Since I've decided to drop the Drive By idea, or at least put it indefinitely on hiatus, I might as well just post this. Gunpoint was a little emo rant I wrote and rewrote in August 2013. Drive By would have been my attempt to put it in a little more context, but I think it is also fine by itself.
<I've read this probably a dozen times already; I might insert audio recording here as well sometime?>
WC: 1,560
Gunpoint
There is a gun pointed at my head.
It’s a silver- reinforced mana gun: soul-eater division one. The body of the gun is a pale silver sheen with three black rings positioned every other inch along the barrel starting with one at the muzzle that juts upward to form the sight. Three aesthetic ridges on either side of the body lead down to a trigger guard studded with three small rubies on either side and a shiny red trigger. Black leather and spelled silk make a grip designed for only one hand. Poking out the back is a red hammer, with a minuscule hole drilled through the tip and a small knife charm hung there with a bit of rose gold wire.
It’s very fancy, but that doesn’t make it any less lethal. Past the aluminum casing is a pure platinum core that focuses magical energy siphoned into the gun through 20 tiny bullet- shaping crystals—each one handpicked diamond grade gems—and propels the newly minted bullet at its target at something near the speed of sound. Even the weakest shot from this gun will pierce through bone and tear through flesh, searing any living cell it doesn’t destroy on contact. But technology can fix all that.
That’s where the soul-eater comes in. About four of those tiny crystals inside the gun twist the bullet into a wicked dart that’ll seek out any unguarded shred of soul-stuff and latch parasitically on. The magical energy used to create the bullet consumes that bit of soul with itself, sending bits of the victim soul to reinforce the soul of its master. Lifesteal and penetration applied very neatly in one function. At this range though, the wielder hardly needs to put any energy into it to deal a killing blow. By the time I hear the gun fire, it’ll be too late to do anything but pray I’m going to heaven, wherever the hell that is.
One shot will end me.
But soul eater has its consequences. It’s magic after all, and if you lose control of that magic, it’ll consume you. You let yourself fall too far, and there isn’t tech this side of your dreams that can fix you up again.
I stare into the face of my adversary, wondering if they really know what it means to fall into that kind of madness. An oval, maybe oblong, face stares back at me, bored and expressionless at least, condescending and angry at best. Long black hair is combed back, pinned flat against her head, and tied in a low segmented ponytail that drapes to a small breast. Her figure is a long rectangle with a small roll of chubbiness around her belly and thighs, almost like she had (slightly deflated) life preservers hidden under her skin. Her upper lip is thin but the lower lip is full, and both are an off-brown color similar to the rest of her skin—she doesn’t have an ounce of makeup on to cover up her blemishes. Her nose is roughly triangular, though so rounded at the tip that it looks like someone stuck a marble between the oversized nostrils. Deep maroon almond-shaped eyes are framed by eyebrows that grow in patches like weeds: some areas thicker than others, sometimes so sparse I wonder what happened.
Actually, what I really wonder is what happened to myself; how did I get here? Why am I in this situation, with this person, of all miserable people, pointing death at my face?
I take a slow breath and try to re-evaluate. She’s not really fat. Under the black shirt-pants-coat outfit she always wears, she looks healthy sized. And her face isn’t really that ugly. Marred by a few acne scars, but not really that grotesque. (The weed-like brows can’t be observed any other way though.) Beauty is supposed to be in the eye of the beholder, and despite the gun, I try to see some beauty in her. She seems to be doing the same thing, searching the windows to my soul for some redeeming trait—or just surveying what her bullet’s going to consume.
Her gaze is level, but she can’t hide the emotion there. There’s cruelty behind those slits, but also guilt. Some insecurity that holds her back from pulling the trigger— that’s held her back until now. I can almost imagine the gears grinding in her head, calculating whether this handful of flesh and soul merits living.
Bitterness washes again over me and tears run down my face.
“Stop crying,” says the girl with the gun pointed at my head. “Why the fuck are you crying?”
When did I start crying? There’s not exactly anything else I can do though, and I keep sniveling, to my own disgust. I don’t want to die crying. I want to die surrounded by a family that doesn’t exist yet. I want to die with adrenaline flooded through my system. I want to die in a noble spectacle of greatness and sacrifice, not cornered uselessly so.
My would-be murderer drops her aim for a moment. Her expression is now devastated, remorseful and I realize she doesn’t want to kill me and I don’t want to die. But there’s the rule to be obeyed: eliminate all things bad and useless. Only the good and strong can remain.
I had doubted she knew what it was like to fall into madness, but now I turn away and inquire whether I know what it means.
My life these past few months has been a cycle: It starts with getting lucky. I feel the exhilaration of triumph or a job well done, an encounter well met, or a fun adventure with profitable return. I’m on a high, invincible, and can’t be brought down, no matter how miserable everyone else is or how hectic and unforgiving life is. But if a crucial strike doesn’t miss or a dismal failure doesn’t bring me down first, that enthusiasm drains away in a few days, leaving me a hallow husk with a painted smile and recorded laugh. A few days later, even the paint fades and the recording jams. I become—or maybe I always was—a miserable glob of meat sucking resources from the world and dumping pollutants behind.
I try to convince myself I’m okay and I’ll succeed eventually. I try to convince myself I’m in one of those dismal stages now and I’ll get over it with the next coming of the tide. I try to give myself a ghost of credit for being “moral” and for persevering even this long. Half of me argues that I’m not doing that badly, that I didn’t deserve this fate, that I’m not at the bottom of the pit. That half argues for more hope, for a brighter tomorrow, and a brilliant future where all my vague dreams of happiness come true. I believe it.
But only for the moment. The next instant the other half laughs. It scoffs at the naivety of the optimistic half. Because while I can hope, I also can’t help but look at those who don’t make my mistakes, those who never stop improving, those who never falter at the hurdle: those who never really fail. They’re nicer, smarter, happier, busier. More diligent, more talented, more skillful, more clever, more persuasive, more confident, more thoughtful—more. I find them everywhere: people who are just more than I am. More than this mediocre, spoiled pretense.
Another sob escapes me and the gun returns to my cerebrum. My consciousness retreats back from rational thought.
I feel mad, but not at anyone or anything. I’m mad at myself, for allowing myself to sink so far. Magic corruption? I’ve been trampled by another kind of madness, closer to home: personality destruction.
Telling someone is catharsis, but after the catharsis all I feel is this satisfied, fluttery feeling and all I want to do is sit at home and knit. Which is fine, except I’m not very good, and I only knit scarves, and all that has nothing to do with anything.
I go back to jealous thinking, and wonder if her life-preserver fat rolls help her float. I might laugh mordantly. But it wouldn’t matter. In this world, you can’t just float. It’s sink or swim. I feel a sense of despair clutching at my heart. I feel defeat settling in: I’m sinking.
As I metaphorically drown, I stare upwards, searching for a last ray of sunshine. All I see is water, a vast muddled expanse of it, bearing down on me, pushing me further down.
I wonder what could have been different if I had known a few years ago that I would feel this way—or, while we’re time traveling, let’s just go all the way back to whenever I first started being conscious of my existence. I wonder if it would have changed the way I worked and behaved, growing up. I wonder whether I was born to lose or if I screwed myself up somewhere along the road. I wonder if this is nature or nurture. It all seems to come down to that mystery. I wonder if knowing the answer to that—to all of those things— would make a difference.
I stop wondering and pull the trigger.
This is supposed to be from the point of view of Exyshixos Zqwiu, a vampire-demon I used in the roleplay Protect Against Nightcrawlers (PAN) on Gaia. PAN is a worldwide underground organization of people who have survived the mysterious nighttime attacks by creatures called the nightcrawlers. These survivors now put their abilities to use combating the nightcrawlers and protecting their cities.
Unfortunately, the thread the roleplay was in was taken down so I can't link to it :( It was my favorite roleplay I've ever been in. This depressing little self reflection is probably sometime before Exy joins the London PAN group.
Point one: It's long, an it's ranty. The tension of her having a gun to her head would probably be better done if the oneshot was a little shorter, and I did what I could to cut it. However, despite that, it still came out quite long. This is why: I had an idea for the structure of this to literally, in the writing, show Exy's descent to madness:
- The opening part is her description of the gun: clear, more or less objective description.
- The second part has her describing the person with the gun (herself, as we find out at the end). This is obviously biased, but it is still description, based on something she has before her.
- The third part is hazy, around where she starts talking about her life in these recent months. It's based on memories, and it's getting vaguer and more loaded with emotion.
- Finally, in the last few paragraphs, it's just despair and philosophical desperation talking. She makes a metaphor to drowning, and goes off into a world of muddled thoughts, bringing in the universal debate of nature vs nurture and retrospective wishing.
This was the structure I was hoping to write into the rant and I sacrificed the conciseness and power of the suicide threat for it. I'm really hoping someone else noticed this, or at least can see definitively what I'm talking about after glancing back at it. If not, please tell me how I could make this happen!
There's a bit of Ayn Rand in here too, against my liking. I think Ayn Rand (writer of Anthem) says at one point "I hope I go to Heaven, wherever the Hell that is" and Exy says that towards the end of her description on the gun.
So what do YOU think? So tell me what you think! I love feedback!
Thanks for reading!
