Running on empty

I was recently skipping through a field of daffodils, trying to carefully not damage any of the abundant flowers. It’s not every day I get to skip anywhere and certainly hardly ever that I find myself skipping lightly through a field of beauty. Of course, the day did not start that way.

First, the Mayor of Crazytown stopped by my studio, punched me in the gut and took my 357 Magnum, the most powerful handgun made in America. He did not know it at the time, but the gun only had three bullets left in it. That in itself is a long story, suffice to say that if 3 bullets from a 357 does not stop whatever you are shooting at, you deserve to get whatever you are about to endure.

The good Mayor looked at me, my gun hanging from his limp wrist and he said, “this is a warning pansyboy, you keep your self out of my shit, or things gonna get weird.” That’s a direct quote, which is awkward for me to even write. The Mayor left me there, standing in my studio, gunless and a bit beguiled.

Later that afternoon, while running for my life in a cornfield that seemed to go on forever, all I could think about was if the Mayor of Crazytown had fired 2 shots, or three. Then again, I might be worried about the wrong thing. There was the large stupid and angry man chasing me into the cornfield with a chainsaw.

Here’s a little background on me, being chased in a large field by a deranged man with a chainsaw has happened to me more often than I care to admit. I am not sure why this sort of thing happens to me, maybe it’s just my luck, or my inability to make friends with people who don’t own a chainsaw, either way, I was being chased again by a large man with a barely functioning and smoky chainsaw.

I knew it was a smoky chain saw because I could jump high enough over the corn and see the gray smoke as he ran around looking for me, plus, a chainsaw that is not running properly makes a sort of loud, unfortunate sound. I could track the chainsaw wielding idiot by slowing my pace and listening for the sputtering engine. Then, once, I could hear a 357 shot, possibly in my direction, or maybe in the direction of the chainsaw wielding nut case, or who knows where. The point is, a man with a barely functioning chainsaw and another crazy man with my gun were both running wildly through the cornfield with no other motive than to track me down and kill me.

The thing about a chainsaw is it makes plenty of noise and if you are wise like me and trying to avoid being cut to pieces by a badly tuned but still powerful tree cutting machine, you just have to keep running away from the motor noise, which is exactly what I did. Whenever I heard the engine of the chainsaw, I ran in the opposite direction. Then I heard another shot, probably from my own gun, destination unknown. That was at least the second shot and I knew something the Mayor of Crazytown did not, that the 357 magnum, possibly the most powerful handgun ever built, was only loaded with three rounds.

Running through a cornfield is not fun. First of all, corn is a healthy and ambitious plant. Some of the corn plants I was running over had deep roots and very long and strong stalks. Running through them was like trying to sprint through a gaggle of super models, tall, statuesque and stubborn. That said, when you hear the motor of a badly tuned chainsaw in the distance and, wait for it, shot number three from a 357 magnum, your instinct to survive takes over and corn stalks may as well be daffodils, because survival becomes job one.

After hearing that third shot I knew the Mayor of Crazytown was now out of bullets, so I started to make my way towards him, knowing that such an out of shape crazy man could easily be subdued, while recognizing the distant discordant sound from the chainsaw was fading. It did not take me long to run smack dab into the pockmarked face of the Mayor of Crazytown, who leveled my own gun right at my head and said, “you think a crooked motherfucker like you can just run away from a debt?”

At that very moment all I could think of was, I did not owe the Mayor of Crazytown any money. I watched as his pudgy finger tightened around the trigger and he said, slowly, “you got any last thing you wanna say?” I just sort of sideways smiled and said, “kind of happy I only had three bullets.” He pulled the trigger and the gun made a sad noise, a gasp of sorts, like an imperfect lesbian might make at a gala for PETA.

I kicked the good mayor in the ball, he only has one testicle. He went down like a sick balloon. He laid there, on some broken and shredded corn husks, crying like an obese baby. I smiled, picked up my 357 and started to run towards the distant sound of the malfunctioning chainsaw.

Of course, a chainsaw wielding moron knows he is outgunned by a 357 magnum, so once I pointed it at his giant empty head, he dropped the machine and ran away into the cornfield. I shut the chainsaw off and left it there, to probably damage the combine that would soon be tearing through the productive fields of corn.

Soon after, but what had at the time seemed like hours, I made my way out of the cornfield and found myself skipping through a field of daffodils, happy for whatever reason I could think of and reminding myself that somedays are completely unlike others, for a variety of reasons.