Shooting Yourself In The Foot

"So what's it gonna be little miss?..."

Aubrey's eyes darted from the counter and the wall, she was determined to walk out of here with something but she wasn't anticipating just how much something there'd be. The variety presented to her was almost making her panic a little, so many shaped and silhouettes, and the numbers, good god all those numbers!

She bit her lip and tried to rub a bit of the palm swear on her skirt, finally her eyes gravitated towards something. She didn't know much about this sort of stuff, but what she saw there on the wall was something so classic, so familiar to just about everyone on the planet, and something in her gut told her she couldn't go wrong with it.

"That one!" She yelled, pointing to the object.


Basil was taking care of some plants in his room when he heard a knock on the front door, and soon after another knock on his followed by Polly's voice.

"Basil, Aubrey is here to see you."

He walked over to the door and opened it.

It was Aubrey, but there was something about her demeanor Basil really didn't like, a kind of a naughty smirk on her face. Driving home this feeling was a long duffel bag she was clinging onto like it was a filled gold. Without warning Aubrey gave Basil a quick shove back into his room and practically jumped in after him, closing the door behind her after quickly checking to make sure Polly was somewhere else.

"H-hey Aubrey, what's going on..."

Aubrey stared at him silently as she slowly unzipped the bag, Basil just stood there in worried anticipation, trying (and failing) to keep his shivering to a minimum. With her bag unzipped Aubrey reached inside of it with both hands and then with a quick jerk of her shoulder let the bag fall to the floor, revealing the thing inside it.

"This is a hold up, that's what going on!" Aubrey said it playfully, but in Basil's mind she was gonna kill him.

Reacting almost entirely by instinct Basil threw his hands up and froze, shaking like he was standing soaking wet in a blizzard. Not hard to understand why considering he was staring down the barrel of a shotgun. His life began to flash before his eyes, and a little whisper of "I'm coming Mari, please don't be mad" sounded in the back of his mind, but Aubrey's face softened as she let the barrel drop down away from Basil's head.

"Pretty cool, huh?" She asked, admiring pump action, "the guy at the counter said it was a 'Maverick 88,' and here I thought Maverick would never be cool."

The images of Mari holding her hands out to accept Basil into her forgiving embrace faded away slightly and he slowly allowed his hands to drop to his sides, silently staring at the device in Aubrey's hand with it's stockless pistol grip and long magazine tube that reached the end of the barrel. It took a few second before the utter surrealness of the situation finally subsided long enough for him to say anything.

"A-Aubrey! What the hell! Why do you have something like that?"

Aubrey swung the gun up and rested the barrel on her shoulder, Basil taking very good notice of the fact that when she did so the muzzle spent an uncomfortably long time in his direction.

"Why not? I'm 18 now and my bat just ain't cutting it anymore, I needed something with a little more... Umf."

Basil momentarily ignored how concerning he found this answer to ask something else that seemed pressing to him.

"But why did you bring it into my house?"

Aubrey once again swung the gun down, holding it by her hip and pointing it in the general direction of whatever she saw in the room, again Basil noticing many instance of the gun moving in his direction for a few seconds.

"Because I want you to take pictures of me shooting it, already found out a good spot near the lake to do some shooting."

Basil's next words would have been refusal, but before he could get a word out Aubrey swung the gun at the camera (and past his head) and racked the pump. The sound made Basil nearly jump out of his skin, especially when he remembered that Polly might have heard that, and if she walked into the room to see Aubrey swing a shotgun around...

"Please don't swing it around like that," Basil quickly stammered out.

Aubrey just let the gun swing right down as she said, "relax, it's not even loaded."

It was as if the great saint Jeff Cooper himself heard that statement and decided punishment for such sacrilege was in order.

As the gun swung down in Aubrey very loose grip it's weight happened to press the trigger into her finger, and the very next second a deafening bang burst through the room. Basil actually screamed a little as he heard it, and if his ears weren't ringing he'd have heard Polly's frantic footsteps rushing up the stairs.

Aubrey on the other hand just started wide eyed at nothing.

"O-oh yeah, I did load a couple shells into it just to see how it was done, I forgot about that." It was bizarre how nonchalant that sounded, even panicked as he was Basil knew Aubrey was completely checked out for some reason.

The door swung open and Polly ran in, stopping dead in her tracks and taking in the scene she'd only seen in her nightmares. Basil was cowering in the corner, tears running down his face as he started at Aubrey in total terror. Aubrey just stood there silently, staring off into nothing as a shotgun limply swayed in her hand like sweat was the only thing keeping it from falling to the floor.

But most notably Polly saw a very ragged baseball sized hole in the floor, right where the front half of Aubrey's foot used to be.


"Aubrey, darling, are you okay?"

Aubrey's slowly opening eyes squinted against the bright white ceiling of a hospital room, looking around to see Polly standing to her left. Her face seeming to struggle between "I'm very worried about you" mode and "I'm very upset with you" mode. Basil was there too, he also seemed to be conflicted between whether he should be sympathetic or terrified.

"Whaaa?... What happened."

"You shot yourself and feinted! That's what happened! How could you bring a loaded gun into my house?" Polly screamed, the scolding part of her seemingly taking hold.

Aubrey took a moment to take the information in, finally a few of her memories came flooding back. She looked down at the bed sheets and wiggled her feet a little. Surely enough, there was a very noticeable lack of a bump in the bed sheet around here her right foot should have been.

"I'm sorry Aubrey." Polly said, seeming to revert back into her maternal instincts again, "the damage was... Bad, there wasn't anything in front of the ankle that could be salvaged. You'll have to get a prosthetic."

It took Aubrey a little bit to truly process it, her foot was actually gone now, most of it at least. Just like that, she was crippled for life, that part of her just lost forever...

Wait, speaking of lost...

"Polly, what..."

Polly put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in closer, a warm, comforting smile on her face. "I know Aubrey, I know, it's gonna be hard moving forward, but I want to you know that I'll help you through it however I can; and of course you have all your wonderful friends who I'm sure will do everything they can. Life is going to be different now, but we're not gonna make you figure it out on your own."

Man, Polly was so nice, but...

"Actually I was wondering what happened to the shotgun, is it still at your place?"

Polly's warm smile stayed on for only a few seconds before she realized Aubrey wasn't asking out of concern, but because she still wanted it, after that it instantly dropped into scolding mode again.

"When I called 911 I gave it to the police as evidence."

"God dammit, now I gotta buy another one."

Basil was utterly shocked when he saw Polly, a beacon of kindness and love, smack the side of Aubrey's head without any hesitation.

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Pub: 18 Dec 2021 10:29 UTC
Views: 342