A gun had gone off and a person had been killed though it had been an accident or at least that’s what she told herself, that’s what she had to tell herself all those fitful nights squirming half-sleepless in her bed, her nightgown strangling her twisted torso, the ceiling fan spinning slowly like a sweaty doubt, because after all they’d hired her for just that—to eliminate the possibility of accidental discharge—and she’d set up the industry protocols for weapons mastery, strict record-keeping for the signing out of firearms, mandatory trigger locks and meticulously counted ammo, daily barrel cleanings, repetitive chamber checks and dual, human-centered authentication to confirm the removal of live rounds after target practice, because of course the actors had wanted to shoot real bullets, not so much for rehearsal purposes but to feel the authentic jolt of an actual pistol in their hand, to thrill in the exhilaration of sending a deadly metal projectile speeding through the air and hearing the satisfactory pock as it hit the paper targets she’d arranged out in the desert at the edge of the film set, paper targets with shadows of humans on them, shadows you could imagine were your worst enemy or maybe even someone you loved but secretly despised in some way, like that part of herself she despised for its gross negligence, for she had been lingering nearby when they filmed the scene, she heard the pop of the pistol shot and saw the gun in the actor’s hand, literally smoking, and she noticed the DP crunched over like her stomach was falling out, and one of the grips shouted something about a medic or an ambulance but they were in the middle of the desert outside Tucson, a good forty minutes from the nearest hospital and all they had on set was a standard first-aid kit, and she felt her blood spike because her worst nightmare was coming true, she had overlooked some crucial detail that would cost the Director of Photography her life and they all knew it, the actor looked at the gun in his hands like it was some diseased animal and then turned and looked at her and she almost fainted, but people were running around now trying to figure out what to do, the DP was sprawled on the hard dirt moaning and drops of blood were scattered on the dusty earth about her, the blood gathered into small, bright red beads as if the ground refused to soak it in, she remembered that most, the small red beads of blood and the blood soaked into the DP’s shirt and the DP’s face twisted with bewilderment and pain and disbelief, and though she knew it was her fault, her instinctual fear of the law asserted itself and she immediately knew the absolute truth, that she would deny culpability to the grave, standing there in the punishing sunlight and heat so far from home, her mind already fishing around for someone or something to blame, she’d squirm out of it just as she’d evaded punishment her whole life—when her brother broke his arm falling off the rope ladder, when she’d gunned the inflatable boat motor into the dock in Mobile, Alabama, when she let that heavy glass door swing shut on the woman in Penn Station, breaking her nose—none of it was her fault, really, we all make mistakes, though ultimately she remembered the bearded man on the train going up to Burlington, she’d been walking up the narrow aisle with a cup of coffee and had tripped and spilled it on him and said, Oh my god I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and he’d looked at her, wiping his grimy pants, his eyes bloodshot with a life’s worth of suffering and embitterment, and he’d said, Don’t be sorry, be careful—she hated him for that, hated him more than anyone in her life even though that had been twenty years ago, back when she had no responsibility or care, when she was young and pretty, her skin like milk, her breasts full under her loose shirt, and there was a nice guy in the next train car who was keen on her and she was going to have a baby with him (she’d thought at the time though it never worked out) and now it was decade to the day that the DP had died and she was still enjoying life, very much so, sipping a chutney-infused cocktail on a beach in Goa when—maybe because a truck backfired on the street nearby, or maybe because her unconscious brain remembered the date she herself tried so hard to forget—it came back to her: the crack of the pistol shot, the bright red berries of blood, the way that blatant desert afternoon had swooned into hallucinatory denial, she’d almost forgotten the endless interrogations that ensued, the social media canceling, the funeral she’d been too ashamed to attend, the shrug of her mental shoulders each time her conscience tried to broach the subject of the killing, she remembered only that she’d worn a pretty blouse with a red floral design that day, that she had a pack of cinnamon gum sticks in her pocket, that all her dreams of the future instantly shriveled up and dissipated into chaos, for if the future existed then the past existed and neither could exist if she were to thrive, now was always just now, this moment, timeless, unmemorable, infuriatingly pointless and pleasurable beyond measure because her heart was beating hard, the sun warmed her skin, she was alive.

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An NEA Literature Fellow, John Parras has published in Conjunctions, Salmagundi, Painted Bride Quarterly, Xconnect, Oasis and other literary journals. His chapbook, Dangerous Limbs: Prose Poems and Flash Fictions, is published by Kattywompus Press. He teaches literature and creative writing at William Paterson University.