0.001 of a Second or When I Almost (Accidentally) Shot Myself in the Head (An Excerpt)

I remember when the Glock 19’s trigger spring dunked the nine millimeter bullet’s primer into its blackpowder charge. A sharp metal clank rang out—the shock ignited a war inside the cartridge-brass casing, and expanding gases thrusted 115 grams of copper and lead on a journey through the four-inch-barrel’s rifling. I felt my heart—thump thump, thumping adrenaline as the shockwave struck my eardrums—it soured my arteries, the adrenaline, and drowned the muscle fibers at my finger tips with a nervous energy that weakened their grasp on the Glock 19’s textured grip. I felt my lungs decompress, as if someone twisted their windpipe’s valve wide open and sucked my reservoirs dry. In dire need, I drew in a sharp gulp of desert Idaho air. It tasted like sandpaper, and clawed at the back of my throat—scratching, scraping, abrading the soft tissue at the back of my throat. Agitation radiated my chest. The heat traveled through my blood, blistering every nerve ending as it branched up the capillaries under my forehead, nape, and shoulder blades—driven through that tenuous layer between me and the flesh that makes me, and not me—until the heat erupted at my skin. It stung every inch of its surface as the sweat oozed out like lava. Thump, thump, thumping my red-hot blood. Salty sweat beads percolated at my underarms. My brain burned at its synapses. The Glock 19 kicked its butt against my wrist, buckling my bones and compressing the cartilage between. It wiggled free of my left hand’s grasp. I fumbled and felt the weight of the gun fall. A flash burst at the muzzle—I furled my nose. My jaw clenched, and I raised my left cheek—I closed one eye to protect its retina—I remember that. A cloud of heat burned my left hand’s fingertips. The Glock 19’s ejection port flew wide open, and the spent cartridge-brass casing lobbed its way to freedom, whooshing past my nose. It whizzed across my open eye, shimmering above my globe like Halleys Comet whipping a dreadful tail. Smoke exuded from the casing’s open edge where the bullet and several grains of blackpowder used to wait, and it left an oily charcoal scent that crawled up my nostrils. And that’s when I felt the wake. The bullet departed its barrel at 1500 feet per second—in a second, it would shoot past five football fields, the roof height of the Empire State Building plus 250 feet, or the entire length of the Seawise Giant; at 1503 feet (it was the largest oil tanker ever constructed by man). By the time it would fall south, the lead engine would clear all those obstacles, twice. It shot past my scrunched up face, a finger-widths distance from my skin and skull at 1500 feet per second muzzle velocity. The disturbed air flustered the split-ends of my dirty-blonde hair and slapped my bare brown eye with dust. When the Glock 19 struck the ground, my brain resumed to think. Had the safety been off? That much should have been obvious but I remember asking it. Mom said Grandpa tuned his guns with hair-triggers. He was an award winning trap shooter when my mom was young, but as his years droned forward, arthritis inflamed the joints in his hand, and had stiffened his movements. It stifled him and his attitude. Grandfather complained of pain, and claimed to whoever was near enough to hear him, that it was my Kenyan President’s fault, because the democrats wanted gun reform, and therefor they were trying to take away my Grandfather’s guns. My index finger, as lanky as my 18 year old body was, must have felt like tidal-wave energy to the tuned Glock 19’s hair-trigger mechanism when I picked it up. And when I brought it close to my face, to scrutinize the weight, the steel, the textured grip, I must’ve rested my left index finger on the trigger. KABLAM. No one was home at redneck riviera that day. That’s what my mother had taken to calling my Grandfather’s acreage, which lied about twenty minutes outside of Buhl, Idaho. Twenty years ago, he had filled up his first gun safe, and never thought to purchase his second as his firearm collection ballooned. Instead, my grandfather had it in his head that the end of free and legal gun ownership was nigh—and with his rights threatened, had prepared Obama and his G-men a healthy serving of semi-automatic served lead should they decide to invade redneck riviera. He left guns strewn on the coffee table in the living room, two loaded AR-15s with two more loaded magazines should the firefight get out of hand. In the pool room, Grandfather had built a billiard table to carry his shotguns—too many to count, but I remember a 20 gauge with a stained oak grip and stock, and a black as night barrel. In his office, there was a desk with a Mac Pro whose browser was open to some conservative news website. Next to the mousepad was where I had found the Glock 19. After it had hit the ground—a white carpet—I remember that I couldn't hear, save for a high pitch scream in my left eardrum, and a buzz inside my brain. I had to get out of there. No one was home to hear the shot. I tripped my way through my grandfather’s office, past the open gun safe, into the pool room with the shotguns and that 20 gauge, fell my way up the stairs into the living room where I glimpsed the two AR-15s waiting for a firefight. I fumbled my way to the door, and clawed at the handle for what felt like an eternity, until I said fuck it and just kicked it open and fell forward into the hot grass. No one was home to hear the shot. Kneeling there, I felt a warmth in my chest and thought for a moment that I’d been hit, but it was nothing more than excess adrenaline flooding my flesh. Am I dead? Have I died? Am I dead? My thoughts devolved, starved. But then I felt that sun beating down on me, forcing my eyes into a squint, and the Idaho pollen funnel its way up my nostrils till I had to sneeze—and I was alive.