Death Business

The gun feels heavy in my hand. The steel is cold and familiar. My aim will be true. This person, the one on his knees in front of me, deserves what is about to happen to him. It is his time. But how did I get here?

* * * *

For me it all started on the day I lost my brother. I froze as soon as I heard the gun being cocked. I knew there was no escape. You know these things, even when you’re young. We were trapped in the back of the shop, unable to get to the exit. The shopkeeper had his shotgun trained right on us, even though all we had stolen was a carton of milk. Then I heard the deafening BANG ring out.

I instinctively reached for my chest. I told myself out loud, ‘I’m alive!’ There was a moment of relief until I looked down at the floor and saw him lying there. I dropped to my knees next to my brother’s body. He was laid on his back, choking from the blood in his mouth and chest. I shouted at him, ‘James, stay with me! Stay with me! Don’t you dare close your eyes! Don’t you dare!’

It was no use and I knew it. His body seemed to relax and he exhaled his last breath. It was then that I felt the shotgun pointed at the back of my head. The shopkeeper was behind me. He was telling me not to move. I sensed that he was in shock because I could feel the muzzle of the gun trembling against my head. Just then two cops came crashing through the door and the shopkeeper raised his gun and shot them both without thinking.

He really was in shock. ‘No more ammo,’ I said to the man as I got to my feet to face him. He tried to hit me with the shotgun barrel but I yanked the thing from his hands and threw it across the shop floor. I was lost in a blind rage as I punched and kicked the man. When he fell to the floor, I pulled him up and pushed him through the shop window. I followed him out onto the sidewalk and continued punching and kicking until my hands were bloodied and bruised. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed his hand reach for a broken piece of glass. Before I knew what was happening, the man lunged at me and stabbed me in the chest. With that one blow he managed to puncture my lung which caused an unbelievable pain to rush through my whole body. I saw my life flash before my eyes just as the world turned to blackness.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed. There were doctors and nurses running back and forth attending to other patients. The noise was terrible and I was confused and in pain. I tried to sit up but my body was too beaten. The bandage on my chest had blood in the centre where they had stitched me up.

Later in the day the police arrived and told me that the shopkeeper had been arrested and charged with murdering my brother and two police officers who were found dead on the scene. He didn’t have a licence for his shotgun and that guaranteed him life in prison.

‘Your brother’s funeral is in two weeks,’ one of the officers told me. ‘Looks like you’ll make it there but you’re going to have to use a wheelchair.’

‘I’m not that bad,’ I told the man.

‘Son, I’m afraid that when you went down out front of the shop you suffered a second injury.’ He went on to tell me how they found a long shard of glass embedded in my spine.

‘You’re sort of paralysed, kid,’ said his partner.

‘Sort of paralysed! There’s no such thing as sort of paralysed!’ I shouted. ‘I can walk or I can’t walk, so what the hell do you mean?’

Both police officers fell silent. A doctor approached the bed and asked that the two men not aggravate my condition by raising my blood pressure.

‘I’ll raise my blood pressure if I want to,’ I said coldly. ‘It’s my body.’

The doctor looked at me sternly. ‘If you raise your blood pressure then you might rupture your lung and you could die this time.’

I took the doctor’s advice and calmed my nerves. The officers left me and I tried to get my head around everything that had happened.