POV
By Sacha Bissonnette
My brother told me that he’s fixing to shoot a man dead, and naturally, I told him he shouldn’t do that. But first I said wait. Why? And he said because another man slept with his wife and I said, “Well, that’s not a reason to kill a man, just maybe rough him up a little and talk to your wife, ’cause cheating is a symptom not the problem. But then I remembered that he doesn’t have a wife and I said, “Wait, you don’t have a wife,” and he said, “Yes, you’re right, you’re the one with the wife,” and I said, “Oh, yeah,” and I went to hang up the phone, but I wasn’t holding a phone. It’s actually been a while since I called my brother, so I picked up the real phone, in my living room, and I gave him a call, and he said, “Mark, it’s been six months,” and I said, “Wait, what? I just talked to you, and you told me about my wife, how you thought she cheated on me, but now you’re saying that was last April after the accident and the way they snatched my boy from me oh god oh god but you said it’s all right now and I believe you so now you’re coming to get me to bring me to the hospital,” so I should probably get changed because my shirt and my shoes are stained such a shiny deep red and I should probably put this gun down because they won’t like that. They won’t like it one bit.
Sacha Bissonnette is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. His fiction has appeared in Witness, Wigleaf, SmokeLong, EQMM, Terrain, Ghost Parachute, The No Sleep Podcast and elsewhere. He is currently working on a short fiction collection as well as a comic book adaptation of one of his short stories. His projects are powered by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. He has been selected for a 2024 Sundress Publications residency and the 2024 Gulf Coast Faulkner residency. Find him at sachajohnbissonnette.com.