, he wondered. Perhaps he had. The darkness of this moment today let him know that there would probably be other dark moments, possibly many other dark moments. The fight with his inner demons was going to be a lifelong struggle, like a heroin addict or an alcoholic, the danger would always be there. It would be difficult, and he would need to take it one day at a time, but today he had succeeded. He would find strength in that. He was sure of it. One thing that he would never be sure of though was whether it was his father speaking to him from some aethereal plane or if it was his own mind prevailing that day. He never really believed in that stuff, but he had to suppose that anything was possible.

He resumed his walk towards the door but stopped again when he got there and turned around. “Thanks, dad. I love you,” he whispered and closed the door.