Corinne was inspired to write a short story after a discussion she and her husband had concerning the world that we live in. When her husband asked her, “What one word invokes the most fear in American?” After a short pause he answered, “Terrorism.” The discussion took a turn toward gun free zones and soft target areas in which terrorist choose to attach because many law abiding citizens are made easy targets. Law abiding citizens who would otherwise have a fighting chance have their right to defend themselves stripped away by legislation that does nothing absolutely nothing to stop criminals.
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When I Die – A Short Story by Corinne Mosher
“Oh God…it’s happening.
My stomach clenches with a sickly dread so palpable that I can taste it. There’s a voice wailing in my head “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to die!” Now I’m back in control of myself, and my brain snaps into acceptance and planning mode. “Yeah, this IS happening, so what are you going to do about it?”
This question activates a mental dropdown menu of choices under two main categories: Fight? or Flight? I hear the disembodied plea again, “I don’t want to die. RUN!”. But there’s nowhere to run, the danger’s too close, nowhere to hide, so much chaos, people falling around me, he’s coming closer, turning towards me, turning the gun on me. I have the sense that it’s all happening too fast and too slowly. A split-second passes while my brain absurdly produces the mental image of a PowerPoint slide. The words “Tachypychia” “Mindset” “Tunnel Vision” appear in front of my face as vividly as if I am still sitting in that classroom. The vision’s gone again, and I am left looking my death in the face.
So be it. I am ready. This isn’t going to go the way he wants. What my murderer doesn’t know is that I knew that we would meet one day. So, when he was planning for his job, I was training for mine. I had sharpened my mind and body to be a weapon, and had developed a skillset with firearms that would make me ready to respond with cultured violence for the day we came face to face. For today. For the next 3 seconds of this minute. I ready my body for action and set my resolve towards the one choice, the ONLY choice I have left, Fight…
That had been the plan, anyways. But that minute has come and gone, and I am soaking in a puddle of my own blood and tears. Lying next to me are the broken bodies of people I never knew but had shared our final moments with. I hope I’m still warm when my husband touches me for the last time. I want him to feel like I’m still close by. I don’t want my daughter to see me at all. Not like this. Not as a victim.
But I wasn’t supposed to be a victim! In preparing a warrior mindset, I had made peace with the possibility of experiencing a bloody, untimely death. But in that scenario, I never imagined that the blood would all be mine.
I can find no peace in the ending of my real story, the one where in the end I had to cower helpless, begging for my life. Praying for mercy or poor marksmanship, or that others around me would soak up the bullets that were intended for me. Hoping that somehow the laws of physics and anatomy would temporarily suspend so that my body was suddenly harder than bullets. But before I prayed and hoped and cried, I did fight. Out of nothing but the purest, most desperate desire for life I threw myself into the path of invisible death, but it tore through my body, severing my connection to this world.
And I did it with my hands, my hands that were so skilled and yet so empty when I needed them to grasp the one tool that would have made me equal to my attacker. But I didn’t have it. Couldn’t have it with me, not unless I was willing to break the law. And here is where I realize the awful cleverness of my murderer. He must have known I would be ready for him, so he arranged our meeting in a place I would be forced to be disarmed.
And so now I have died, but before I went, as I lay where I had fallen marveling at the pure terror and sorrow of a wrongful death, my last conscious thought was of the people who had killed me long before I ever woke up that day. From thousands of miles away and without even knowing who I was, they signed my death warrant on a piece of legislation which prevented me from being armed in Gun Free Zones.
I couldn’t have chosen not to be there that awful day, call it fate, or life or just the way it goes. But with a few lines on a piece of paper my ultimate and final choice was stripped away from me, the choice and the right to fight for my life. If you’re hearing my story, I need you to know this, I was killed by paper, not by bullets. ”
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https://youtu.be/SxZydqBfGsU
We’re gonna have to agree with Corinne it is absolute bullshit that innocent people who would have otherwise been able to defend themselves should have to die at the hands of criminals for no other reason than to appease a small group of people who pass laws on feelings and knee jerk reactions. Laws that do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop the criminals in the first place.