â you got any fuckinâ clue what youre doing? â
the clatter of metal against the wooden table rings out throughout the quiet air of the home, ruining what semblance of a peaceful moment the two had. Frustration began to radiate off of Nottim at an alarming rate, but this was not unusual. Any medial task frustrated him, and this medial task just so happened to be gun cleaning with his buddy The Dude. Nottim fancy himself the type of man with very little friends, but he felt the Dude and him were alike in many ways, making the Dude tolerable to him, at the very least. He did enjoy his company, even in moments like this.
â i asked you to help, not just stare at me. â He snips at the other, his frustration quick to spill despite his minimal efforts. Dude had done nothing wrong in this moment, not at all, but Nottim was in one of those moods, so to say.
/ hii!! sorry to slip in like this ^^â, but your postal dude seems great and i have been dying to interact with him with my nottim!!
At the resounding clatter, his nerves compel him to react with a full-body flinch before his mouth even grants him a chance to defend himself.
By the time a defense even comes, itâs already been wrung through the gnashing gears in his brain so hastily that it comes out more like a frantic series of mumbles. Nothing intelligible comes of it.
His eyelids finally flit to meet each other behind dark lenses: the first blink his bloodshot eyes have had in at least two minutes. Dude frowns inwardlyâ had he really been staring? A bad habit, he realized, and one heâd never quite been able to snuff out since childhood. Had it been so noticeable, even with his shades on? It was part of why heâd begun wearing them in the first place; heâd been told he had scary eyes by at least a dozen children by playgrounds and lockers. It was assumed he was just entering his âmoody teen phaseâ by the time he started wearing them out and about. Wore them indoors, too.
Suddenly, Dude felt as though his eyewear hid nothing at all. What a horrible sensation. His head bows subconsciously.
And then he remembers whatâs been asked of him. His eyes rose to crawl their intense gaze across the worn wooden table, observing the muddied and bloodied guns haphazardly scattered across the table. Most of them were Nottimâs, he quickly realized. A Mossberg 500, a MAC-10, an AKMâ he knew them all by name, like friends. But they werenât his friends.
Maybe that was why touching them felt like such a daunting first step. How can one fear rejection from a gun?
His eyes fall upon a nearby rag and a half-used bottle of gun oil. Was this all they were working with? Dude wasnât familiar with how to clean guns, but even he felt as though this setup was a little crude. His heavy hands feel oddly uncertain as he takes the bottle between two fingers. The other hand dragged the Mossberg towards his side of the table. He squeezes some of the lubricant out onto his fingers before working it along the tarnished upper and lower barrels, then followed that up with firm scrubs with the rag.
Every so often, as he worked, heâd glance up at Nottimâs face, searching for something in his expression. Searching for⊠what? A cue, it told him. He might slip up. They all do eventually.
Dudeâs fingers applied more pressure against the barrels.
He could be one of them. Do you really think heâs your friend?
Donât be stupid.
Heâs going to kill you. Youâre cleaning the guns heâs going to kill you with.
A bead of sweat prickles at Dudeâs hairline.
Are you going to let that happen?
His movements hasten with vicious shoves of the rag against the metal, as if attempting to purge his own reflection from its surface.
You should kill him.
Kill him.
Kill him.
Kill him.
It fell from his quaking hands and crashed to the floor, causing him to stumble back a step. Dude keeps his head down and swiftly dives to his knees to pick it up, with his arms offering a loose cradle, as if the gun were made of glass.
âSorryâŠâ he muttered instinctively before wiping the sweat from his brow.
