One hundred and twenty-five grains of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur...one hundred and twenty-five grains of pain. Twelve in the clip and one in the chamber, my “lucky thirteen.”
One time while I was counting my money, I turned down a panhandling junkie asking for a dollar and he keyed my car. There’s a bullet for him if we ever cross paths again. As a matter of fact, I have a bullet for everybody.
Mad Dog acts as stupid as his nickname by coming up wrong on the money he gives me at the end of the week. He’ll get a bullet as an example of how I conduct business.
Every time I come home for lunch, Yuri’s on my couch. He drinks my beer and sniffs around my woman. I got a bullet for each transgression.
Cash wants to push my territory all the way back to the police station, and I kiss the top four bullets before I leave home so that when I do catch up with him, I’ll send him off just right.
And don’t think for a second that I’m going to let that asshole keep parking in front of my driveway: I pay way too much to let that go on.
Because that’s how we settle things around here and it’s been that way as long as I can remember. I’d like to fight things out, but the strongest and fastest fists in the world can’t travel almost a thousand feet per second. So the first cat might get one punch in, but it more often than not will be his last.
Yeah, I got a bullet for just about everyone, but someone had two bullets for me. So I’ll just have to take care of my affairs in the next life.
Note: The title pertains to amount of gunpowder in some 9mm bullets and because I had problems meeting the word count limit with my previous submissions to Flashing in The Gutters, this was more haiku than short story, in terms of length.
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