I Unintentionally Became Her Kitten

Chapter 113: Respect and Fear

Tye was exhausted, perhaps as much as Alisha had been at her worst. But he drove me, as usual not talking. I was fine, though. This was such the standard at this point I didn’t question it, staring out the window as the world went by. We were leaving the city again, but this time going deeper into the woods, beyond Alisha’s house and probably beyond wherever Tye’s house was as well. 

He pulled up outside a warehouse kind of building.

I hesitated to get out, still feeling a bit of unease at being in such a isolated place intentionally far enough from other people that gunshots wouldn’t be heard.  And if they were, it’d be assumed someone was hunting wild animals.

The chill in the air was getting stronger sinking into me enough I pulled my jacket on a bit more. Summer and autumn were fighting over the weather and today autumn was winning. It reminded me Alisha’s birthday was in a couple months. If I wanted to plan something, I’d have to start piecing together what… and more pressingly how.

For now, my stomach twisted a little asTye unlocked a door and pushed it open heavily. It slammed shut again behind us. There were skylights above us which were the only light source, I figured, since there were no visible powerswitches or anything electric at all. Just a long barn like building made of steel and concrete. There were marks on the floor and rolling clothing racks that had obviously been repurposed to hold targets. Bullet holes peppered the frames and Tye calmly went about getting a fresh target sheet, taping it to one of these racks securely before coming back to the bold green line on the ground by the entrance. Then he pulled his own gun out from behind him. 

“You never handled weapons before you met Alisha, right?” he asked. It was a quiet question.

“No,” I agreed. I freed the holster from behind me, finding the weight to be its familiar foreboding self. I took the gun out of the holster, trying not to grimace. There weren’t good memories of this thing. Every time one of these had crossed my path, someone had died.

I swallowed down the sick feeling and took a breath before looking at Tye.

He had his arms folded in a peculiar, half-crossed kind of way as he was watching me.

“How do I fire this?” I asked.

He showed me his, again very similar to mine. He pointed to the magazine release, demonstrated the way it released the boxy thing and held it up.

“This is a magazine,” he explained, and angled it. “It holds the bullets. When you take one out, particularly if you haven’t fired the weapon until it stops, there’s probably still a bullet in the chamber.” At this he  put the magazine in a pocket and instead pulled back on the top part of the gun. “Open the slide and you can see,” he continued, showing me the little chamber where indeed a bullet was held firmly in place by more mechanics I didn’t fully understand. “So even if there’s no magazine in your gun, it may still fire,” he explained. “Understand?”

I nodded. That was perhaps why Sergei hadn’t murdered someone as soon as the magazine fell out. He would have known something like that.

Then Tye slid the magazine back in, and angled it to me, to show me the open chamber. “If the slide’s open you need to release it, there's a little tab right on the side here,” he explained, showing me, and then pressed it down so the ‘slide’ part snapped back shut. “And then you can fire a handgun like this.”

I found myself nodding again.

“To actually fire it,” again he angled the gun, showing me the trigger area, “you need to push in the trigger blade, then the trigger. That’s the safety mechanism on these.”

I opened my mouth to ask, but hesitated.

“It’s okay,” he reassured. “You can ask.”

“There isn’t, like, a switch?” I asked.

“Not on these. Some guns, yes. But these are made to be picked up and used without any hesitation. Police officers carry these,” he explained.

“I see.” My voice was trembling a little as I considered what that actually meant, that the mobsters I knew carried the same exact weapon as law enforcement. Tye, at least, seemed to treat them with the same amount of respect. He nor Alisha took taking a person's life lightly, though it had to be done sometimes. The fact Tye was taking the time to teach me gun safety at all was a little surprising. I had expected some impatient directions to point and shoot, but no. This was proper. This was… preparation for the inevitable, not just the possible.

My hair stood up a little, even more than Alisha asking me if I’d be willing to do this today.

“Are you comfortable?” Tye asked.

I nodded despite the answer in my head screaming no. 

He pointed down the crude lane. “This type of gun only has about thirty feet or so before the accuracy starts to plummet.” He raised his gun at the target, going into that ready stance. “Feet under your shoulders, back straight, arms straight but not braced and then,” he pulled the trigger. The resulting bang made my ears ring. The paper target twitched as a bullet pierced it.

I tried to keep myself calm, looking for the mark he’d left, finding it pretty close to dead center, only two inches to the left.

We let the silence fill in after that. Then he finally said, “You don’t need to be afraid of a gun. You just need to respect it. The thing you should be afraid of is the people that has it. It’s not like murder was invented when guns were.”

My body was still trembling and then Tye made a gesture down the lane, indicating I should shoot.

I hesitated. Of course I hesitated. I hated myself for it, but I was afraid.

But I pushed that aside and squared myself with the lane before raising the weapon. Tye gave me a few gentle pointers about grip and then took a step away.

It was a lot, my finger pulling the trigger struggled, finding it quite firm still, and when the mechanism deeper inside the gun engaged, the world shattered with the sound of the controlled explosion. The gun kicked back against my hand and I clamped my grip down on it more so I didn’t drop it.

Tye still observed, looked down at the target, but the bullet had missed, instead taking a chunk out of the floor quite a ways down.

Then he corrected my grip again, always gently. This cycle continued. My hands sweated against the black metal and I was thankful there was a texture beneath them so the gun wasn’t sliding around carelessly.

Several rounds later I fired and the slide that he had shown me earlier stuck open. I blinked, then turned to look at him, worried I’d broken it, but he simply held out a fresh magazine to me. 

“Just switch them and close the slide,” he explained. 

My hands shook. I removed the magazine, saw it was empty and put the new one in. 

I was still terrified, round after round, but it wasn’t fear of the gun anymore.