Meet Sam,
My Ghost Gun

by Nan Wigington 

I want to stop the rats in the wall, so I build a ghost gun the color of pea soup. He’s like many of my projects – a mess. His frame bends. His barrel balloons. His trigger hiccups. He wants to be called Sam. He can’t shoot his way out of the back closet. I take him apart and throw him away.

“Not that easy to get rid of me,” Sam says from the bottom of the trash can. I hear him reassemble, load. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. So much ammunition. Where did it come from? I get out of there fast. Let the rats in the wall take care of themselves.

The ghost gun finds me. He sticks his nose in my back and shouts, “Hands up.”

Part of me is unafraid. Who is he kidding? He’s so damaged, probably couldn’t hit the broadside of a bar stool. I keep my hands on my drink, wink at the bartender like it’s all a joke, this thing I’ve made.

But little Sam means business. He fires, shoots out a light, two. People scream. Glass falls like bones. The bartender falls, too.

My ghost gun realizes what he’s done. The bartender had twelve children, was married to the mayor. Sam gets out of there fast. Let the bodies on the floor take care of themselves.

The police are helpless, can’t tell one pea-green gun from another. They hold a press conference, put out an APB, hang Sam’s picture on every telephone pole in all the worlds of every city.

Sam melts himself down, becomes a grocery bag, a soda bottle, floats on an island of trash in the South Pacific. He writes me postcards, “Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.”

I can read between the lines. Sam’s bored and betrayed and just wants to explode. I send him a passport, a plane ticket. He lands in a war zone. He sits on the top of a building, picks off an old woman, a child, a father, a brother. He even kills the marksman who holds him, loves him. From clear across the world, I hear Sam, “Not that easy to get rid of me.”

I’m in the same damn bar when he finds me. The lights have been replaced. So has the bartender. There are more people, more rats in the wall. When Sam sticks his nose in my back, he doesn’t say a word. He just shoots, takes me apart, piece by damaged piece.