Non-fiction / 38 Special

       I let my hand drop to my side and heard a thump as the .38 hit the floor. That sure was loud for such a small pistol, I thought. Ok, I must have been in shock, because that had to be the most ludicrous thing I could be thinking just then. How could I be so calm, otherwise? There were plenty of other things I should be worrying about besides how much noise a gun hitting the floor made. Like maybe I should be concerned about how much noise there was when I took those four shots in the cramped interior of my apartment. I could still hear the gunfire echoing off the walls, could still feel the recoil vibrating in my wrist.
        Or maybe my first concern should be what I was going to do about the body that was bleeding all over my living room carpet. Clichéd thoughts of disposing of him in a rolled up carpet and wiping the gun for fingerprints before tossing it into the river ran through my head. But I didn’t have anything to cover up, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, maybe I should have called 9-1-1 when I first heard the rattling of the doorknob, but I was afraid I was just overreacting. Why would anyone want to break into my apartment? I didn’t really own anything that would be worth much on the streets, just a dinky little twenty-seven inch television set and an outdated VCR. I didn’t even have a DVD player or a stereo.
        But I was getting off track; I really needed to figure out what the proper thing to do next was. Should I call 9-1-1 now? What were the chances they would believe that I shot what I thought was an intruder? Especially when they found out that this “intruder” was on the job. And that he had let himself in with the key that I gave him last summer so he could stop and see me before he went home to his wife after work. My counselor was disappointed that he didn’t give it back to me two weeks ago when he told me that we were over.
        So add that into the account: here was a married cop, screwing some chick – and a crazy chick at that – for almost a year, and then when he broke it off, she shoots him dead in her living room. How ironic, shouldn’t all of this had happened in the bedroom? It’s where everything else happened that concerned him. I was pretty much screwed.
        And what would they say when they got copies of his phone records and saw that I had been calling repeatedly for the past two weeks? They would never believe that all I wanted was my key and for him to come and get all the crap that he left at my apartment, not the least of which was the .38. He had given it to me with the promise of getting me my conceal-carry permit, but when that never happened I had no use for the gun. I just wanted him to get everything that reminded me of him out of my sight.  But they would never believe me, I just knew it.
        The longer I waited to call this in, the worse it was going to look. And with my luck, one of the neighbors had probably already made a call, so if I didn’t pick up the phone and dial like right now, I was going away for a very long time. Shit, even if I did pick up the phone and dial right now, I was probably going away for a very long time. But what options did I have? I wasn’t about to turn the gun on myself. That would just be stupid, and besides, it would make me look even guiltier.
         I headed for the phone but stopped when I heard a gurgling sound coming from across the room. A gurgling? Could he still be alive? There was no way he was still alive. I shot him four times in the chest. And I knew I hit him all four times; that’s what he gets for taking me to the range all those times for practice. But I definitely heard something coming from his general direction.
        I walked over to where he lay, still bleeding all over my carpet. There goes my security deposit. Great, here come the ludicrous thoughts again. But if he were still bleeding, that meant that his heart was still pumping. So maybe if the paramedics got here in time, they could save his life and he could clear my name. He could tell them how he was sneaking into my apartment late at night and I was totally justified in defending myself. He could tell them that I didn’t know he had picked tonight to come and get his shit out of my apartment. He could tell them…
        I picked up the pistol and this time I made sure he was dead.