First, I must again apologize for being so delayed on announcing the winner of last week’s assignment. It’s been a doozy of week, but hopefully the wait was worth it.

Just to refresh your memory, last week’s assignment was to portray someone making a hard decision. It’s amazing to me how many hard decisions we face in our lifetime, but perhaps one of the most difficult decisions pertain to life and death.

This week’s winner did a fantastic job of describing the situation the character is facing, without actually describing the scene. The piece took place entirely inside the character’s head, and he (or she) is faced with a rather extreme decision of pulling the trigger on a gun. James Lombardi, the author, really used the space given to slow time down to a near crawl as the character tries to make the decision.

It’s not clear if this person is about to kill someone else, or about to kill him/herself. I think it would’ve been good to know what the relationship is between the character and the victim. But hey, this is supposed to be fun, so we’re not looking for perfection here, just solid writing and story telling.

So, here it is for your reading enjoyment:

The thing is slick with sweat running down the barrel.

I never realized a gun could sweat.

The drops moved along the grooves in the metal as they raced to the pavement.  Another drop fell off my brow to join the other drops on the ground.  A swift shake of the head cleared my thoughts.

A gun doesn’t sweat.  You do because you’re a fucking wreck.

I tightened my grip on the gun.  It felt like it wanted to slip away.  I couldn’t help but think about what it wanted out of all of this.  Did it long to be used for what it was intended?  That brief but potent moment when it fulfills its function.  Or was the gun just a tool with no stake in the matter?  It simply went with the course set in front of it.

This isn’t the time for a philosophical debate.  Focus on the job.

My car wasn’t far.  It would be so easy to just get in and turn the ignition.  All of this would be gone.

This would be gone? Everything, every goddamn thing would be gone.

Each second that went by, bringing the moment nearer, seemed to last longer than the last. Each second gave even more time than the last to plot every tiny point along the line that led to this very place.  Looking back, point by point, I could see my options narrow.  At first they collapsed slowly.  Wide branches still open at the end. But every subsequent fork blocked more paths than the last.

My finger moved to the little switch on the side, sliding the safety off.  In the end, the decision was already made. The gun’s hammer poised to fall.

Time.

My legs were moving before I told them.

Tags: creative writing, writing contest winner

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Weekly Winners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.