Hesitations and Thoughts and Power

The gun feels light as a feather in my hand as I point it at the president, his eyebrows furrowing with fear and my lips curving up in delight. He had hurt me so many times. Too many times. He didn’t even know I existed, but that was the problem. He did things that changed people’s lives without asking for their permission. He didn’t listen to their qualms before destroying their livelihoods. He made his little repo lackeys collect everything they could find, even if the person was only missing one cent from their bill. They were hungry for power.

Now, they’re full, and I want to reclaim the power they stole from me to use for their own selfish desires. I’m reclaiming it after years of subordination and dehumanization. For my family. For my city. For me.

My finger curls around the trigger, putting pressure on it and pulling it back until I hear a little muffled voice. I turn around to face the door, but it’s closed. I look at the closet, but nobody has popped out. I turn back to the president, who is as puzzled as I am, but I ignore the voice and point the gun back at his head.

All of a sudden, the gun feels heavy. It feels as heavy as a thirty-pound bowling ball. I drop it on the ground accidentally, and it fires a bullet in the wall. I pick it back up and unload it, scared of what it will do next. I cradle it in my hands, trying to figure out what had happened. I look at the president and slowly begin to point the gun at him again, but I hesitate. This gun, the president’s gun, has killed so many people. This had been his gun since his military days when he would go into foreign countries and shoot innocent people in a bloodthirsty rage. It was all documented in his file, but of course, it got covered up. This gun has blood in its history; should I add to its list of conquests?

Am I going to be that kind of leader now? A power-hungry, bloodthirsty person who couldn’t care less about human life—only the feeling of money in my blood-stained hands? Will this become my gun now? Will it become an accomplice in my murders, will it become my right-hand man? I lower the gun, and the president lets out a sigh of relief.

However, without thinking, I raise the gun again and fire three rounds point-blank into his forehead. His eyes roll up into his head like golf balls, and he falls back onto the ground splattered in crusted-over blood.

How fitting. His own gun was the one who shot him. He falls onto the blood of others he had spilled, and his own blood mingles in with theirs. I apologize to the victims; to have their blood, the only evidence of them ever living on this earth, mix in with the tyrant that murdered them must be painful. But it must have been done. He was stealing air away from people worthy of life.

I unload the gun and throw it into the fireplace. I no longer need it. I walk over and sit in the president’s chair and pull up to his desk.

I had decided his fate; where shall I go now?