If there’s a gun in act one, fire it in act three. Make it loud. Make it bang. Call it a climax.
Alternatively, if there’s a gun in act one, keep the bullets inside it. Do not fire it in act one, two, or three. Guns are dangerous and more dangerous when the bullets are left inside.
If there’s a gun in act one, let it instead be a banana. Let the hero slip on the peel, fall onto the third rail of the subway tracks in act two, and, while he’s being electrocuted, let the banana shoot him in the head.
Know that you may go through act one, two, and three without ever having a gun, let alone the gun you love, fire a single bullet in your direction. This will create sympathy or its uglier, more honest cousin, pity, for you in your readers, though some, no matter how subtle your rendering of your unrequited love-pain, will still think you’re a sad sack who shouldn’t be in love with a gun to be begin with and certainly not a gun who already has a girlfriend.
Despite knowing that if gun, then fire, despite knowing that it’s not just inevitability but persistence, a kind of insistence, a drive and purpose like gravity, know that if gun, then fire will outlive you, know that if gun, then fire might even kill you. Nonetheless, grind your wheels, if only a little, against if gun, then fire. You might, for example, take the gun somewhere you’ve never been before in act two. You will have to drive or walk or bike (you cannot fly with a gun, they do not allow it in carry-on and we don’t have time for checking bags). For example, you might drive or walk as far east as you can go. Which means, eventually, depending on where act one begins, hitting a mountain, an ocean, a cliff. Take the gun and, assuming it’s still a gun, throw it as far as you can throw it. Loosen up your arm, rear back, make it a good one. Keep the bullets inside of it. At the edge of the water or cliff, the top of the mountain, the bubbling mouth of the volcano, you may see others doing or just having done the same thing. Give a nod, perhaps even do a secret hand signal, a tug of the ear, a swipe of the nose, but say nothing. Do not smile. Do not congratulate yourself or the others for the long journey to the gun’s obliteration. This is something you and the others should have done a long time ago, long before act one even began.
If this, then end the story now, leave the children looking ahead to, but not quite getting, the science fair. This will put them in a state of insecurity (what if the same thing happens tomorrow? What if there are more bananas?) but also of hope, which is a good state in which to leave things—that is to say complicated, perhaps only slighter wiser, potentially, probably a little sadder than before.
“Shake Hands Like a Man” by Billy Lombardo
“Diáspora” by Heather Michaels
“And When Were We in Delaware?” by Lex Sonne
“Sugar Pop” by Robin Kirk
