An excerpt: “There” - “The Loudest Gunshot You Will Ever Hear”
And now an excerpt from my novel, “There”:
“What you are about to go through is going to be a very complex series of unexpected universal experiences. The first being disbelief, the second curious amazement, and the third and final being total consciousness disconnection from the Essential Grid of the Universe and its corresponding self-generated tangents. What you are about to go through will top any quarter, mid and latter life crisis you could ever want. Nervous breakdowns and mental shakedowns will no longer seem like anything to you except petty excuses. You will not just feel like you have a hole in your head, as for a short amount of time, you will have a hole in your head.
“It will be the loudest gunshot you will ever hear in your life and the most improbable of results will occur…if everything goes correctly.”
“If everything goes correctly?” he paused.
“Yes,” the dragon said, tossing a metallic object to Alem. The human caught it and nearly dropped it due to its unexpected weight.
“But this is a gun. What am I suppose to do with it?”
“Again,” Lazarus walked over and placed the gun in his hand, “It will be the loudest gunshot,” he continued moving the firearm’s barrel to the human’s temple, “you will ever hear in your life.”
“What? Shoot myself in the head? I’ll kill myself!” he dropped the gun in disgust.
Orange and black chuckled, “Well, that…or you’ll survive. It all depends on you. If you survive, then you’ve completed the ultimate test anyone could ever run on you. Nice to, as the DSG just sent in these guns as your standard issue. Much more powerful than human’s projectile based weaponry could ever get.”
“Laz, I’m not going to survive a gunshot to the head.”
“I did,” he turned and pointed to a small scar on the back of his head. It was a small “X”, smaller than a quarter and would’ve gone unnoticed.
“I decided to do the rear where my head meets my neck. Brain stem is there and if you destroy that, it’s guaranteed to kill you. I wouldn’t do the temple, as the bullet might actually skim your skull, which’d mean you’d have to take another shot. Or you could Budd Dwyer it and put the gun in your mouth. If you do, you’d be wiser to aim it upwards so it travels through the rather important brain matter as opposed to holding it normally and tearing out the 90 percent you humans don’t use. Or you can place the gun just above your nose for a sure fire sinus unclogger.”
“So how the hell are you still here?”
“Because, a There user never has to die unnecessarily. The whole point is that everything is changeable. You have to figure out what you need to do to prevent an untimely death. If you do, then you really are a There user. You either get it right on the first try or die in your feeble attempt.”
“Have you ever seen anyone kill themselves?” he nervously asked.
“The survival rate is less than 5 percent (5%).”
“Shit…I have to do it?”
“Yes. Standard procedure really.”
“Gosh, what kind of a group would make shooting yourself in the head standard procedure?”
“Work Unions, College Acceptance Committees, Various Forms of Law Enforcement, Being a CEO of a Major American Company, Suicide Hotline Training, Scientology…anything you really don’t need a brain for.”
“Look, doesn’t this seem a bit extreme to you?”
“Your asking this to someone who has already gone through and survived the process.”
“5 percent (5%)?”
“Well, in the early days we didn’t exactly have the proper ways to determine if you really were a There user which is why the survival rate is so low. Then again methods of determination weren’t exactly as clean a killer as a gun is. After the introduction of the gun you could pinpoint where to maximize the damage in this test.”
“So what’d the rate jump up to?”
“Oh, it jumped significantly up to about 8 percent (8%).”
“Well, if this was government, that’s a rather successful increase.”
“Alright Alem, time to stop talking and start doing.”
“What if I don’t make it through this?”
“We’ll, I’ll obviously be executed for wasting a very important group’s time and resources. So look at it this way: if you die, I die along with you…you dick.”
“Man,” he said, picking up the gun, “This can not turn out well.”
“Hopefully it will.”
“Alright,” Alem put the gun to his head, “I’ll do it.”
“Godspeed to wherever you’ll wake up.”
“Oh,” he stalled slightly, “I’m pretty sure I’ll wake up here.”
A slight hesitation in pulling the trigger was only natural. Once he did, it really was the loudest gunshot he had ever heard.
The hammer came down on the firing cap of the bullet. The powder within burnt up instantaneously and the pressure built, sending the slug off down the barrel. As it did the rifling that began within the chamber itself began to spin the projectile into gyroscopic based stabilization. As it left the barrel, a bright muzzle flash followed by the expulsion of highly pressurized super heated gases greeted the skin on Alem’s head just in front of his ear with their singeing tendencies. The recoil from the shot helped to push back the slide, ejecting the spent cartridge. The ammunition was now in it’s primary flight phase, which lasted for a total distance of 1 inch.
The skin was easy to pierce through; the skull even more so. It traveled through the brain matter with the greatest of ease. Exiting on the other side of the head, slicing through the right optic nerve as it did, the small capsule of highly fortified carbon carbon sent blood and brain matter spouting out like a high velocity fountain on the other side of his head. As it now tumbled harmless out of control into the wall, a small puff of dirt came and went.
His body went limp and any brain function had most certainly ceased to exist.
PROTIP: Never shoot yourself in the head unless you are a registered There user. Trust me on this one, as I have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE.
Tags: books, dragon, fantasy, head wounds, humor, novel, satire, science fiction, writing
