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Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
You know, if I had to write a slogan to defend some imagined Right I would come up with something less clever-sounding but slightly more grounded in reality. Something that would remain true in face of the facts, something like I love my gun! or whatever.
Facts. Let's see.
I am keeling on the floor, hands taped together so tight behind my back I can't move them at all. The hard texture of the carpet is starting to make my knees hurt. No training as a hostage.
Fact.
There is a gun against my forehead, a nine-millimeter semi-automatic if I am to believe Eddie's carefully worded description.
Fact.
And with my would-be victim's perspective, I look at the barrel, big and shiny and everything receding behind it, getting smaller, and it seems to me that the gun is the one in control of Eddie, rather than the other way around.
Fact.
But then someone, Nietzsche I think, said that there are no facts, only interpretation.
I guess that when a trigger mechanism is the only thing between you and a piece of metal at subsonic speed crashing against your head there aren't many ways to interpret a situation.
And that's the way it always is with guns, isn't it? Or is it just me?
Overly philosophical? Well, I need a distraction. A gun is not a pleasant thing to have against your head. The cold of the first touch is quickly replaced by the warmth the metal is taking from you, and you drift into philosophy to avoid wondering if the bullet will actually kill you or if it will simply end up lodged in your brain after going through your temporal lobes, opening up wonderful new career opportunities, in politics for example.
Eddie's hand trembles for a moment and I'm wishing that his index finger, against the trigger, holds steady. I begin to really wish I had stayed put in the apparent safety of the security room.
Suddenly, Eddie takes the gun off my head and waves it around, muttering. I look to my right, at my boss feet held against a chair with Magic Tape, his hands taped around, his mouth taped over, his terrified eyes looking back at me, asking questions I can't hear but are easy to imagine.
Eddie points the gun at my boss and says, All I ever wanted was a drawer.
My boss shakes his head and tries to say something, but the tape gets in the way. I think he said, I don't know what you mean.
I know what Eddie is talking about. A few months ago the company came up with a new policy: only managers or secretaries could have drawers. A cost-saving measure, they said. The next day a moving company came in and removed the drawers of all the employees that didn't qualify, and, apparently, moved them to the basement. An underground movement sprung up, and drawers started to disappear mysteriously from managers' cubicles and reappear in someone else's cubicles. Managers, as usual, simply ordered a new one, which was moved up from the basement. In about a month, everyone had drawers again. Everyone except Eddie I guess.
Eddie, a gun-toting drawerless person that is now looking at me, menacingly.
He says, slowly, as if each word was an effort, Why, why did you come here?
Me? I say, Is it you who wants to know? Or is it the gun?
Eddie, who hasn't been following my internal musings, puts on a puzzled look. Finally the gun points at me again and Eddie says, Tellme.
I look up at one of the cameras in the ceiling for a moment, and I think of Jordan, who must be watching all this. Should I lie?
Of course.
Okay, I say, I'll tell you.
So I tell him.
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12:24:29 PM 
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