The Shape of Days

Last night I had one of the worst nightmares I’ve had in years.

I was on an island. Actually it was more like an atoll, a little doughnut of sand surrounding a brackish lake.

It was sunny. So sunny I could barely see.

There was a shark in the water. I wanted to kill it. Not because I was afraid of it, but because I was hungry. I wanted to eat it.

I had a gun. A World War II-issue M1 Garand rifle. When I was little, my parents had my father’s M1 mounted on the wall. It was black with age and heavier than it looked. My father took it down for me one time. I could barely lift it. I was six years old.

It was that gun. Only in my dream, I was grown up, and the gun fit correctly in my hands.

I saw the shark thrashing in the water near the beach. I put the gun to my shoulder. I put my cheek on the stock, closed one eye. Squeezed the trigger. A bullet slapped into the shark’s back, just behind its head, with a meaty smack.

I had visions of grilling shark steaks over my campfire.

I started walking out into the shallow water where the shark was. It was still moving. I could feel the water between my toes. Then it wasn’t water any more. It was carpet. I was walking through a house. And the shark wasn’t a shark any more. It was a kitten. A little grey kitten we’d had when I was a kid, a stray we’d adopted but never quite tamed. It had a bullet hole in the back of its neck, just behind its head. It was still moving, mewling plaintively.

I wept. I hadn’t meant to kill the kitten. I’d meant to kill the shark. And it was only because I was hungry.

Then I was in a hospital, the kitten in my hands still struggling, its blood-matted fur rough under my fingers. I was still crying. I knew there was nothing I could do.

I took the kitten outside into the parking lot. I took another gun out of my pocket — the snub-nosed .38 Special, the only working gun my father owned during my lifetime, a gun he kept in a green cardboard box in the back of the shelf under the table next to his bed. I guess he had it in case someone broke into our house during the night. He never had to use it.

I had the gun in my pocket, the kitten in my hands. I took the gun out. I put the kitten on the ground, put the muzzle to the kitten’s head, closed my eyes with tears welling out over my cheeks, and pulled the trigger.

The kitten was still alive.

I shot again. And again, and again, until the little revolver was empty. Seven shots in total, and the kitten wouldn’t die.

I was screaming. I was running around the hospital with the mortally wounded kitten in my hands, screaming for someone to help. Not to help me save it. I knew that was impossible. I was screaming for someone to help me kill it. For someone to help me help it die.

I woke up.

I don’t know what time it was. The sky was still dark. It had to have been before five o’clock. It might have been even earlier than that. Because I’ve been sitting here ever since, and it feels like it’s been a really long time.

• The appalling strangeness of the mercy of God
• The quality of mercy is not strained
• Five things that annoy me far more than they should