catching bullets with your teeth
by
captain mission

old man mission never died off the cancer that crept up his ass into his guts and spread to his brain, he was an old carny from way back so when they put him in the ground with his treasured things, he would chew on that bacco, and spit it at his headstone or whatever dumb inscription the charitable wrote upon it. stupid words, sentiment don't measure a man in words he thought as he fell to the ground in that long strange last moment.
it was an old party trick that killed him, an old carny act he used to preform and charge top dollar to the city folk to witness. once he made a thousand bucks in one night and filled a tent full of gawking spectators and drop jawed slackers, and many times his spirit was lifted by their rapturous applause, but not this time, not now, not ever again.
it was a trick from the olden times, a place long dead like he would soon be, a forgotten country. he never had accomplished much he thought in that fleeting space where lifetimes flicker by the echo chamber in the head. 
i perfected one skill and it's god dammed killed me. 
i never saw the sea, i never fell in love, i never baked alaska, i never ever took the locomotive cross the west like i dreamed. i had my chances but i was always practising and perfecting my trick. the trick that kills me.
people say you should die for your art but what if your art kills you. is that the same thing. tell me now.
my heads just exploding, it's all so beautiful, the way the blood just spurts out in some act of violent expression and my head recoils forwards nearly ripped from the neck, fragments of skull spinning through the air, precious shrapnel in front of me. its far to much violence where there should have been grace, such finality where once there was cause for rejoice and wonder. my legs inelegantly fail, at least my bowels are composed as gravity acts with it's unopposed precision. i'm not sure what's happening but my teeth have shattered like in pychadelica slow motion and those chunks of brain matter splatter like inedible jelly, my body twists around in a determined final gaze. do my eyes close or stay open, the sky falls over as the chimpanzee dressed in the cowboy hat comes running over to assess the damage, his pistol still smoking. i can almost see the look of anxiety upon his face, his mouth and lips puckering up. people said i was crazy using a chimp in the act, but training him was easy, keeping him off the coke and booze was a different story. 
his big bloodshot eyes are looking down at me, his left hand makes for my waistcoat and pulls out my wallet extracting a roll of bills he nods his head in approval as he plonks himself down upon my motionless chest and lights up a cigar.
'end of the road mission. end of the mission mission.'
i'm rising now, passing from the brutal body, i'm looking down at the absurd scene, my shattered face a rosarch test, the pesky chimpanzee holsters his pistol and perches upon my old body oblivious to the other dimension. he looks serene and at peace. 
it was our last trick, a performance we had perfected and we had rehearsed until it became second nature. i once had a beautiful assistant but she died of plague back in the bad days, i knew i would follow her shortly after but somehow i had an extended life till the cancer struck. then you know time is up. 
all i wanted was a nostalgic trip back to what i do best, after all it was my life's work. i'd perfected the art but there's not much control i could have over an unreliable accomplice. after all he held the gun. he had the power. i just had the power to stop the bullet but i didn't have eyes at the back of my head and murder is murder, even when it's committed by a malevolent chimp on a dead man walking.