john is into guns. it is all he talks about. he subscribes to gun magazines. the type that have pictures of guns in them. sometimes the magazines have free posters in them. the posters are of guns, sometimes naked girls with guns.
john says that he has two guns. a shotgun and a semi-automatic. he says that he keeps them hidden in the roof of his house. you have to be careful with guns like this around. he takes out polaroids of them.
john takes me out the back of nowhere. we shoot the fuck out of a red bucket with john’s shotgun.
john tells me about the time he took acid:
he was walking with his shotgun and the sky was just on fire. he saw a fox and he shot it. it was in two pieces. both halves still twitching. it looked like it was trying to run off in opposite directions. but it was dead. and the blood was so red and it seeped into the sunset. seeped into his soft head.
there are three shells left, there is no bucket. john takes a vegemite jar out of his pocket. he sits it on a rock and shoots it. now there is no jar. we walk over to where it once was. it is a pile of white powder.
‘look at that,’ he says, ‘it’s atomised. i killed it.’ he cannot get over the white powder that the jar has become. he sifts it through his fingers in rapture.
we stop by the roadside to buy hot jam doghnuts. john gets sugar all over his face and lap and shirt. he says, ‘this sugar looks like that vegemite jar i shot.’