The Gunman

A dream I had a few weeks ago while napping after class.

9/10/08 1:40-3:40 p.m. The Gunmen

The weather was like it was today, cloudy, rainy, dismal… As I am walking out of the school, I hear sudden screaming and see a gun men pull out a pistol and start firing shots. I am quick to take cover behind a concrete column, but my back side is exposed at first and a round skims across my back, there is a distinct stinging feeling. I count 15 shots, and then know that he is out of bullets. At that moment, I sprint into what turns into the Cochran’s Crossing Shopping Center’s Kroger parking lot, and take cover behind a car where someone else nearby is already taking cover.

“Oh no!”,the person taking cover near me warns, and sure enough I see this gun men sprinting over towards our side of the parking lot. The gun men is tall and lanky, he has long brown hair with a mustache and goatee. He runs over to me and takes a few shots but this time I am moving back and forth to try and give him a harder target to hit, and the bullets once again whiz bye, missing their marks but not without any consequences, for I feel the sting of grazed bullets on my legs.
Now the gunman is running around as a professional killer would, and he is pumping off rounds in a sawed off shotgun and reloading the over-under while on the run. The gunman then climbs into a car with a girl that I recognize from my psychology class. She is not a voluntary passenger, but a hostage. He has her snuggled up on his lap like a really protective shield.
At this moment I am trying to text my father a 911 emergency message, but it all turns out to be gibberish for my phone is wet because I had been laying in a deep puddle. My efforts had not gone unnoticed though, for the gunmen gives me an evil stare as I am holding up my phone. I drop it into the puddle to try and clear up any misconceptions he would form about me calling for help, but still decides to drive over with his hostage and step outside to have a word with me. He paces back and forth…

“So, did you ever like to play halo?” the gunman persists.

“Well yes, I used to be pretty good.” I reply to the gunmen in a nice tone to hopefully calm him down a little bit, as if I really wanted to have a conversation with him. But his reply was not was I was hoping for…

“Well, I didn’t!” he touches back in a disgusting, snidely way. He pulls out his pistol and aims it up to his face… he takes his time with careful aim as I squirm back and forth splashing water from the puddle I am laying in up into the air for the slightest hope of distracting his precise aim. BAM! I am struck directly in the chest, and I flop over as to appear dead. The girl beside me is left unharmed as the gunmen drives away to the opposite side of the parking lot. What would appear to be a mortal wound is not at all, and even though the bullet wound appears right over my heart, I am left alive.

“Im not dead, just don’t look over here”, I whisper to her. She lets someone else know beside her that I am ok. As I lay there the quarrel is ended, I am not sure how but I jump up at once to celebrate… I run over to a very attractive girl, looking to be around the age of 18, near the back of the parking lot and pick her up with joy and kiss her. We keep kissing for a while and run over to where some other students are sitting on a curb.

“How old are you?” I question the attractive girl.

“Fourteen,” she replys.

“What!?” I let out in shock and disappointment. “But I.. Im 17… no sorry, 19” I quickly say back to her. Her look is of pain too as I reassure her that I will be here for her in a few years once she is a little older, and she walks away with her mother. I start to look down at my bullet wounds and joke with the students on the curb about how beaten up I am. And then right at that instant, I am awoken to a clip of Radiohead’s “You and Who’s Army” playing on my cell phone’s alarm clock, to find my self safe and gunshot-wound free laying in my bed.