The Ghost in the Gun

The day the ghost came out with his gun lingers in my mind, and today, after many years of living with its haunting I have finally put pen to paper to dispel its memory...

I picked up the gun. Felt the cold steel in my palm, saw the flames of sulphur exploding from the barrel, the bullet racing toward its target.

Then He grabbed it from my hand dismantling it in seconds. The mechanics of the firearm strewn out on the desk before me, an explosion of letters on paper.

“Guns are so overused,” he said as he walks to the front of the classroom. ”guns and bombs, car chases and boat chases. They fire up your adrenaline like a cheap sweet that fades quickly. Dig deeper, find another tool to move your story forward. Go below the surface of the addiction to violence and vengeance, find its source and tug at that string. “

The bell rings and my classmates and I rise, gathering our books and note pads with the screeching of chairs on the linoleum floor, chatter everywhere as I walk toward the door.

He looks up at me with a clear gaze, sending a shiver down my spine. I look away and push through the crowd. As the sea of students flows around me in the hall between classes I pause to take in the scene.

Blood and bone, earthen homes, mud formed and with breath we are born to live as we choose to be.

A second bell, right on cue, compels the human sea to part and flow and pool in classroom after classroom after classroom.

I walk past each room, watching my fellow students living their high school dream. Goth and jock, prepster and nerd and everyone in between.

My feet are meant to follow the crowd, to enter and sit, to listen and obey. But the dismantled gun in my notebook has me walking a different way.

I can see the autumn wind rustling red and golden leaves as I approach the door, and exit into the crisp cool morning.

My car waits in the parking lot, but I pass it by cross the football field and disappear into the woods.

The woods, a tool, much like my dismantled gun, is given imagery that reflects fear and uncertainty in the minds of men.

Witches live in the woods. Witches and wolves, goblins and trolls, spiders and swamps.

Yet as my feet touch the earth beneath the limbs of towering giants, I feel a different story unfold. The story of connection, companionship, harmony in balance. From the tiniest ant to the tallest tree all together create a symphony that pulses with life and color and sound.

Chipmunks and squirrels gather nuts for the winter. Red and gold leaves fall to cover the roots of the trees, becoming energy that will feed the tree in spring.

The diversity of personality, wardrobe, movement and conversation between each member of the forest family mimics the forgotten essence of my classmates as they sit on their ass listening or not, learning or not. Most if not all completely unaware of the life that radiates all around me as I gaze up into the autumn sun.

Suddenly the stillness of the woods is destroyed with the explosions of much more than letters on paper. Someone has reassembled the gun in my notebook and with the slightest touch of his finger is blowing a hole in the heart of my world.

I rush back to the school to watch my classmates spilling out of back doors and windows propelled by the rapid fire explosions within.

Then all is silent. For a moment we wait and listen.

The leaves above me rustle in the wind.

Our breath, our life, the future. All hang in the balance.

A final shot rings through the air and we shudder. A convulsion that ripples around the school before being carried into the wind.

Today, the day the ghost came out of his gun, will echo into eternity.

I slip back into the woods, walk a few steps and collapse. My body emptying of the blood that flows through the halls. My heart racing with the agony of the memory of what I wrote in the letters of my pen.

I descend into the earth, I collapse into the sea of energy all around me and tears flow like never before.

The day the ghost came out with his gun, was the day I rose new from the earth. I gathered with my friends and we mourned the day the gun came out like a ghost.