Everyone

CLICK. 

Nothing. 

I feel the cool metal barrel leave my temple. 

I open my eyes to the blue glow of the screen. 

My sister applauds. 

My uncle grits his teeth. 

Step-dad forces a smile. 

Mom looks tired. 

Step-sis rolls the cylinder. Her turn now. 

Heavy breathing. She craps out. Lifts the barrel away and gives’er another spin. 

We all whoop and holler. 

“Cheater!” 

“She can’t do that!” 

She hedges again. I get impatient. She spins a third time. 

Step-dad’s knuckles turn white. 

Empty. 

That ends the round. We each slide in another slug and pick up again. 

I don’t know if we’re batshit or not, but the video chat, at least, makes it easier. 

With Ultra-4K definition and the fastest connection speed available, we can mourn in real time. And since we’re all apart for the holidays, Mom doesn’t have to worry about clean-up. 

This is the fourth year we’ve done this. Other families break a wish-bone, or mud-wrestle in the backyard. 

We Russian Roulette. 

Harold married my mom five years ago. Four years ago, he’s tellin’ us these wild stories about his drinkin’ buddies. One of them, a Russky, would bring out a .44 Magnum whenever he got shit-faced. 

You’ve piqued my interest. 

We drink. We get jazzed. We stretch the limits of the 2nd amendment.  

First one to croak, loses. 

In the four years we’ve done this, we lost a cousin, a great something-or-other, and a lonely co-worker. The second year we did this, we sobered up long enough to call it a draw. 

At this point, we got this. We each have our roulette wheel, our poison, and our funeral song picked out. 

Here’s the rundown: 

August - Me - Mint Juleps - .38 Special - Smashing Pumpkins; “Daydream” 

Shelby - Sister - Manhattan - .44 ACP - Guns N’ Roses; “Sweet Child O’ Mine” 

Harold - Step-Dad - Jaegerbomb - .41 Long Colt - Van Morrison; “Everyone” 

Carol - Mom - Cuba Libre - .357 Magnum - Dave Matthews Band; “Crash Into Me” 

Hunter - Uncle - Black and Tan - 7 mm - New Order; “Ceremony” 

Ash - Step-Sister - Irish Car Bomb - .45 Colt - Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy; “I See A Darkness” 

First time we did this, I sneezed; the gun slipped just as the hammer clicked. Uncle Hunter was on board the second he saw the smoking hole in the ceiling. Ash was right behind him. She witnessed one of her dad’s outings; this was nothing new to her. 

Everyone else had to be sweet-talked and liquored up. Took a firing-squad’s worth of shots to get everyone bombed enough to remember The Deer Hunter a little more ecstatically than they should. Everyone thinks they’re De Niro. I like to think the last thing that passes through their head, besides the bullet, is the realization that they were Christopher Walken all along.   

We got up to two rounds in the chamber before cousin Blair, I called him cousin Blair - Harold’s nephew - popped himself. 

Coroner chalked it up to misadventure. 

Six small pixelated faces, including mine, stare out at me.  

Click. 

Click. 

Click. 

Click. 

Click. 

Click. 

Empty. 

Empty. 

Empty. 

Empty. 

Empty. 

Empty. 

Ash drops a tumbler of cream and whiskey into a glass of Stout. 

Slide in another funeral rocket. Rocket from the Tombs. Rocket from the Crypt. Rocket through my Brain. Rocket to the Grave. Everyone stares. Did I make my brain words mouth words? 

Third round. Three slugs. We’ve never made it past three. With half the chambers full, your odds are 50/50. Factor in six players, and your odds of beating it are 1/64. 

Harold’s outta Red Bull and uses Monster as a substitute. He taps out the last few drops of Jager into a tumbler, filling it halfway.  

Shelby mixes a sloppy Manhattan - she’s almost out of rye and the ratio of vermouth is off. 

“He adored New York City. He idolised it all out of proportion.” 

She looks up and gives me a blank stare. 

I stuff cold cuts of turkey into my mouth. 

Turkey and lead if I’m lucky. 

The rotation order / chopping block: Harold, Mom, Hunter, Shelby, August, Ash. 

We don’t say anything. The video chat highlights a square when it picks up the sound of a click. 

Cock. 

Click. 

The hammer snaps on another empty chamber. 

The booze dries up. 

Uncle Hunter’s Black and Tan goes full-on apartheid. He’s just drinkin’ them seperate now, downin’ Guiness and Ale, occasionally swishing them together in his mouth. 

“I call it a ‘Helter Skelter’!” he burps out. 

“Catholics, rejoice! The Troubles are over!” Ash hails as she drops her last Irish Car Bomb. 

I sadly raise my empty Mint Julep glass and swish around the ice. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, the South will not rise again.” 

Blair didn’t know what hit him. 

Great Aunt Ada wimped out too late. 

Mom’s coworker Sharon was just begging for it. 

Harold doesn’t react. Eyes glazed. 

Mom doesn’t bat an eye. 

Hunter puts on a play in which he hunts himself. 

Shelby goes through the motions. 

I spit out chewed-up turkey chunks as I scream my brains out, aggressively throating the barrel.  

Ash quips, “What comes after death? ...A Necrophiliac.” That gets a few tipsy chuckles. 

This isn’t legendary, mate. It’s just fuckin’ astronomical. 

I hum “No Surprises” as I click the fourth suicide capsule into place. 

The shit-faced mugs behind the high-res pixels swim. A billion little cathode suns hum in the dark.  

Someone grovels something I didn’t catch. 

Harold taps his screen with his piece, “Highlander rules, babe. We keep going u...until th-there’s only one.” 

I’m gripped by the existential dread of sobering up. 

I clatter open the metal drawer of my desk and - Papa Legba be praised! - pull out a half-drained fifth of rum. 

I toss it back and roll my head forward in time to see the lower-left corner of the video chat, the barrel of a Long Colt pokes through the dark, lit by the glow of a screen.  

The snap of a full-metal rocket. 

… 

I stare at my socks. Mismatched. Black loafers match the black-tiled floor of the chapel. 

“Everyone” follows our procession.