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Be honest now – you all wanted to shoot somebody today.

Maybe it was your boyfriend, or that dude cut you up on the freeway. Maybe it was a politician – lord knows Lee Harvey set every one of us an example with that. Maybe it was your sister or your ma, your high school gym coach or that jerk in accounts screwed with your expenses four months running. Maybe it was that creep hit on your girl in the roadside, or the motorcycle cop followed you a steady thirty all the way home, or the drunk who threw up all over the steps of your building. Maybe it was Hannah Fucking Montana – seriously, who’d blame you for that?

The who don’t matter. All that matters is we both acknowledge the truth. You wanted to shoot somebody today, and you didn’t. For all those crazy reasons keep our half-assed excuse for society from drifting into anarchy and chaos. Morals and decency. Conscience and consequence. The law. You didn’t do it, and it’s chewing you up inside. But imagine for one moment you didn’t have to worry about any of that. Imagine you could shoot whomsoever you wanted, whenever the mood took you – without fear of arrest or reprisal or guilt. Imagine you could work out those frustrations in the moment, bask in the swell of satisfaction, gratification… justice…. then move on with your day. Be honest now…

The first time it happened was an accident. I hadn’t seen him and he shouldn’t have been out there. I arrived at the range a little after seven – I was first one there and Crebbins was still sweeping out the yard. He waved at me from across the compound as I set up. I was eager to try out the new Westley Richards 20 gauge I’d bought from an old-timer out on the Circle Hill Road. Guy was selling off a bunch of old shotguns – said his wife had died so he no longer had any need to keep them in the house. Most of them were crap, but this one… this one was a beauty. 28 inch barrels, nitro-reproofed, with a solid silver safety and red sandalwood stocks. I’d been careful not to go straight for it, gave some consideration to the junk before settling on my jewel. If the old man didn’t know what a peach he had here, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let on. In the end I got it for seventy-five, two cases of ammo thrown in. I could have sold it on for five times that, and maybe I might have done. I’m not sentimental about these things, a profit’s a profit. Turns out though, this particular gun was worth a whole lot more.

Like I said, I hadn’t even seen him. No way I could have known he was out there – why would he be? Why would anybody go wandering out across a live shooting range, seven in the morning, like he’s taking the air on Main Street? Turns out he was a retard – mentally deficient, like – dragged out into the country on a whim the night before by some reckless kids from Johnstown, then left to find his own way home. Poor fucker couldn’t read the signs, it was simple as that. He just saw the lodge in the distance and started out towards it. A little barbed wire and a few red dangers weren’t going to stop him - he was in a flap, and he wanted his ma. And he came climbing right up out of the ditch in front of the target area just as I pulled the trigger on my new Westley for the first ever time.

Those people you wanted to shoot today… how far d’you let that particular fantasy play out? Maybe you lined them up through the hood ornament on your car, maybe you tossed them what Mr. Raymond Chandler used to call The Gunman’s Salute – two fingers and a little click, back of your throat, followed by a mouth-filling boom. Maybe you actually imagined the blood – the stain of it, blotting out cross the fabric of their shirt, just like in the movies. You’d have to be pretty far gone to picture the insides of their skull blooming up like fungus from an old tree stump – the full-on ‘NC-17’ special effects – but hate’ll do that to you, and I don’t reckon we know the half of what goes on in most people’s heads but never gets out fully into the light. That’s probably for the best, you ask me, the world’s a scary enough place as is, don’t you think?

The retard’s head didn’t explode or nothing. This is a bird gun we’re talking here, and what would be the point splattering your duck all over the horizon? There’d be nothing left to eat, certainly nothing worth having your picture took with. So a nice, neat hole, no bigger than the end of your forefinger, and down he goes.

“Shit!” Lest you think I’m a callous… some kind of cold-blooded type… well, I’d never shot a man before, and while certainly I’d thought about it just as many times as you have, it’d never been without provocation. This was just some innocent kid, not even playing with the full deck, I had no truck with him. No, he sure as hell shouldn’t have been out there, but don’t for one second think I thought he deserved it.

Read the complete story here.