I went out early, took my gun. I put on my fatigues, my helmet, my combat boots, slung a camouflage pack on my back, and walked outside. I lifted the rifle to my eye, shot the man my father had hired to mow the lawn. He threw up both hands, then clutched his heart. I watched him as he fell to the ground, gurgling, gasping for air. I had never spoken to him, I’d be durned if I ever knew his name.
This was in the days leading up to the first live televised war in history. This was the advent of the Golden Age of first person shooters, which would in turn become the advent of the Golden Age of school shootings.
I walked on, down to the end of the driveway, went down the hill to where the road ends abruptly. I kept right on walking, down the storm drain, crossed the creek, followed a trail through a thick of trees.
I came to a clearing where there were the ruins of an old mill, covered with graffiti. There were broken bottles and empty spray paint cans among the twisted roots and moss-covered stones. The days of going around barefoot were over in America.
Not far from the ruins, I sat in some tall grass where the trees parted underneath some power lines. I looked in my backpack, ate part of a sandwich with the crusts cut off. I sipped slowly from my canteen, trying to make the water last.
I had packed a bible and some comic books. The bible was for luck, l read the comic books. Then, I laid back in the grass, dreamed the electricity that crackled in the lines above my head gave me special powers.
I woke feeling bored.
I picked up my gun, shot a hole in the sky. To this day, when the world is dark, that hole is how the light gets in.
As I walked back up the hill to our house, I was hungry for dinner. The light of the world began to take on a cast of amber, or maybe rust. I came up the driveway, and I saw the mower sitting quiet, like it had run out of gas. The man was nowhere to be seen, and for the first time in my life, I had the notion that it was no great thing to be alive. I took off my helmet, ran my fingers through my hair. Soon, it would be time for a trim. Around me, the air started to move – I breathed it in deep, inhaling the many-colored wind, rank with the smell of fresh-cut grass, murder.