By AJ Atwater

One kneecap is smashed.  I’m on my back.  I scream.  I reach.  Behind me.  Encircle the shooter’s legs above his black boots.  Squeeze, drag him down, take him by surprise, trip him, AK-47 falls, shooter’s boots flip into my face, a tag by the boot manufacturer Boots to Kill sticks on the side of my nose.  I hang on and the rush hour foot traffic who sought shelter in coffee shops and boutiques arouse from their stupor of fear.  Flood back to Seventh Avenue.  The shooter turns to pulp under the stomping of the lucky one’s steel-tipped high heels and wingtip oxfords.  A woman stomps on the shooter, then digs through debris.  Grabs a mewing newborn from under a smashed stroller.  A grown boy stomps on the shooter, the kite he had been carrying before the shooting now shredded like his innocence on the bloodied sidewalk.  A Rugby player near me pants.  Screams and wails.  I release the shooter’s legs.  Roll over.  Get up.  Hop like a crazy bastard on my one good leg, join the mass of people herding around on the sidewalk, ambulance crews sorting us out, police officers lining us up.  Interviewing.  Asking what we had seen.  

A month later I’m on my way to work as I had been the day of the shooting.  My crutches land silent on the sidewalk with every move I make.  The Avenue is jittery.  I’m jittery.  You see, I designed the shooter’s boots.  I am responsible for the brand, Boots to Kill.  Our company is riding high in the stock market.  Many of our TikTok followers want to tag along on the tail of the chaos happening in our country, want to hitch up their pants, pat guns in their holsters to celebrate new open carry laws as they pull on Boots To Kill, the crowning glory to their dressed-to-kill outfits, to their attitude, to their swagger.  We’d talked at board meetings about selling that swagger, about selling the concept, the idea of death as a becoming thing.  A desirable thing.  An attainable thing.  Our now-famous tag stitched to every pair of boots chalked up 1,000,000 views for its design, its color and mostly for its message, Boots To Kill, if only to stomp on a helpless insect or kick a wife. 

We said in our boardroom, my crutches propped at the gleaming conference table, we are not responsible for the behavior of people, we said, who wear our boots.  We make them.  We make money.  We are not responsible.  But after the past month of reflection, in the boardroom now, we know we are responsible and our conversation dies back like a once-live flower on a dead vine.  We will tear down our empire, we said, then one by one we leave the boardroom.  I’m the last to go.   

Back on Seventh Avenue, my crutches land silent on the sidewalk with every move I make. 

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AJ Atwater’s fiction is published in Eckleburg, American Literary Review, LitroNY, Roanoke Review, Blood Tree Literature, PANK, Bull, and other journals.