Gun Shy(48)

Yes, in the end, the only way to save my sister from the system is to go home with Pike to collect our useless fucking mother. It means a four-hour round trip to Gun Creek and then back to Reno - a trip we’ve already made once today. Time is against us — if Hannah’s situation worsens, CPS will step in and make her a ward of the state. They’ll decide what happens to our sister. And we’ll never see her again.

That cannot happen.

Pike speeds the entire way home. It’d be much easier if we were in the Mustang, but sadly we’re relegated to his piece of shit Honda. As soon as we arrive back home, Pike locks the car doors before I can open my door. I glare at him, a fist in his face and a growl in my throat. I am fucking homicidal. I will kill everyone I lay eyes on, family or not, to get my sister fixed and back home where I can keep her safe.

“Unlock the fucking door,” I hiss at my brother.

He stares at me with eyes that have seen the weight of the world and have been crushed beneath it. “You can’t kill her yet,” he says flatly. “Not until we get Hannah back.”

“I know that,” I fume. Yet. You can’t kill her yet. Not You can’t kill her.

“She’s not going to come with us,” Pike adds.

“I know that, too,” I reply. “You got a gun?”

I expect my brother to yell at me, to tell me I’m crazy. But he doesn’t. It’s been a long eight years while I’ve been locked up. He nods. “In my bedroom,” he says. “Underneath my bed. You want me to get it?”

I shake my head. “You keep the car running. Those social workers won’t wait around long. They’ll have Hannah in the system and shipped off to a fucking foster home if we’re not back in a hot minute.”

“Yeah, okay,” Pike mutters.

“The gun. Is it loaded?”

He nods.

“Well, all right then. If you see her running, fucking run her over and throw her in the trunk, will you?”

I burst into the trailer like a man possessed. If I were an action hero right now, I’d be Hulking out. But since I’m just a human, and an average one at that, I go for the gun. It’s exactly where Pike said. Thank you, little brother. A sawn-off shotgun - perfect. I’m almost sad that I need my mother alive right now. Blowing her head clean off with a double-barrel would be poetic at this point. I stand in the kitchen and holler.

“Mommy!” I yell mockingly. “Where are you?”

I hear movement in the main bedroom and stalk down the hallway like a fucking panther on the hunt. She’s there, sitting up in bed in her pajamas. A cigarette burns between her lips. She barely gives me a glance but doubles back to me when I pump the shotgun in one hand and aim it at her head.

“What-what are you doing, baby?” she slurs. Great. The bitch is high as a kite. I bite down on the insides of my cheeks. “Get up,” I spit.

She closes her eyes. I glance at the bedside table — sure enough, she’s got all the ingredients for a one-person smack party. There’s a syringe caked in dried blood, a length of rubber tubing, a dirty spoon, a lighter. It’s the middle of the afternoon on a weekday and my mother is high. Go figure.

I pour a glass of water over her head and she sputters to life. She can barely talk. It’s okay - we have a long drive ahead. It’s almost easier that she’s all soft and rubbery from the heroin. In the end, I simply grab a fistful of her dirty hair and drag her to the car.

I throw her into the backseat, triumphant when her head hits the opposite window. I hope it bleeds. I hope it fucking clots and kills her.



Three hours later, we arrive back at the hospital with one sober, pissed-as-fuck mother. Hannah’s vitals have crashed in the six hours we’ve been collecting Mom, and they’re preparing to perform an emergency c-section as we arrive. The doctor — who is highly suspicious of all three of us — reluctantly tells us that Hannah is sedated, but is allowed one person in the operating room with her. “I’ll go,” my mother volunteers. “My baby would want me to be there with her in case she wakes up.”

I smile at the doctor. “Give us a second,” I say, taking my mother’s elbow and steering her out of earshot.

“Let go of me,” she says. “Listen to your mother.”

I stare directly into her bloodshot eyes, well aware that my fingernails are digging into her arm hard enough to break the skin. “You listen to me, you useless cunt,” I whisper, in a voice loud enough for just her and I. “Hannah’s in here because of you. Her baby is going to die because of you. She’s pregnant with Hal Carter’s deformed baby because of you. Hannah’s father. Did. This. To. Her.”

All the blood drains away from her sunken cheeks; she starts to cry. “W-what?”

“I will be going into that surgery with her,” I say, towering over my mother. “And you will be sitting out here, thinking about how you should kill yourself when we get home.”

“Leo…” she whimpers.

“You’re not a mother,” I continue. “You’re a whore. A whore who should have been sterilized at birth.”

She slaps me across the face with all the feeble strength a skinny junkie’s arm can muster. And it stings; not so much physically, but deep in my chest. And then, she leans against the wall, her face in her hands, and begins to sob.