The Sharpshooter

“Next shooters!” The operator called out in her best southern voice.

Before they could even feel that disappointed, they were shuffled ahead into the next group, the turn they’d waited all this time for swiftly beginning.

“What- uh- okay…” Frankie stammered as she and her sister were pushed forward as half of the group, four guns waiting for them at the face of the range. Two pistols, two rifles.

“Your bag looks heavy.”

Frankie was on the inside. With Katie to her right, on the left of her was a complete stranger. She had terribly unkempt brown hair and dead, baggy eyes that reminded her of her own. It was with these sad things that she eyed Katie’s sack, the very one containing the spoils of their victory.

“Uh… yeah, sharp eye.” Frankie lifted a rifle, checking out the gallery. The gun looked and felt like the real thing. The display she’d be shooting at, on the other hand, was a cartoonish wonderland of dancing bear animatronics and talking crows, set to a backdrop of cardboard cactuses.

“Just saying.” The dreary-eyed brunette raised her own rifle, cocking the lever in a singular smooth motion. “Wanna make a bet?”

“Oh.” Frankie checked up at the top of the display, seeing a red light that she assumed would change once the time was right. “Sure. Fifteen tokens that I get a higher score?”

“Thirty that I get higher than both of you.”

She glared at Frankie’s partner. Frankie looked to her too, only to give a look of pleading for her advice.

“Are we betting?” Katie gleamed. “Yeah, sure! Thirty to the winner.” She raised her revolver, admiring the oddly heavy small piece of metal.

“Okay.” The competitor trained the sights of her rifle on the furthest, smallest target- a joking crow in the very back.

“I’m… Frankie, by the way.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Open fire!” The operator called out, bell ringing as the light shined green.

In a domino sound of electronic gun sound effects followed each time by a perfect swinging of the toy’s metal lever, the shooter expertly rattled off shot after shot, knocking over animatronic after cardboard cutout after animatronic, over and over again, only to shoot them once more whenever a target got back up.

Frankie panicked, uselessly blasting at randomly-chosen targets. Struggling to copy her opponent’s deft movements, she turned to her sister rapidly pulling her own trigger to no avail.

“I shot it once, but now it won’t do anything!”

“Pull the hammer!” As Katie figured out the gun’s artificial controls, Frankie turned back to the range to see all the targets pop back up at once. In that one second she looked away, her adversary had hit every single one of them.

She hurried to call upon whatever skill she had, but thinking of guns only brought back bad memories as she failed to hit hardly anything. Still, she worked as hard as she could to make up for lost time.

Almost against her own will, she regrettably shot her eyes up to see the score on the top of the display. Above her, “32.” Above Katie, “8.”

Above the mysterious gunslinger next to her- “25900.”

“Time’s up!” Called the operator.

The markswoman set down her tool, and, coldly, stuck out her entitled palm.

“Thirty.”