Great Balls of Fire
I’ve never shot a gun, but I’ve fought with brothers through plenty of wars and caused more battle scars than I’ve received. Roman candle wars were games of tag we used to play, only with a pyrotechnic element added to the mix. The memory of our most intense clash still glows fresh in my mind.
House sitting in high school is one of the best opportunities for my friends and I to engage in an age-old endeavor of conflicting dynamics. We wanted to be older, so we’d drink and party like older people do. Of course the more we drank, the more irresponsible and childish we acted, and still do to some extent, but we were too smart to worry about those things back then. One such opportunity happened to arise not only near the Fourth of July, but next to a spacious golf course as well.
House sitting in high school is one of the best opportunities for my friends and I to engage in an age-old endeavor of conflicting dynamics. We wanted to be older, so we’d drink and party like older people do. Of course the more we drank, the more irresponsible and childish we acted, and still do to some extent, but we were too smart to worry about those things back then. One such opportunity happened to arise not only near the Fourth of July, but next to a spacious golf course as well.
We all purchased our arsenals at the seasonal armories and some of us even took the liberty of purchasing illegally powerful weapons from Missouri. As dusk drew blankets of darkening blue over the sky, my comrades and I found the perfect battlefield. Gently rolling swells of carpet smooth green and jungle thick roughs formed a triangular valley large enough to allow mobility but small enough to prevent cowardly retreats. The valley was as concealing as any space trying to hide groups of kids shooting brightly colored balls of fire at each other at night could be.
Although our continued participation would suggest otherwise, we remembered valuable lessons that had been literally burnt into us during previous battles. Our armor consisted of clothes of enough quality to protect us but valueless enough we didn’t mind burning holes in them. Caps acted as helmets by keeping any stray hairs clear of our sights and more importantly, protecting our flammable locks from the airborne infernos spewed from our firearms. The rules of engagement comprised of a complicated protocol of us all facing each other, counting to three and sparking the ends of our gun barrels.
My friend Mungin confidently wielded such large , loud, dangerous roman candles that night, that the rest of us felt like a squadron armed with BB guns against Rambo toting a grenade launcher. After counting down, my fears of Chris annihilating us with his artillery shell-spitting boom stick quickly dissipated with my realization of Chris’s failure to light his handheld howitzer. Killer instinct swarmed inside my chest, expelling battle cry thunder and raining masculine aggression.
Mungin, all 6’7” and 300 lbs. of him, switched into survival mode, and began executing evasive maneuvers rarely seen from a man his size. Before you assume Mungin is too easy of a target, I should tell you his black skin is the optimal color for a nighttime operation, making him invisible with the exception of his eyes and teeth. Mungin’s retreat poured buckets of blood into the shark tank of my head. I chased him around the inclined walls of the valley, like a go-cart chasing a semi truck around a NASCAR track. As I aimed every shot a Mungin’s extra-large ass, I followed the green and red comet tails that produced camera-flash gaps in my vision. My exasperated lungs vacuumed gunpowder smoke while sweat mixed with dirt caked my face in gritty mud, like war paint mixed with sand.
All my confidence quickly drained from my body after I exhausted my ammo and I was filled just as quickly with a special brand of “Oh Shit!” fear juice when I saw Mungin, now with all the time in the world, lighting his roman candle of the apocalypse. Crackling, whistling, side-winding projectiles screamed pass me, searing me with the sparkles in their wake. Mungin’s massive bazooka rounds not only tore after me like rabid, wolverines, but they also exploded with different patterns and effects near the end of their flight. Intended for shooting high into the air and appreciating from a safe distance, these pretty missiles zipped by me on every side. Karma being the fickle and cruel mistress that she is, had dropped the floor from which she had just raised me up and all I could do was zig-zag like a gazelle on meth. In panicked cowardice, I ran over one of the surrounding boundaries and into a neighboring valley, logically making the connection between distance and safety.
Wrong. I caught the briefest glance of Mungin’s large, shadowy outline standing on the advantageous high ground. Doubled over and heaving to catch my breath, my brain didn’t make the crucial connection until an asteroid sizzled into the ground in my immediate vicinity. Its propelling burners faded and time stopped just long enough for my brain to catch up and comprehend the increasing danger of the time bomb next to me. My whole body sprawled out like a tree frog straining to reach a far leaf. In a scene that would’ve made John McClane proud, the fire mine erupted while my body was in mid air, releasing fire-bees that flew in all directions, humming over my facedown body. I celebrated my unscathed outcome by gasping triumphantly, the closest thing to a defiant laugh I could muster.
We all reveled in our amateur brutality by watching a recording of the entire conflict. Our exploits were illuminated by night-vision video, indistinguishable from clips of Desert Storm. Bright green orbs of energy levitated toward dark mossy figures. On the camera’s tiny side screen our blissfully ignorant disregard for our own wellbeing seemed a safe distance away.
No comments:
Post a Comment