Clint Eastwood

I'm entering this factory and I don't know the name of it, but I know that it fills me with great dread, and at the same time great anger. There are guards everywhere, and so I become small for a time, unseen invisible. The revolver that had recently been in my pocket is in my hand now. I'm creeping down corridors, the floor beneath me is some sort of see through, just pieces of metal attached somehow, there are little holes in between shards that allow me to see the nothing that falls down into more nothing below.

There are guards at every turn, and my revolver is crying constantly.

Suddenly, I'm upon the employees of this god-forsaken factory. What are they doing here? I don't really care, but for some reason that question crosses my mind.

I move quickly towards the first one, a shorter man with red hair and bright eyes. I throw my revolver towards him and it catches him in the nape of the neck. He doubles over and his head jerks to look in my direction. His eyes are already full of tears, and the same anger I feel towards this factory. A kind of...'why' anger.

I don't bother looking into his eyes for more than half a second, because my anger is doubled by his. I grab the hair on the back of his head and pull it back, so his neck is exposed and his eyes are widened, and I punch him with my free right hand. I feel his teeth cracking, maybe shattering inside his mouth, and then I bring my fist, after pulling back, into his neck. I hit him straight in his Adam's apple, and he begins to choke. I throw him down and kick him once in the chest, and then rest my foot on his head, grinding into the broken metal beneath us.

The next person to feel my wrath has it easier. I pick up the revolver and I conduct a waltz with it, and it crescendoes and crescendoes into this climax, and then ends with him slumping over, down beside his either dead or dying co-worker.

There's a girl next, and I grab her hair the same way I grabbed the red-haired man, except I punch her in the chest, square in the heart, and she flies backwards. She's stumbling on the ground, trying to get up, and I kick her in the stomach. She falls down on her side, gasping for air, and when she finally gets it back, she's crying and I'm punching her, over and over, in the small of her back.

She's crying and crying and crying and crying...and crying.

I'm crying.

I'm apologizing, my face is sticky with tears, I'm crying more than her. She's whimpering softer, and I'm sobbing.

I rest my head in my hands and I just cry. She holds me close, and she kisses me. She sends me home.

* * *

I'm waiting in my house, and my three cousins pull up in this ugly red car. They want to go out for food. My face is still covered in the salty sediment of my tears.

They ask if there's a Pizza Hut around here. And, as though they're morons, I tell them that yes, there is one, and it's right beside the Dairy Queen.

We drive there, and Tim Horton's is more open than the others, but we still try Pizza Hut. We get in, and sitting at this table for two is a saxaphonist from my school and his girlfriend that I used to work with. They say hey, and ask what's wrong, and I walk away.

I leave my cousins because I need to be alone for a few minutes. I'm walking around this residential area that seems pretty quiet, and then Clint Eastwood is walking towards me, telling me to get my little punk ass in gear. I should be jogging he says. There's a war coming, he says, and you aren't ready. He tells me to do things, and I comply. 100 push ups. 60 jumping jacks. Jog eight miles one direction and run back. He's a fucker, that's what he is, but I have to listen. I mean, there's a war coming, isn't there? He tells me that I ain't ready for no battle.

He tells me I'm useless.

He tells me to keep running, to keep pushing, and jumping. He tells me I might survive a day.