Joe Ferguson’s Magic Bullet

Deep in debt Iowa farmer Joe Ferguson loved his firearms—had a custom made oak cabinet full of the pampered killers of various calibers and an arsenal of ammunition of various

capacities—and was a stickler at keeping his collection pristine by dismantling, cleaning,

and reassembling each piece after each firing, a habit he kept up even while hunting

down his family inside their old brick farmhouse outside Keosauqua one foggy night 

In late November ‘63.

Joe, sick of the queen bee’s face, flirty beehive hairdo, and incessant buzzing, enjoyed watching the bullet from his High Standard H-D Military semi-automatic .22 LR pistol shred through his wife’s skull, spraying its contents on the bedroom wall behind her.

“Huh,” he whispered nonchalantly as he sat on the edge of their bed to clean the weapon with an edge of the sheet before heading to the kids’ rooms. “Kinda reminds me of some dumb Polock’s paintin’ I seen in Look Magazine a few weeks ago at the barber shop. A decent portrait of the old bob-tailed nag I gotta say,” he gushed, admiring his splattered and dripping knockoff masterpiece.

Joe snapped the 10-round magazine back inside the gun’s gut and walked the well-worn planks to daughter Molly’s room. The 17-year-old chemistry whiz was dying to attend the University of Iowa next year, but college—and a college

city full of college boys—was no place for a farm girl, he had argued vehemently and often; besides, he couldn’t afford to pay for four years of books and tuition, room and board. “And besides,” he liked to scoff for closure, “what’s a smarty-pants college degree gonna

get ya anyhows besides bein’ a high faultin’ housewife?”

Now Molly was just gonna die.

He tip-toed into her room, pulled back her quilt, and shot her in the chest, her black-and-gold Hawkeye sleep shirt now dyed the crimson of rival Nebraska. “Ya won’t need book learnin’ now that you’re in God’s precious hands, my darling child,” he assured the corpse, wiping the gunpowder residue on the pink teddy bear the girl won at the Van Buren County Fair that summer. Joe cleaned and re-assembled the semi-automatic and headed towards little Carolyn’s room.

“Ya know you was an accident, don’t ya, Pest?'' he whispered, calling the sleeping child by her secret nickname. “Thought we almost had the family brought up til I caught Momma between the corn rows a few years back. Been payin’ for that rare piece of adventure ever since.”

Joe muzzled the barrel with the girl’s Barbie pillow, pulled the trigger, then sat on her oval rag rug peppered with blowback to perform the routine maintenance. “But I’m not payin’ for that mistake ‘til you’re 18, nope, ain’t gonna happen.” He chuckled and headed down the basement stairs to son Matthew’s room.

Oh, boy, Matt, what a prize, he thought, sighing heavily and rolling his eyes as he entered the boy’s messy inner sanctum. “Hates farmin’ and tearin’ down engines; loves cookin’ and the Devil’s rock-and-roll. Not in my house.” The boy was dead before he could grow

Elvis-inspired sideburns.

Joe sat cross-legged on the concrete floor that he noticed his sissy son had painted satanic black, cleaned his High Standard H-D Military semi-automatic .22 LR one last time, then turned the pistol on himself.

The essence of Joe Ferguson remembered that Standard Velocity .22 LR bullets travel at 1,070 feet per second, but that was slow poke cuz now he was moving at the speed of light—his bullseye, Heaven! He was finally free of debt and his family because there was no way his wife would get through St. Peter’s Pearly Gates all dolled up with that whorey-looking hairdo  because self-pride is a sin; or Molly, because she favored science over the Holy Word of God; or Carolyn, because the Good Lord don’t take no accidents; or Matt, no way, because He don’t take guys who aren’t all man, neither.

Zipping through the universe like he had been fired from a rifle, joyous how great things come 

to those who put their faith in Jesus, it suddenly dawned on Joe that he felt a little weighed down, a bit heavy, considering he was just a few measly photons of Divine Light.

Then the reality of his new reality hit him square between the eyes–he was not a few measly photons of Divine Light, after all, but, in God’s ultimate reward, had rematerialized him into a bullet–one with consciousness!  His Sunday morning daydream had been fulfilled!  

How darn nifty was the Almighty, apparently an NRA supporter, because sometimes, while half-listening to Reverend Lampkin’s sermons that didn't really apply to him, he would imagine his own funeral here to try to stay awake. He could see it all in his mind’s eye—his open casket up there by the altar, his distraught family in the front pew weeping and gnashing away.

The grand finale he prayed for, half in jest, would be a patriotic send-off at the Keosauqua cemetery with him somehow becoming one of the twenty-one shells sent up Heaven’s way by one of his American Legion buddies.  And now here he was.  It came to pass! Hallelujah! and Amen!  His re-formed spirit as a pointy piece of lead with feelings praised his almighty wish-giver as he tore through the very fabric of time and space.  

In its trajectory towards the Great Duck Blind in the Sky, Joe’s .22-caliber soul had fun ricocheting off ice chunks swirling around in the Oort Cloud, shattering tails off comets, pitting asteroids with bullet holes, although he was kinda disappointed that he couldn't find life on another planet to stalk, kill, and take as trophy. Joe was in heavenly bliss until he was zipping through the Orion Nebula one night and ran into the essence of his murdered wife—no, he ran through the head of the essence of his murdered wife, and worse, in agonizingly super-slow motion.

Now he felt the sickening stench of blood and brains and death cling to him like

Break-Free gun lube as he gnawed through her brain, frame-by-frame like high-speed film, creeping through her skull nearly in stop-action. He felt disgusted, dirty, vile, and heartbroken as some of her mental film clips flickered open: happy ones with him who she loved so deeply. He watched these little flecks of their lives together–pleasant memories from her point-of-view–slowly expel and disintegrate through the exit hole, and felt ashamed. Now Joe’s spirit began to feel regret and remorse, and started to question God’s means of deliverance to the Promised Land.

Just past Betelgeuse, his leaden spirit felt more guilt and sadness because here come the three kids floating by, and again he decelerated to a near stop as he was slimed by their bits of desecrated flesh, blood, and bone. He bawled for mercy as he tore through each soft and innocent cell, and got nauseous from the shroud of discharged smoke that slapped him like some sickening-smelling Old Spice aftershave. He felt them die.

“Heavens to Betsy, bein’ ammo stinks, dear Lord. I took five lives and messed everything up real bad! I’m so sorry!” he confessed during this bang-bang act of repentance. But God was not quite finished eking out His eternal punishment on this

sorry little lump of lead just quite yet.

While trying to clip an arm off a spiral galaxy, Joe’s shooting gallery fun was interrupted

when another man’s essence, powder-wigged and dressed in silk tights and a ruffled shirt,

approached him, and grandly introduced himself as James Stewart, the First Earl of Moray of the House of Stewart, half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and half-nephew of the infant king, James the Fourth.

“Big deal”. Joe shot an annoying thought towards this pompous ass who was breaking his

focus just as he had his sight set for a chip shot. Then stopping to give the dandy the up-and-down, thought, “Sorry, don’t remember you. Should I?”  He smiled with a smug afterthought, “you’re one of the weirdos workin’ this carnival, ain’t ya?”

“No  am not. but thee should remember me. Think back to Thursday, January 19th, 1570, Linlithgow Scotland. I’m the first head of government to be assassinated with a firearm. Just a tiny metal ball, yet thee turned my brain into haggis and altered the course of our history forever,” replied the ghost of James Stewart, the First Earl of Moray of the House of Stewart, half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and half-nephew of the infant king, James the Fourth.

Joe shivered in his full metal jacket at this truth—his ancestors were Highlanders and now he felt like a traitor! A 16th-century insurrectionist! What had he done? Suddenly, he didn't want to be .22 anymore.

It came to his full realization in that moment of time-warp, how 40 grains of powder, so worshiped, can alter the course of life in a bang.  How 40 grains of powder, so destructive, turns wars into bloodbaths. At that epiphany, he felt the last agonizing gasp of life of the millions of soldiers he had slaughtered over time, even through the modern era with a growing conflict brewing in a far-off, obscure southeast Asian country called Vietnam. He joined the collective agony of every victims suffered on every battlefield throughout the centuries, whether they died for a worthy cause or not, and felt horrified and overburdened.

Joe’s soul recalled that whenever life in Iowa got too much to bare, even for the good Lord to handle, he’d head for the woods with one of his trusty shootin’ irons, so he did a straight shot to Ursa Major to stalk and kill some bears. Yet, that, too, was interrupted by another weirdo, this one coming at him wearing silver tights beneath a

silver outfit tied around the waist with a silver-fringed sash, cloaked in black, wearing a

fringed two-cornered hat the size of a royal banquet gravy bowl. He communicated

telepathically, suspiciously, in a foreign language.

“Hey, got a sec?”

“Thanks, Liberace, for intrudin’ on my huntin’ . Sure, but what could you possibly

want?”

“Just to stare a bit. Wanted to see what killed me.”

“Do I know you?”

“Aye, you should. I was Gustav the Third, King of Sweden. You ended my life at a masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, on March 16, 1792. You changed our country’s history, irrevocably, forever.”

Joe sizzled as Gustav’s spirit spit on him in spite, and again was reminded of his horrific firepower–not something to be proudly showed off in custom made oak cabinet, he lamented before reloading, and shot off towards the vacuum of M51 trying to hide his chagrin.

He didn’t enjoy the wonder of being a magic bullet any more, even in this star-spangled galaxy ready to be shot up, for he met an infant wandering here and made the mistake of asking if the little soul was lost in space.

“Have you seen my mommy?” the child asked, thinking in Lakota Sioux. “I’m hungry.”

Now Joe was jolted again; he gasped in horror when he realized that as a matter of fact he did see his mommy, but only from behind.

He had been locked, loaded, and fired from a Springfield Model 1873 rifle, shattering her spine as she was fleeing barefoot in the snow. The woman was dropped with this child nursing at her breast who was then left alive to starve to death. The utter inhumanity! Joe didn't want to be this reincarnated combination of lead and dead anymore.

Now he felt the entire horror of the Wounded Knee Massacre as it happened once he

was reminded of it, reliving the genocide of over 250 men, women, and children mowed down in cold blood that snowy December 29,1890 morning.

Joe Ammo and his fellow peacemakers came at the terrified people en masse fired from carbines and Hotchkiss-designed M1875 mountain guns until there wasn’t a living target remaining, including dogs and horses.  Afterwards, the US Calvary tossed the frozen corpses into a single mass grave because ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian!’ was the unofficial national motto around that era. Joe felt the weight now of all the indigenous people in the New World killed by fire sticks, from the Taino people of Hispaniola to these Sioux being unceremoniously dumped into a pit.

He had changed history again as this massacre at Pine Ridge was the last of the 300-year-old series of conflicts between colonial and U.S. forces and American Indians.

“ Me and my lead-headed compatriots won the West. Congratulations, we’ll take the pink teddy bear,” he groaned before shooting for the stars again.

He was guided towards what he assumed was NGC 3572, but in God’s mysterious ways the star cluster was in reality only the twinkles of starlight reflecting off the medals that Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had pinned to his jacket the morning of his assassination.

 Joe’s soul seared as he recalled that Sunday, June 28 morning back in 1914: he was

the winning .380 caliber bullet that Gavrilo Principth chambered into a pocket-sized FN Model 1910 pistol that ended Ferdinand’s and his wife’s life in Sarajevo, the capital of the

Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The leader’s assassination was

the most immediate cause of World War I, he remembered with self-loathing. “Hey Joe,”

he berated himself as he detoured around a supernova,” feelin’ all man yet?”

His life review as a guilt-ridden chunk of supersonic lead was hitting its intended

target, yet there was more gore in store. 

Now he was loaded into a Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol in the early hours of July 17, 1918, hand-picked by Russian Bolsheviks to aid in the execution of the Imperial Romanov family of Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children, Olga,Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei.  He drew Olga’s name, ripping through her young brain as if were a Faberge egg.

Joe was riddled with more notorious fame: he rode and murdered with Jesse James and Al Capone; had the dubious honor of being one of the three bullets pumped into Gandhi's chest at close range by a Hindu nationalist.  He ended the life of black educator and civil rights worker, Harry T. Moore, who was shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan in 1951. Now he felt pity by the collective racism and hate against all people shot to death simply because of their elevated melatonin levels.

Joe’s soul was reaching the outer limits now, wrung-out emotionally and feeling like a

coward, until he pierced a blanket of Kevlar clouds and, at last, saw the outskirts of

Heaven off in the distance! He was nearing the Pearly Gates, and could see his wife and kids waiting for him with open arms! Thank God he was wrong on that sanctimonious judgment call!

And with them were James Stewart, the First Earl of Moray of the House of Stewart, half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots, and half-nephew of the infant king, James the Fourth, Gustav, little roly-poly Spotted Tail, Franz, Olga, Mahatma, Harry T., and every soul in human history who had been shot to death.  His atonement seemed to

be accepted!  “I shall be holstered, forever!” he thought, feeling relieved and received, his

millions of forgiving victims now a mere thousand yards within range.

But in Joe’s eternal excitement he seemed to have forgotten one important lesson about himself—ballistics, the mechanical science dealing with the launch, flight behavior,

and impact effects of projectiles—because just five hundred feet from Paradise his parabolic trajectory reached its apex, stopped, and began its escalating free fall, because even in God’s perfect post-life creation, what goes up must come down.

It would be a very long, very bloody, nosedive. 

For his first slow-motion death ride in the early

afternoon the day after his own murder spree, he was loaded into a mail-order Carcano rifle and fired from the sixth floor of a building in Dallas. 

But that was only the start of his violent rampage: in time, Joe Ferguson’s magic bullet would rip through a maker of the Devil’s music on a New York City sidewalk and participate in many, many more wars, conflicts and bitter personal disagreements to come. 

He would find his way into the backs of innocent blacks gunned down just like the Sioux at Wounded Knee.  He would be jammed with a hundred other of his legal buddies into high-capacity magazines, exceptional for mass casualties in churches, schools, concerts, bars, and job sites everywhere in the great US of A—Hallelujah! and Amen! for the Second Amendment!  Joe had a lot more punishment left.

By: CraigE

From: United States