Writing Exercises

Just The Right Bullets

Sorry for disappearing! Life, as usual, happened. No promises for times on future updates, but here you go. This was sitting in a doc so I figured I'd put it here.

Todays prompt was from a song called "Just The Right Bullets" by Tom Waits, and one line of dialogue: I just died! He thought to himself. What happened? What do I do now?

I hope you enjoy!

~Blaze

As the bullet raced towards him, time seemed to slow and freeze around him. Everything was suddenly locked into place, the air still, people freeze-framed around him stuck in a variety of actions. Everyone he could see in his periphery were doing nothing. They were just watching. Why?

Just as quickly time decided to speed up. He felt nothing but a hard punch to the chest, followed by another further down, and then one right on target.

Dying felt sort of like flying on air. One moment he was flying back, and the next second there were simply no feelings. He was simply... floating over the dead.

As he stared blindly at his own corpse, his memories slowly came back. The fighting, the stupid, useless fighting between them that had led him and his opponents to this one place. Where suddenly he was standing before a crowd and being attacked on all sides by everyone and anyone.

And finally that was followed by a large call, an angry yell from his greatest opponent. He turned his head to see, abandoning the fight for a split second in front of him.

It was enough.

In that moment, his weapon was removed from his hand and he was on the floor gasping for breath. As he rose on unsteady feet, he saw the gun being cleanly leveled at him. The noise in the clearing had died down to an all-time low, where he and his opponent were the only ones fighting. And then the bullet had flown.

Now, as he stared at the chaos and fighting around him, he wondered for the first time in his existence: Why are we doing this? What will they do now? The winners of a fight, ready to rule over Nothing!

He stared empty-minded at his own blood pooling around his feet, accompanied by nothing but a lonely howl.