He peered out from an open crack in the blind.

The sunlight came in too abruptly.

It served as a constant, daily, irritating reminder of the ever-present

great out-doors.

"People",he sang to himself softly,

"people who love people, are the luckiest people".

He punctuated the end of his verse with a resounding"pong",

as he pulled the wadding from his gun barrel.

It was now clean.

He was now ready.

"where oh where has my baby gone?”,

he licked the tears and snot from his upper lip.

Still singing with his teeth tightly clenched, softly ,

“…the lord took her away from me".

He began to name each and every round as he locked it firmly into his clip.

He wanted to look nice,

for when they found him.

Sweating, hot,

sitting on the floor,

poised with his new found friends,

back against the wall.

He picked up the broken cheap acrylic hand mirror.

A lump formed in his throat.

The corners of his mouth grew heavy.

He began to cry.

He'd found the mirror in the school yard.

He kept it.

It was dear to him.

Every time he looked into it,

through the filth,

through cracks,

through his actual distorted reflection into some seperate perception,

he would somehow find comfort.

There was to him,

now,

no other way to alter the reflections his past had generated.

Cradling the gun in his arms,

gazing through his image,

he combed back his greasy black hair,

and wiped away the slobber of his sorrows.

Gently,

he placed the mirror on the floor.

He slams his head back against the wall.

"There's a place for me,"

his voice trembled,

"A very special place for me”,

he pulls closed the crack in the blind,

"…close my eyes and I'm halfway...",

  BLAM!,