I Have a Gun

From Shifti

I have a gun. That’s what I said when Jimmy asked me. I knew why he asked me, and I knew what was coming next. I didn’t want to know, but I did. Because that was the reason he had come here. He couldn’t do it himself, and I was his best friend. I needed to kill my best friend in order to save him.

Jimmy came to my door one weekend afternoon in late fall. He was wearing a coat, and his hands were in his sleeves. Something looked different about his face, although at the time I just thought it was distortion caused by his expression of fear. When I answered, he stepped inside before I even said anything. He started talking in an odd slurred voice that made me feel instantly uneasy.

“I’m fucked man.” There was something wrong with his belly. It was swelled and pressed against his jacket. I kept trying to keep my eyes on his face, but there was something wrong with that fucking stomach of his. Something that scared me for no real reason.

“I’ve been cursed by a witch. A real witch… LOOK AT MY FUCKING HANDS!” His voice, which had had relatively calm up until now had suddenly veered into hysterical territory. I knew why. On the ends of his arms were hooves. Deer hooves. I’d been hunting enough times to recognize them. He started sobbing, and didn’t stop for a while. I got him so sit down on the couch in the living room. I paced back and forth trying not to think about what I had seen. He started talking again, and that’s when he asked.

“Do you have a gun?”

I didn’t want to answer. There was only one direction that question could lead. One knew that witches couldn’t be killed with guns.

“I have a gun.”

He couldn’t do it himself because of the hooves, see. He needed me. So I grabbed my hunting rifle, some shells and rope. And a shovel. Oh god, it would have to be a big hole. It would have to fit the antlers that were growing out of his head. As we walked back into the woods, he talked some more. I think we were both crying as he told me that the witch had told him all about how the curse couldn’t be reversed, how his mind would be prisoner to the deer’s mind, how his friends might end up eating him. So finally we got to a spot in the middle of the woods. I hog tied him, and he thanked me. And I dug the hole. As I dug, we talked. I would have to tell his family. I would report his disappearance to the police. And then his muzzle grew too much for him to talk anymore. And then I finished digging. All I had left to do was to tighten the knots as his limbs grew thinner, and look into his eyes as they changed. The fear was still there, just different.

I have a gun. It’s sitting across my knees, and I’m looking at a buck that shouldn’t exist. It looks just like any one of the other deer that I have shot in my career as a hunter. The shot won’t be noticed. It’s hunting season after all.

Maybe the curse can be reversed. But I know in my heart it can’t be. I don’t even know why the witch cursed him. He never told me who she was. And now there’s only one thing left that I can do for him. And God, I think I’m too scared to do it.