The earliest known instance of a child shooting someone dead with just their hands was a case of a girl who cocked her fingers and said, pyoo-pyoo at her brother who was teasing her. Toddlers can make guns out of anything, banana gun, cheese sandwich with a bite taken out of it-gun. One afternoon, while a mother fed her son with a turkey pterodactyl; he made it a gun, and went pyoo-pyoo at his mom. Normally, the mother would pretend to be hit, Oh, you got me! This time, a bullet materialized from the turkey and hit his mother square in the forehead. She slumped down. When the father came home, he found the toddler hysterical with tears and snot streaming down his face. All over, toddlers were making things into guns; straw gun, toilet paper roll gun. Their caregivers were afraid and started to bind their hands. Of course, the children couldn’t tie their shoes anymore, but Velcro shoes were fine just as long as the parents were protected. The military got wind of this: if children could make bullets from their imagination, why have a bullet forge? They began recruiting the children. They had polycarbonate bullet-resistant plastic placed between them so they couldn’t shoot each other. At their naptime, they were so exhausted that they didn’t think about making guns. They shot into an assembly line and bullets were packaged and sent off for the war in Ukraine. They were useful engines.
Originally published in Harpy Hybrid Literary Magazine