Trigger Happy
The Ruloi Collective
theruloicollective@hotmail.com

Any life she could've wanted was at her fingertips.

As a child, everything had been handed to her the second she screamed for it, from the finest foods to the most expensive toys. She had a dress for every day of the week and enough books to fill her personal library with plenty leftover to spill onto the floor. But books only gave her so much freedom, and some days, she would draw her attention from the pages to listen to the sound of

click click pull

shattering milk bottles as her father blasted them from their perches on fenceposts. Her favorite books could take her out into the wasteland where she was an expert markswoman...but she knew that she could do that herself.

But first, she'd have to fight for it.

Most protested, but she stood her ground and met every insistance that she needed to be a lady with an equal insistance that she needed a gun. They called her unreasonable. She called herself pragmatic. And eventually, they caved.

It wasn't long before her father had bought her a shiny pistol and she was out blowing up milk bottles all on her own, taking satisfaction in the

click click pull

sweet recoil that shockwaved up her arms and the smell of gunpowder that still lingered long after discharge.

Ten years later, little had changed.

She was her own woman, forging a different life out in the wastelands - a life far away from frippery and fancy dresses. Every day felt like it was wrought from the pages of a book, and everything would play out how she imagined it as a little girl: she'd stare straight into the eyes of adversity while she'd take her stance, raise her gun, and

click click pull

breathe.