GUNS by MICHAEL WASPMAN

Guns

by Michael Waspman



Guns in kitchen drawers.
Guns stuffed down the backs of sofas.
Guns lined tight beneath floorboards, nestled between the joists.
Guns in cavity walls, hidden behind hastily rendered plasterboards.
Guns in lampshades and secreted behind unread books in oak-effect shelving units.
Guns on TV, illuminated and garish.
Guns down the back of shirts, itching like a visit to the barbershop.
Guns filling the basement and blocking the drains, sending effluent flooding across gun-patterned linoleum.
Guns in cigarette packs, shaken out onto a Formica-top coffee table.
Guns in wooden boxes, piled high beneath the stairs.
Guns in the fish-tank bloated and shrouded in air-bubbles.
Guns, crammed tight along the windowsill.
Guns dripping from a busted faucet like Dali watches.
Guns just visible in the filament of a light bulb.
A room full of dust mite guns, hung in the air and spiraling like a secret microcosm.
Gun molecules that gag and lay heavy on the lungs.
Infinite guns stretching above and below to plot a heathen gun-universe.

Guns everywhere.

Shaun Tyler awoke, face down on his desk, his mouth wretched with the taste of stale beer. And in those awakening moments, with the dream of guns still fresh in his mind, Shaun Tyler knew what he should do.

A great weight lifted from Shaun Tyler’s shoulders as he slid open the pine drawer, where the 9mm. parabellem Sig Sauger slumbered, oiled and fully loaded and lovely beyond belief.





Michael Waspman was born in Chicago in 1957. He grew up in California and has a BA in English literature from Willamette University, Oregon and an MA from Loyola University, Los Angeles. He has worked as a librarian, a school teacher and as a report writer for a law firm. He now works full time as a writer.

Apart from his novels he has published more than sixty short stories in magazines such as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and Cavalier and in anthology titles, including Modern Masters of Horror, The Dead Hate the Living, Night Visions 5 and The Second Abacus Book of Crime.

His novel Naked Came the Stranger was named Best Horror Novel of 1987 and short listed for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award, as was The Impalement of Rosemary Ward.

Michael Waspman is the author of more than twenty acclaimed novels, including
Salad Bar, Bullet Train to Heck, Rainy Wednesday, The Girl in Box 2 and Say Pretty for Me.

He lives in California with his mother Connie.