Scars and Bullets

Red droplets slowly trickled down his arm as he methodically moved it back and forth against the wall. At the age of 47, Paul Curry was broken. He worked 6 days a week as a postal carrier, came home, and slowly fell asleep in front of the television every night. He had no wife, no drive, and no happiness. He repeated this monotony for 20 years. It was now 3:37 A.M. and he continued to paint the same spot on the kitchen wall with the crimson red color he had stumbled upon in his cellar for the past thirty minutes. He had awoken from his couch with more passion in his eyes than ever. The off-white room was the last straw. Nothing seemed to matter to him except the wall. As he made his 352nd pass over the same patch of plaster, he realized the wall would never be what he wanted it to be. There was little he could do except leave the atrocious scar on the wall and fall to his knees. He sobbed into his arms and shook violently, wanting nothing more than to rip the wall out of his house and watch his home crumble around him.

It was sometime the next morning on Sunday when Paul picked himself off the floor. The red slash on the wall still mocked him. He could not bring himself to paint over it with the original washed out color. It had strangely brought change, as unsettling as it was, to him. It was the only thing in his life that had changed in 20 years. He hated it but yearned for it at the same time. He quickly changed clothes and drove into town.

He had no idea what he was doing, but the red scar had burned itself into him and he had a ferocious drive inside of him controlling his every move. Paul found himself in the dilapidated parking lot of a small gun shop. Inside the store, he felt a strange excitement and power enter him that he had never felt before. He wanted to explore this feeling and see how far it would take him. The store owner had said something to Paul, most likely a half-hearted greeting he rehearsed for all his shoppers, but Paul paid him no interest. His attention had fallen totally on a slender black rifle with a beautifully shaped barrel protruding gracefully from the center. The owner saw Paul gazing at the gun and pulled him back to reality. “You lookin’ to get yourself a gun? This one’s a real beauty.” Nothing else he said clicked in Paul’s mind. He handed his card over and soon enough the rifle was in his car as he drove home.

The night was strangely quiet as Paul cleaned the gun for the third time in a row. He had never even fired a single bullet in his 47 years of life, but somehow it felt right holding the gun in his hands. He cocked the gun and aimed at the reflection in the mirror across the room. The sight in the mirror was frightening at first, but soon he realized he had the gun. He had the power for the first time. It was salvation in supremacy and he never wanted to let it escape.