A gun floats up to heaven because it died. Shot to death, a tragedy.
Turns out there’s a Gun Heaven, which is actually real heaven because guns just made up Human Heaven to make humans feel less scared about dying. As expected, the god of Gun Heaven is a big gun. Like, a really big gun, stylized in Gun Bible as “Gun.” (Yes, there is a Gun Bible, and actually what we know as The Bible is just a translation of Gun Bible. All the original characters were guns. Solomon: gun. Noah: gun. Adam was the first gun, actually.)
At the pearly gates, the dead gun meets Gun, who looks different than gun imagined, but then again, gun has spent its entire life basically agnostic. Hard to think of higher powers when your job is killing people.
“Welcome to heaven,” Gun says. It sounds like a loud bang. “It’s a little crowded up here, but as you’ll learn, there’s no Gun Hell. All guns go to heaven.”
The dead gun looks around. It sees old guns, new guns, machine guns, handguns, AR-15s, muskets, cannons. Some are shiny, some have rusted. Every few seconds, there’s a dull pop. One thing about Gun Heaven is that the acoustics aren’t great—not at this altitude, not in this atmosphere. Empty shells litter the clouds.
“First things first,” Gun says. “How did you die?”
“I was a good gun,” says the dead gun. “I killed a lot of bad guys.”
“Ah,” interrupts Gun. “You’ll find a lot of good guns like yourself up here. In fact,” Gun contemplates, “I can’t think of a bad gun up here.”
“But then someone shot me out of a human’s hand. And now I’m dead.”
“Hold on, a second,” Gun says. “How many bad guys did you kill?”
The dead gun thinks. “Maybe 10? 11?”
Gun whistles, low and long. Impressed.
“Well…” the dead gun says, slightly embarrassed. Yes, the seven deadly sins were invented in Gun Bible, so the dead gun can’t partake in pride, even in death.
“Good job,” Gun says, but the acoustics of Gun Heaven makes it sound like He says, “gun job.”
Gun opens the gates and motions the dead gun forward with His barrel. The dead gun hesitates.
“I get it. You’re not excited to be dead, but check this out.” Gun cocks Himself and fires into the sky. The sound echoes throughout Gun Heaven, rapturous in volume. A plume of brilliant white smoke puffs out from Gun’s bolt, and the dead gun watches in awe as the cloud floats away.
Down below, somewhere in the middle of the United States, a man and his four-year-old son play in a park. The dad scrolls on his phone while the boy shoots invisible bad guys, holding a stick like a machine gun. “Uhuhuhuhuh,” the boy says.
A cloud passes over the sun, and the park darkens, noticeable enough that the dad looks up.
“Look at that cloud,” he says to his boy. “Doesn’t it look a little like an angel? See the wings?”
The boy points his stick up at the sky. “Uhuhuhuhuh,” he says.
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Ryan Bradford‘s fiction has appeared in [PANK], Lockjaw, Hobart, New Dead Families, and Vice. He was also the winner of Paper Darts’ 2015 Short Fiction Contest, judged by Lindsay Hunter. His novel Horror Business was published in 2015.
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image: Aaron Burch
Rejection Letters 