• The gun rests quietly on a table polished thin. Its holed face stares at the new blood that came into the door; some muzzled down man with hair too straw like to be acceptable in the fringe fashion. His face is stormed rage fused with broad eyebrows staring at Charles in a loving, hating way. They both remain interlocked in a few short moments of silence where the only sound that comes is from the over-cleaned door being brushed by the wind outside of the apartment room. Charles remains stuck in a stare similar to car struck gazelles; his eyes throbbing pleas of innocence to the newcomer's own with no blinking allowed. A mouth once shut and unused was now scared into a frenzy of movement making his breaths sound like a rushed vehicle on the road. His head remains still but eyes turn over to that healthily scrubbed gun whose holster shines with the gun polish that was applied, and suddenly the muzzled man speaks:

    "Not thinking of going for it, are you?"

    Charles's mouth increases in frequency and his mind like his feet move back a step submissively while that raging stare moves forward, inch by every little inch. Charles and his loafers cannot compete with the black boots of his visitor, and they cower small feet within them, and suddenly the boots stop moving:

    "I thought so. You're not the kind of man who likes to get his hands bloody. Are you?"

    Those eyes pierce through Charles own as the hurricane to his Katrina, and his houses can't help but fall and total rational thought be lost as his once dominance gets thrown into the upcoming tides. His mouth is now in total animation; fear that chatters his teeth in a one ended conversation with the newcomer's own dead one, which becomes alive only for a few brief moments:

    "You'd ruin your perfectly accented wallpaper if you did. Or maybe the floor; we both know how much you love that floor."

    Steps continue to the point that the gun is just an accessory to its table and Charles is back in his room of lamps. All of them are turned off except for the one near last: a cute little Chinese dragon lamp made out of light plaster that shines beautifully in its own light with no stains or indentations on it. More arrows of words keep him a prey:

    "Still, that gun seems to be really out of place Charles. I wonder where a man like you could get one?"

    More and more steps put them both into that lamped room, where Charles's bed is covered in photos with each perfectly arranged to make out one giant photo of clashing colors and events. His clock near his bed says six thirty AM, though according to the muzzled man's watch, it was seven. They stop again with more arrows being fired:

    "Answer me Charles, where would you get something like that? From that dirty gunshop near Smiths? The gunshows?"

    Charles can only answer with a sterile choke in his throat as the visitor keeps moving and him stopping at the wall where he cringes, paralyzed from his captor's tidal eyes that wash his cities dry with water, whose words are now bullets into his chest:

    "No, those places are too dirty for the likes of you. You'd leave and get fidgety and probably go back home and complain on your phone to your friends about it..."

    His predator holds his tongue a little before pulling the trigger:

    "the dirtiness."

    Charles gasps and makes sounds similar to pig squeals while those boots on the ground keep going until they're right up next to the loafers, almost in a hugging way while their owners perform acts other than that. The muzzled man lashes out his arms like chains and bolts them to the walls surrounding Charles's head, where his grizzly ocean blue eyes look into those fearful brown. His words rain down like acid rain:

    "I bet you got it from one of your special friends up north. Bet you told them you were going hunting in the woods..."

    The captor's breaths are coming out slow, methodical like each one is being savored, while Charles chatters his mouth with no sound coming out, and more rain drops:

    "but answer me this, Charles. Why would you hunt with a handgun? That doesn't seem like you at all."

    His face moves slowly closer to Charles own, with both locked in a tight embrace of destruction; where buildings are falling down to violent storms and people becoming mad with lunacy while looking for a place to keep shelter, like Charles's mind. But, nothing can stop the storm's beard from tickling the center of his forehead, and those words that come out like poison over his eyes, dripping into his ears:

    "You're more a rifle man. You wouldn't settle for something small. It wouldn't reflect you: Mr. Charles of Charles Inc, a division of Charles enterprises. You're thinking big..."

    Their faces come into contact so close that their noses touch. Each looking into the others eyes, locked in one second of time before that poison brings them back into reality:

    "and I'm thinking small."

    It happens so fast that the tides even appear slow as a small flash and gleam appears from within the muzzled man's hand and the next moment Charles is not moving or breathing, but looking down. A serrated blade is stuck in his belly, just above the navel and shoved so far in that no blood leaks out until a few second later. Both of them still remain close, their faces still connected by the eyes and that poison of words become knives to Charles's mind:

    "I wish it weren't this way, Charles. I want you more than you think, but it seems that won't happen..."

    Charles can only remain still in his captor's grasp, his thoughts and fears slowly fading away little by little, but still there enough to feel the sharp pricks of more blades:

    "Things got out of my hands. Things that I couldn't control and well... you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time as they say."

    The man's dirty hands leave the blade and he moves back, slowly, almost sadly as his boots leave dirt on his carefully cleaned carpeting. Charles slowly drops to the ground where he bends to one side, still looking into those watery eyes of his captor, which start to tear up and one big one drops down like rain onto the floor yet the dirty face remains the same, and his voice still a powerful storm:

    "Don't think for one second I wanted it this way. It was inevitable. They did this to me, and now I can't turn back."

    He slowly moves towards the door, moving backwards but not turning around; his boots mourning the floor with crushed grass. The gun remains still on the table, pointing at the assailant whose about to leave through the unhinged door. Charles is but a bloodied accessory to the wall now in his eyes and he speaks his final sharp words:

    "Tell God that he was wrong about us. We were more than just... friends."

    The gun lays quietly on the table and points at nothing. Charles remains in his room with his eyes staring out at the door, blank with no cities salvageable. One of the photos blow off of his bed to reveal several faces attached. It was taken in what looks like the city with Charles half hugging a person next to him with the next half hugging another. The person in the middle is the muzzled man, but clean. His eyes look a happy blue and join together completely with Charles altruistic brown. The other mans, on the other hand, are a negative black. Other photos reveal shots of Charles and the muzzled man in intimate scenes. Some in parking lots, others in the apartment; some where Charles works.

    There are envelopes on the dresser that are filled with more of these photos and a letter remains still tucked underneath a lamp that displays a tsunami attacking a village, with these words scrawled:

    "I am on to you. I will be sending these photos and others to the papers and what do you think they'll do? Accept what you do and not take a care about it? No way, jose. They're all bible ********, and you're going to get ******** all the same. Just watch. I already ruined your other half.

    You're next."

    The dragon lamp's light starts to flicker, over and over. Each time it outlines the smile of the black eyed man's face... one that is covered in guilt, until it goes out completely; where only darkness and police sirens greet the next morning.