As you watch the trigger click back from the pressure of his hand
Hear the pin strike the powder in the casing, releasing bullet into barrel into air
You can already feel the exit wound
Can already taste the copper of your blood
Smell the linger of the smoke pouring from your nostrils

You can sense what’s coming
You know exactly how this will end
So instead of moving forward, let’s go back

In reverse the bullet rips from between your ribs and stitches you up without a scar
It flows back into the chamber, sucking in the fire that released it
Played backwards, this bullet performs a miracle
Your mugger steps away, out of the alley and into the light

A balding man holds the gun
Pale and trembling he has not yet spotted you
Thin and sweating, he is practically a skeleton made to walk the street
He can’t remember the last time he had a meal
Still moving he wanders the streets for days, looking cleaner and healthier with each sunset
He moves to a park bench and begins to sob

For hours he sits on this bench, a perfect display of tragedy until his eyes dry and he looks crazed
He stumbles off the bench and finds his way to the door of an apartment
He enters vacant gazed
Steps over the corpse of a man dressed in all black, blood slowly flowing back into his body
The man rises as if on strings, stance full of shock as a bullet rips out of his chest and into the gun once more
The two men begin to struggle, gun wrestled back into the hands of the corpse
More shots flow back into the gun, repairing dry wall and ceiling as they do

Another man, dressed similar to the other runs backwards into the room
The broken remains of a T.V. piece themselves together and jump into his arms
He places it back on the stand where it belongs
The two others have stopped struggling, the corpse not noticing the man walking up behind him just yet
In the corner, a woman lays dead, filling the balding man with anger
He walks backwards and out the door again

The corpse and his partner are ransacking the apartment now
They are frenzied into action, grabbing everything
A muttered curse and a bullet jumps back into the gun, reviving the woman being told to keep quite as desperate screams return to her throat
She slaps against the wall and bounces neck first into the hands of her killer who returns her to her room and makes his way to the door

Both corpse and partner leave, one crouching down to unpick the lock
They make their way out of the building and go their separate ways with a nod
The soon to be corpse goes to his own apartment and then to a pawn shop
He puts the gun down and puts money back into his wallet
The gun goes back behind the counter to sit in its case and wonder what its future holds

Time slips back into place and the bullet exits the chamber, fired by a balding man whose eyes have iced over in determination with the spotting of his target
Your back arches, pain blossoming up through your chest
There will be no surviving this

You smell the smoke coming off the barrel
Taste the blood already forcing its way to your tongue
Your eyes lock on the balding man and widen in shock
And as you die you begin to laugh

Your last sight in this world is the man whose house you tried to rob
The man whose wife your partner killed
The man who killed your partner
And the gun that did it all

How poetic