Max Connell

14th April 2011

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Target Practice.

The revolver’s wooden grip was soft and well worn, moulded over four years of handling to the contours of her hand. It reminded Jessie of her father; it felt like home.

Her father had given her the gun as a gift on her tenth birthday, it was little more than a child’s toy, nothing as powerful as her father’s own weapon, but her mother had protested non the less saying it was no tool for a young girl. It was tradition for the eldest son to be given a weapon when they came of age and Jessie her father must have known it would be two late if they were to wait for her brother William was old enough. Her father had been stern, and he had got his way.

So Jessie had kept the gun and her father had begun to train her in the ways of gunfighting.

She flexed her wrist, the gun shifted slightly in her relaxed grip, its reassuring heft rolling in her palm. She gently thumbed the hammer, feeling the cool metal against her skin, and focused on her target.

Her quarry was a rough scarecrow about fifteen feet away from her in the barren cornfield, the breeze ruffled its ragged clothes around its crooked frame.
the farm was mostly dead now, they still had enough to feed themselves and trade a little in Dodger’s Hollow for anything they needed, but things were getting worse year on year as the poison crept in. This had meant they were never hassled by bandits, there was no use in raiding a farm with nothing to steal, even after Jessie’s father had been called away. Jessie still trained, once the radiation finally claimed the farm they would have to move on and join the other families who travelled the wilderness looking for a new life.

She raised the revolver, pushing back the hammer as she did so, and aimed for the scarecrow’s head, a mutated and irregular pumpkin with a pantomime of a human face carved into its skin. With the gun now square to her target, Jessie squeezed the trigger.

The familiar crack of gunfire rang around the surrounding hills and the pumpkin exploded, revealing its black guts to be filled with maggots which cascaded down the scarecrow’s tattered shirt below.

The rush of firing the weapon died away and Jessie’s heartbeat and breathing calmed. She turned away from the scarecrow and walked slowly over to Horatio, the ageing horse she had adopted when her father had left. As she approached, Jessie noticed something strange and her heart began to race again. In the distance, towards the house, a column of black smoke began to rise.

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