I fired my weapon today. I never have before. We’ve done drills, so I was prepared. My body knew what to do.

He marched, arm straight out, toward the guidance counselor (the one who wears earrings that look like little spirals, like she’s hypnotizing you). The gun was too big for his hand. In another place, it might have been funny. A cartoon. Maybe not. 

My body took over (we had practiced). I felt the reverberation in my arm. Then he was down. Hair billowed around his face like he was floating on a salty sea. Hair like my daughter.

Megan Carlson is a nonprofit communications professional, activist, and feminist lit-nerd living in Chicago. Her creative fiction has been featured in Hypertext Magazine, The Blue Nib, and X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine. You can follow her at @MegsCarlson on Twitter, where she mostly re-tweets Chrissy Teigen.

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