The Book of Practical Kills

Chapter 1: Alive Once More

I don’t know how many stories start with someone waking up, but that’s what I did. Can’t remember a thing before that. I suppose that makes me cliché.

What wasn’t quite so cliché was the scene I woke up to. I was staring out at a city skyline from a bedroom wall that looked like it had been bulldozed through. Except we were much higher than that. I sat up from the bed I was lying in, rubbing up against another body.  A dead body.

Directly across from me on the bed was a man with a mustache and long hair. He looked fairly young, but I was unfamiliar with him. It probably didn’t help me recognize him with his brains splattered across the wall behind his head.

My body was trembling. I was confused. My eyes traced the blood to the floor, where an old gun lied on the floor. Despite my memory situation, I managed to recognize it as a classic Smith and Weston revolver, model seventeen. Carbon steel frame and cylinder. Double action. Six rounds. Point twenty two caliber bullets. Blue finish.

Every detail of it was in my head. I couldn’t sort out why. But it was as if it were calling to me. Telling me to pick it up.

That’s when he caught my eye. The other man in the room with me. He was so still I hadn’t even noticed him. He just sat there, head in hands, waiting for someone. Probably me.

“Back from the dead again, I see,” he said. His voice was deep and rich, and it rung in my ears as if I had been hearing him my whole life. He stood up. A dark red suit. A black tie. Wire framed glasses. Shaggy black hair. And a faint smile that made my instincts scream, Run.

But his eyes, oh his eyes. They played tricks on me. Light flickering in his eyes, they soothed me, told me the opposite of what my instincts were begging me to obey. They paralyzed me there, on the bed, as I was halfway stretched out for the gun on the floor.

“Go ahead,” he calmly told me, “pick it up.”

My eyes stayed on him. The gun felt light in my hands. Natural. Like I knew how to use it. I did know how to use it; the instructions were in my head. I spun the barrel. One bullet.

“You can probably keep this one,” he said, “He looks handsome.”

What was he talking about? ‘He’ who? The only other ‘he’ in the room was dead.

But he was looking at me when he said it.

“… Me?”  I asked. The sound of my own voice surprised me. It cracked as I spoke, possibly because I couldn’t remember what I sounded like. But it was fairly youthful.

The suited man tilted his head and stretched out his smile, clearly amused. “So you did lose your memories when you did it. It makes sense. You brain does get pretty scrambled after you do that to yourself.” He nodded towards the dead body.

I couldn’t understand him. What the hell was he implying? I couldn’t have done what that guy had. I’d be dead.

“You look confused,” said the man in the suit, “Let me catch you up.” He straightened his tie up and cleared his throat. “My name is Guy. I am the Dark Horse of Straight City’s Ammunition Plan, and that pretty little gun you have in your hands is a part of the most notorious government war plan to have ever existed, Project Bullet.”

I could only stare at him. He stared back at me in anticipation.

“… Any of this ringing a bell yet?” he asked. I shook my head.

“Fine,” he sighed, “Allow me to explain. The Ammunition Plan was a plan created by the government to import and export ammunition of any kind. Prices for a single bullet skyrocketed to impeccable heights. Arms of any kind could be sold at tremendously high prices at collection posts created by the government around the nation. Not such a big deal, right? It wasn’t. Until China became involved. They wanted to create a law similar to our own. Why? No one had any idea. It all seemed so ridiculous. Where did our government get all this money to buy our guns back from? Why did our government want all our guns back so badly? Had everyone gone crazy?

“Before we realized the answer, it was too late. Businesses started collapsing. Our economy was sucked dry and we didn’t even know why. Where had all our money gone? Into government hands. We had no choice but to sell our weapons for ends meet. Some still resisted. Those people nearly starved. A lot tried to move.

“But it was the same in every country. We hadn’t even noticed it, but they all had dried up wells. They were selling their guns to our government. We were sending out exports, and all our imports were guns from other countries. Somehow, some way, every penny on the face of the earth kept coming back to us. Our government was corrupt. It wanted complete control. And as messed up as it sounds, the only way our government could infect us was to cure us. Because of them, there is no more war. It was eliminated. Why, you ask? The reason is that fun little tinker toy you’re handling, right there.”

I eyed it. It seemed like a normal gun to me. How ironic is it that a gun was created to prevent war?

Guy put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you remember my plan?” he asked. I shook my head. He knelt down and looked into my eye, emitting all the darkness from his soul into mine. “There are two others,” he whispered, “that can do incredible things, just like that gun. That does more than just kill. They will turn the tides of leadership forever. I own the flagship company for Arms Collection. Little does our Congress know I do more than just ‘collect.’ With that gun and the other two in my possession, the world will get on bended knee before me.”

My fingers gripped tighter and tighter around the gun with his every word, until I was squeezing it so hard the veins on my wrist popped.  Guy laughed.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’m not going to take the gun from you. Not yet. You and I, we settle things last.”

My head was spinning. Was he declaring me his enemy?

“Yeah,” he sighed, “One of these days, very soon, I’ll have the other two guns from Project Bullet, you know? Then you and I will have an old western shoot out. See who draws faster. Just like that.” Not even a moment after saying that, he broke out in hysterical laughter.

My nerves shot up. Without thinking I rose from the bed and cocked back the hammer on the gun. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

His laughter receded gradually after hearing my question, and he wiped a genuine tear from his eye. “I was just being funny.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, all I can imagine you doing in a western shoot out is drawing the gun, putting it under your chin and pulling the trigger before I do.” My hand shot up and pointed the barrel of the gun in his face. He just sat there, looking into it. His smile never went away.

I could see blood. Meat. Bone. A crescendo of screams in my head. All just from looking at him. All in his deceitful, quiet eyes. My stomach turned over.

Slowly, he got up, carefully moving the gun from his face. He was inches away from mine. The evil of his presence singed me internally.

“Do you wanna know who that guy is over there?” he asked. I didn’t want to know the answer. Voices in my head screamed not to listen. Not to pay him any attention.

“He was you.”

He walked over to the wide open hole in the wall, and stretched his arms out as if he would embrace the whole city.

“Straight City,” he announced to the world, “The most crooked rats nest in the entire New U.S. Den of the Devil himself. Welcome back, Nero. Welcome back.”