The Bodega Bullet
Flash Fiction
I died in Brooklyn, New York, in Williamsburg, at the bodega across from the pharmacy.
One well placed bullet, intended for someone else, left the chamber of a stranger’s weapon — and it left me with this strange out-of-body experience in which I am writing to you now.
I don’t remember my name, but I see the faces of my loved ones. I see them mourning — they’re angry. A man drinks heavily every night to forget how sad he is. A woman collapses by one door in the apartment every time she gets near it; she goes into the room sometimes and holds t-shirts to her face, leaving around 0.8 grams of human tears against its cotton fabric.
I may be a ghost, but these people haunt me. Wrong place, wrong time, I suppose. I know it wasn’t worth it.
I see the boy who pulled the trigger sometimes. I visit him to check on his progress. He thinks I’d hate him if I knew he killed me, but we don’t hate. There’s no reason for that here. He doesn’t know I’m there when I visit him, but I always make him cry. Someday, when he’s ready, I won’t have to visit so much.
Thank you for reading.
