[PUNCH CLOCK ANIMAL] ASHTRAY

[skinstealer]

You line up your eyes but don't quite match things up with your hands. You end up with the bullet being so far off you're not even sure where it landed. You lose your cool and drop your gun out of nerves.

"Count your shots."

You reach for the gun.

"Count them without checking." 

You missed, then got it, then missed again.. you count on your hands and... She doesn't give you the time to put it all together in your head.



"How many did you hit?"

"One."

"How many did you miss?"

You look at your hands.

"Uh..." 

"More than one?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Two."

"How many shots are left?"

You do the math on your fingers. She grabs you by the chin and turns your head to face her. 



"Don't look away, look up at Me."

"Six?"

“Six?!"

"Three! There's Three left!"

"You've fired three times and hit once. One in three is cop numbers, and if you can't do better than cop numbers you got no right to be doing this."

"I'm sorry-" 



"Pick up your gun, Beatrice Judgment."

You reach to the floor for it, holding back an urge to cry.





You pick it up as careful as can be, adjust your muffs, and take aim again. You honestly don't feel up to doing this anymore, you just want to get it over with. You focus your eyes on the bottles but.... the more you look, the harder it is to recognize them as bottles. No, they're more like tiny little ambiguous homunculi dangling by strings than anything you could classify as a glass bottle. 

Focusing on them makes you uneasy.

"Hurry up and take the shot."

The mumble and drone from the horrific little beasts starts getting to you, too panicked and intelligent to be unaware of what's coming next, and too unintelligible for you to recognize it as anything specific. This isn't right.