Toy Gun by Colten Szarek

Don’t Play with (Toy) Guns

The following is a transcript of the interview between Officer Jason Ivory and Johnny Jackson, son of the infamous robber/murderer Jeremiah Jackson.

“Howdy son, how are you doing today?”

“Fine.”

“Good, good. Well, I just had a couple of questions for ya. Won’t take but a few minutes, ok?”

“Ok.”

“Alrighty then. Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you something.”

*Gasp* “You brought my gun! Yay! Hey, where are the darts for it?”

“Oh, don’t worry, we still have them. And you’ll get them back soon. (Soon as we get all the blood off of em.) I just needed to ask you a couple of questions about that toy gun of yours, and your daddy too if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, ok.”

“Ok. Now then, tell me about how you and your daddy first got into robbing folks.”

“Oh, we started doing that after Mommy left. Daddy said that Mommy said me and Daddy were sick, and that she didn’t want to stay with us no more.”

“I see.”

“I was really sad. So Daddy went out and bought me a toy gun. He said he was going to take me out to help him with work, and that we’d have lots of fun. Daddy was right, it was lots of fun!”

“How did you help your Daddy with his work Johnny?”

“Well, when Daddy was walking around with his gun out and taking people’s money and expensive stuff, I had my gun out and I was watching everyone else. Sometimes somebody would try to be a troublemaker, that’s what Daddy always called them. Troublemakers are people who try to sneak up on Daddy or hurt him, or that try to call the police so they’ll hurt Daddy.”

“And what would you do to these people?”

“Well I always watched them, and if they tried to be troublemakers and hurt Daddy, I’d point my gun at them and shoot a dart at them. And I’d yell ‘Bang!’ too. Daddy’d hear me yell bang, and he’d turn around and see where my dart was going, real fast. And he’d shoot right where I shot and kill the troublemaker just like that!”

“I see, that must have been scary, your Daddy making you do that for him.”

“Scary? No, Daddy never scared me. It was fun! This one time, a troublemaker tried to pull out his gun and shoot Daddy in his back. He was a big, fat, slow man and I was a lot faster. I shot a dart at him and yelled ‘bang!’. My dart hit him right on his nose, and the troublemaker looked real surprised. I’m pretty fast, but Daddy was even faster than me! He turned around and shot the man right where I shot him before my dart even hit the ground! The fat man’s head went BOOM like all those watermelon videos on YouTube! It was super cool!”

“Wow… That does sound like a lot of fun Johnny.”

“Mhmm!”

“I can tell you’re having a lot of fun right now talking about this, but would you mind telling me about what happened to your daddy? I know it’s probably not gonna be fun for you, but we really need to know what happened to him, and some of my friends here say they found you there with him.”

“...”

“Go on.”

“Well, Daddy said one day that he didn’t want to go to work anymore, that we were done playing. That made me really sad and angry.”

“He did, did he? And that made you upset? What happened after that?”

“Well, I got really angry at Daddy, I yelled at him and told him that I didn’t want to stop playing, it was fun, I wanted to keep playing. But Daddy said no, no, he couldn’t play with me anymore. He said I was too mean and scary.”

“Why’d your daddy say something like that?”

“He said I was having too much fun with my toy gun, Daddy said he was gonna take it away from me, and that made me really mad.”

“Ok. What did you do next then, after your Daddy made you mad?”

“I told Daddy I wanted to keep playing. I wanted to keep playing with my toy gun, but he said no. Daddy tried to take my toy gun from me, so I shot a dart at him. It hit Daddy right in the head. Daddy stopped trying to take my gun then. He got really quiet. And then he started crying. He went into his room and I heard a loud bang. I ran to see what Daddy was doing, and he was laying on the ground.”

“Your Daddy shot himself?”

“Yeah.”

“And how did that make you feel son?”

“It made me really mad.”

“It made you mad?”

“Yeah, it made me mad cause I wanted to keep playing with Daddy. But now i couldn’t play with him, because of him. So I got mad at him. I got my toy gun and started shooting Daddy more, with all the darts I had. I kept shooting Daddy until the policemen came. They took my and Daddy’s guns away, and then they brought me here. I’m still mad at Daddy. But I’m real happy you brought my gun back mister! I can’t wait to get out of here and play with it some more!”

Colten Szarek is a senior at the University of Arizona studying English and Psychology. Though he enjoys writing, his ultimate goal is to create music videos and explore storytelling through that medium primarily. When not creating stories, you can find him consuming stories through various mediums, hanging out with friends, and working on his bartending.