Unforeseeable

            It looked like another gorgeous day in the city of Armstrong as the sun began to rise, casting a brilliant red glow throughout the dark sky. Soon, the entire sky was awash in colors; the moon and stars faded away to make room for the bright glow of the sun and the deeply orange-colored clouds lazily making their way through the sky.

            Throughout the city’s perfectly-kept suburbs, parents rose eagerly to prepare for their day. One family in particular, the Gunn family, was especially rosy on this day. Winchester Gunn arose promptly at six AM, followed shortly after by his wife Pistol. They rolled out of their soft bed and stood in front of an enormous window in their master bedroom, gazing at the horizon as the sun’s rays illuminated their back yard. The rosy glow spread over the .357 swing set Winchester had recently set up for the children and the rifle slide that he had spent the past few weeks building from scratch.

He was incredibly proud of this addition to his yard for his children; it took him the longest time to actually make it look like an oversized Remmington sticking out from his yard. However, the children loved sliding down it, and it was still the talk of the neighborhood.

Winchester showered, shaved, and dressed himself in his favorite suit for work, the one where each button was crafted to look like a machine gun, while Pistol slipped into an aerodynamic silver dress and put in her favorite pair of revolver earrings. They headed downstairs and began getting ready for the day.

Inside the rooms of their children, Tommy and Bebe, two alarms went off, the sounds of gunfire echoing from their alarm clocks. Tommy and Bebe turned their alarms off and jumped out of bed, quickly dressing for their day. This was an extra exciting day for each of them; not only was it their first day of school, but it was Tommy’s birthday as well.

Tommy pulled his favorite outfit from the closet, the one that made him look like John Wayne, complete with the holster for his waist. He slipped a gun controller from his Playstation 2 into it, and headed downstairs. Bebe, being older, put on her best black vinyl outfit, black trenchcoat, slicked her short black hair behind her head, and calmly put on a pair of intimidating sunglasses. She blew a kiss to the enormous poster of Keanu Reeves from The Matrix that hung near her bed, and she as well went downstairs.

In the kitchen, Pistol was busy attending to the family’s breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, as well as feeding the baby, Raymond. Winchester read over the Armstrong Shot, the local newspaper, interestedly reviewing the grand opening of a new rifle store downtown. He made plans to look into it after he was done with his work at the mounted machine gun dealership.

With breakfast served, the Gunn family gathered around the table and said a quick grace. Before they could begin eating, Winchester pulled a long object wrapped in bright red paper from under the table and handed it to Tommy.

“Happy birthday, son!” Winchester said cheerfully as his son took the gift with a large smile and began unwrapping it. From the paper, Tommy gleefully produced a rifle. This rifle was a fully-restored, Czechoslovakian SKS, simple yet elegant. It was a gift that Tommy could proudly show off to his friends at school.

The Gunns applauded the gift as Tommy held it up as Winchester took pictures for the family photo album. Pistol wrapped Tommy in a hug, Bebe smiled affectionately and nodded as she tucked her own pistols inside of her coat, and little Ray reached out from his high chair expectantly, trying to grab the gun for himself. It was a warm family moment to start off a beautiful day.

Bebe and Tommy drove to school, as was their morning ritual. Bebe herself was proudly showing off her compact car as she passed her friends on the road. Her birthday had occurred earlier in the month, and for her gift, her parents had repainted her car and mounted two machine guns from Winchester’s workplace above the driver’s and passenger’s doors.

As Bebe pulled up to a stop light, a friend of hers stopped next to her, rolled down her windows, and fired a handgun into the air as a show of approval for Bebe’s guns. Her brother leaned out of his window and looked on in jealousy as Tommy showed him the rifle he had gotten from his father. As the light turned green, both cars sped off towards school.

At the town hall at that moment, Mayor Magnum stepped onto the steps of the capitol building and towards a podium, where he gave a speech celebrating the town’s history and accomplishments. He spoke into microphones designed to look like shotguns as he exuberantly pumped a shotgun above his head.

“Other towns may ask what our fascination with firearms is all about,” he spoke charismatically as a crowd of cameramen shot a barrage of photographs. “To that question, I reply on behalf of all the residents of Armstrong; there is nothing more wholesome than a community that has been brought together by their love and appreciation for harmless objects of leisure!” To prove his point, he pulled the trigger on his shotgun; the blast spread upwards, decimating the head of a cherub adorning the top of the town hall.

The crowd applauded and roared their approval. Several bangs echoed above their heads.

Bebe dropped Tommy off at his school and drove off to her own. Tommy’s rifle was jaunting out of his backpack, as was the fashion among his classmates. Every one of his friends had the muzzle of his rifle peeking out of his backpack as they met and hopped off into school. Once he entered his classroom and placed his birthday gift on his desk, all the kids in the class gathered around, admiring it.

“Boy Tommy, you must be the luckiest guy on earth,” exclaimed his best friend Otto. “I know my father would never get me a gun like this. He only wants me to get new guns with all the safety features.”

“So when are you going to shoot it first? Can I be there?” inquired Suzy Airsoft, the girl who Tommy had a crush on.

“Yeah, totally. My dad’s taking me to shoot at targets on Saturday, why don’t you all come?” Tommy suggested.

“Great! And we can all bring our own guns and have accuracy contests!” cried Nettie Bayo, the best student in their grade.

“I’ve never seen how one of these guns work,” Otto said. “How do you aim it?”

“Here, I’ll show you!” Tommy picked up his gun, shouldered it, and focused his aim on the blackboard at the head of the class.

At that moment their teacher, Ms. Snipes, walked into the room and saw Tommy with his gun.

“Oh Tommy, that’s a beautiful new gun!” she said, admiring it from behind her desk.

“Thanks! It was my birthday present,” Tommy said intently. “Now you have to aim between these two metal bumps here. . .”

“Miss Snipes, my dad wanted me to talk to you about going on a field trip to his factory sometime this year,” Nettie began to walk towards Ms. Snipes’ desk at the front of the room.

“Then, you cock the hammer. . .” Tommy obliviously continued in his demonstration to his spellbound classmates.

“I would love to arrange something like that, Nettie! Come up here and I’ll give you my number for your father to call. . .”

At that moment, a shot rang out through the classroom. Nettie’s body stumbled off balance, a burst of blood flew from her head, and she collapsed. By the time she hit the floor, she was dead.

The class backed away from Tommy in horror. He stood still, smoke curling up from the barrel of his gun, a look of unwavering trauma was plastered across his face. Slowly, several accusing fingers from his classmates lifted up at him menacingly. Ms. Snipes quickly picked up the phone receiver on her desk and dialed 9-1-1.

“Police? We have a shooting at Smith-Wesson Elementary School! The shooter is still armed and dangerous!”

Several of Tommy’s classmates grabbed his rifle and ripped it from his frozen hands, others wrestled him to the ground and held him there. It wasn’t necessary; his entire body had gone stuff from shock.

That afternoon at five, the news programs came on the air covering the story of Tommy Gunn, the first boy who had ever opened fire upon a fellow student. Through the constant barrage of coverage, stories, and interviews in that weeks that followed, one question always remained unanswered:

“Where did he get the idea for such an act?”