A Comfy Tale of a Sig SP2022

She had taken one look at his face and decided the world was unfair. In more ways than one really; he had all the look of a man who had never fully left childhood with his round, baby cheeks and slightly misshapen eyes. He was an awkward thing to look at, pudgy but not overly fat, not ugly enough to pity but nowhere close to the word handsome. Even the word homely was beyond his reach.

Yes, the man she saw was more or less an unwanted creature. And the most unfair part of it was that he bought her.

She was proud of her pedigree, made by Sig Sauer. Sure, she might be considered a budget handgun in comparison to her sisters and her bore axis was a bit high, but she was still a police gun at heart. She was designed for the French police so she was a fighting man’s weapon, nevermind those damned Glocks that she was stored next to in the store kept asking how many times she was dropped in surrender. So the irony was not lost on her how her heart dropped like a French soldier’s weapon when the gun store employee brought her to that man.

He picked her up with his grubby hands and she felt revulsion as he felt her over, pulling her slide and rubbing his thick fingers on her. ‘Pick anyone else,’ she cried inside her heart, ‘pick a Glock, for the love of the Great Weapon Spirit!’

However, fate was not so kind to her. She couldn’t believe it when he put her back down in her case and started the paperwork. The store employee didn’t believe it either, but there was no way he could have changed the man’s mind. Her mind was in disarray; how could she belong to this man? She didn’t even register his voice, although she was irritated at the sound of it. She was a duty weapon; she deserved to be carried by a man, a real man. Not this milquetoast, overgrown boy. She had spent so long dreaming of the man who would own her, carry her. A strong man, with rough, callused hands that would hold her in a confident, sure grip. A man who was practiced in his movements, an operator by every definition of the word.

Not this man, who couldn’t even meet the eyes of the woman manning the cashier.

She fumed the entire car ride to her new home. All she felt was disgust at this man who had dared to stomp on her dream, who carried her back to his apartment with clumsy quickness close to his fatty chest. And once the door was closed and locked in practiced speed, he rushed over to the table and opened her case again. And again, she looked at him.

And again, she cursed how unfair the world was.


A few days passed and she quickly got settled into her new home. Her new life. That man never really spoke. Oh, he mumbled a few things to himself, banal words as if to chase away the loneliness that he must have felt. His apartment was empty of any other person; he lived alone in the truest way possible. She felt a bit of pride in the man; she expected that he lived a spoiled life, forever hiding behind the skirt of the only woman who would love him, his mother. But he lived alone and she could see why he had purchased her.

The man was a coward, through and through. He jumped at the slamming of a door far away at the end of the apartment building. He would desperately flail around for her in the middle of the night when woken by the settling of the building. He would confidently watch a horror film in the courage of the daylight before huddling in fear in the night, watching a comedy to overwrite the scary movie in his mind. She saw all this and could only feel pity for the man. In fact, she no longer felt pity for herself; he had taken her entire allowance of the emotion for himself.

Of course, that was not to say she was happy. Every night the man would pick her up and clumsily field strip her. He would struggle to bring her slide back to the takedown notch and would often fail to push out the slide stop to disassemble her. Once he finally managed, he would take out her spring and barrel before just looking at her. She felt embarrassed during this staring match; the man looked almost greedily at her. Soon, he would bring up a dirty rag that once was a t-shirt and with those thick, slow fingers poke and prod inside her. It would be difficult to call this a cleaning; he never got the right spots of her and would carelessly douse her in oil. Still, he tried and after a while she got used to this unskilled treatment.

Weeks passed on and she became more familiar with the man and his schedule. He was quite regular in his life. He woke up in the morning, went to the bathroom to relieve himself, showered, dressed in a cheap suit, ate a quick, greasy breakfast, and went out the door. In the evening, he would return, disheveled and with a bag of takeout in his hands. On rare occasions he would bring back some groceries, always staple items like milk, bread, whatever prepackaged breakfast item filled with preservatives he liked, and on one special day some fruit. She could only nod in warm approval as he ate something healthy for a change; perhaps this was how the Great Weapon Spirit felt when seeing a Saturday Night Special gun fire a full magazine without jamming?

Every night he would attempt to clean her before playing around, dry firing her. She could only be amused at how silly all this was; here this man was toying around with her, acting out his dreams of being an action hero or a soldier, and yet he had never actually fired her. She wasn’t sure if he had even bought any ammo to load her magazines with. But still, she played along with him, always pointing straight at whatever imaginary target he was aiming at in his mind. She always fired true, breaking cleanly as he jerked the trigger with his finger. This was not the life she had dreamed of, longed for, but as she took on the role of guardian goddess of this small bachelor pad, she felt a sad sort of contentment.


She ached with anticipation as he drove her to his destination. Finally, at long last, the man was taking her somewhere. Nestled comfortably in her case, she daydreamed of whatever it was he going to do. Would he sell her to a real man? Would he finally let her shoot something beyond the ghosts in his mind? Finally, the car stopped and he took her along with him. She could hear the muffled sounds of gunfire and felt at peace. As the man opened a door to the greeting of a chime, she relaxed herself and readied her frame. She was at the range at last. She hadn’t been fired since the test firing at the factory; would she still fire true? She rolled her parts around in her mind, cautiously feeling out any piece that could gum up and jam. The man was heavy handed with the oil, that she could feel down into her action, but she was dry fired enough where she was confident in the first shots. Shot. She was giddy to be shot though, even if it was that man who would fire her.

And finally, the moment of truth came. He opened her case and there she saw him, his awkward visage with shooting glasses and unwieldy earmuffs adorning his unlikable face. He was standing in a small booth, flinching unconsciously at each resounding boom as another patron took his shot. The dusty air must have bothered him, he constantly wiped his nose on the back of his hand. This indoor range didn’t have great air circulation and she could see his brow moistening with sweat as he struggled to load her magazines. Her excitement dulled a tad when she saw it was bulk FMJ, but she was able to get over that quite quickly. She would gladly fire those training rounds if only to feel alive again. And so, when he finally rammed a loaded magazine into her with shaky hands, she gleamed with joy.

He leveled her sights at his target, a generic humanoid block shape with circular targets inside it and a yellow bull’s-eye in the dead center. She felt motherly concern as his unsteady hands aimed her at the target; ‘don’t forget to chamber a round’ she wanted to scold him. Her mental transmission must have gotten through; with a small sigh he grabbed her slide and pulled it back with uncertainty palpable from his palms. She chambered a round for him and felt him grip her tightly as he once again brought her to bear on his target. An eternity passed as he slowly, ever so slowly, tightened his trigger finger. She could feel each nanoangstrom as the mechanisms inside her moved at his command. Finally, at the very breaking point…

She fired.

The man had jerked at the sudden detonation in front of him and his shot went wide. His breathing had gone heavy and she felt more matronly worry as he struggled to regain himself. After a moment he resumed his stance, grip even tighter, and continued shooting.

She fired and fired and fired again. His shots weren’t well placed at all; he was a rank amateur after all was said and done. Still, with grim lines on that baby face he persevered. She moved at his whims, never hindering his desires. Still, all she could do was mentally yell at deaf ears.

‘Don’t jerk your finger, make each pull nice and smooth!’

‘Stop teacupping me, you need a sturdier grip!’

‘Focus on the break, feel the hammer fall instead of fearing it!’

On and on and on she screamed at him. Yet, she wasn’t angry. He wasn’t a soldier or an officer, he was simply a fearful man who needed her to feel safe in the dark of the night, when the world is asleep and the monsters howl in the wind. All he needed was to aim properly and that would be more than enough for him to protect himself. And that was her reason for existence, she realized, as he finally reached the center circle after multiple magazines expended.

If no one else would care for this sad man, she would keep him safe.


She couldn’t believe it. After a year of living with his man he finally got her a holster. It was a very boring year; the man did not deviate from his daily routines except with regards to her. The days when she was constantly cleaned and inspected daily had gone. Now he would pick her up maybe once in a week to dry fire her a few times before putting her back in her little shelf in his nightstand. She didn’t mind the solitude anymore. Having long since given up on being the weapon of a man of danger, she settled nicely into her place as this cowardly man’s little safety charm. He still didn’t keep her loaded, but now he left a full magazine inside her instead of the earlier days when he kept her chained up with a safety lock. She hadn’t rusted at all and her finish was still pristine so she kept her silent vigil in protecting that man.

So when he brought her a holster she was overjoyed. It wasn’t that she was afraid of being forgotten, no sir. She didn’t feel lonely at all or unwanted. It was just that she had never been in a real holster before. It was a cheap little thing, a universal drop leg holster. An airsoft pistol would have been ashamed to be seen carried around in it, but she didn’t mind at all. She had long since given up those wistful daydreams, so she relished the guilty pleasure as the man jammed her into it. And for a few days, she felt joy again as he carried her around with him on his nightly missions of heating up a greasy tv dinner and shooting invisible bad guys while cleaning the apartment one room at a time. Of course, there were only three rooms, so he would constantly go back to defend his bathroom or his kitchen from danger. Still, she dry fired joyfully with the man as he clumsily maneuvered around his apartment, him forever a boy playing a solitary game of cops and robbers.
It wasn’t too long, maybe a month, before the games ended and she was once again relegated to his nightstand drawer, only to be drawn in fearful panic at the sound of the wind rushing against a window or the moldy timbres creaking within the building. Still, she kept her unending vigil despite knowing that no one would come for the man. She bore his protection and care with her polymer frame, glad in the knowledge that no harm would come to the man under her watch.

It was getting late and he hadn’t shown up yet. This was more than unusual, this was completely unexpected. She had been with him for a long time, had it been years already? She had seen him alternate between endlessly sweating in the unconditioned apartment he called his home to freezing underneath musty blankets that must have been his childhood companions a few times now. So that would be years that he had been under her care. And yet, never in that period of time had he not come back home.

She worried and fretted for him, scolding herself as she tried to reason with herself. ‘He has only been gone for a few hours. There’s nothing to worry about. Maybe he got stuck in traffic or at work? Maybe he met a girl…’ She couldn’t help but laugh at that. But the laughter died and with the return of silence came the return of the worrying. This had never happened before; he had been late on occasion, but never later than this. Had something gone wrong? Sickness? Accident? It was only then that she realized how fragile humans were and how powerless she was to actually protect one. Still, she held on hope, praying to that Great Spirit that the man would return to her soon.

But he didn’t. Days passed and worry turned to frantic desperation. Something must have happened. She berated him first. Why didn’t he carry her around? Why buy that stupid tactical holster instead of a real one? Why didn’t he take her with him? Then she berated herself. He never should have bought her. She was too heavy to carry concealed, didn’t she used to call herself a duty pistol? Why couldn’t she have been one of those small, slender single stacks? Why did she have to be chambered for 40 S&W instead of 9mm Parabellum? She cursed herself for being what she was, a clumsy weapon meant for a peacetime officer to carry around and never fire. She cursed and screamed and cried.

And he never returned.

Weeks passed and finally the door that had not opened since that day he left for work, that same day with his same routine, finally opened again. And she, after being catatonic from despair, finally felt a small ray of hope return to her. He had come back! He must have gone on some long trip; he never really spent any money other than for food and small things here and there, he could have decided on a whim to go on a long vacation. That joy burned deep inside her like a bright ember.

That ember was crushed and blown away as she heard footsteps. Footsteps that weren’t his. Multiple people entered his apartment and that crushed hope transformed into an emotion she had never felt before. How dare they? How dare these people waltz in to his home? She raged, wishing she could fire her magazine away. Scare away these intruders who dared to break into his home that was under her protection. She defied those footsteps as they trampled around his apartment. They had no right! No right to come here until he comes back!

And while she was caught up in the outpouring of emotion that had must have died those weeks ago, while she was in the very depths of her righteous fury, the drawer she was in opened and she saw this intruder looking back at her with a familiar face.

It was the face of a woman who had been pretty a long time ago, a face that once, behind the wrinkles brought on by the wear of constant years, the lines brought on by the unending grind of time, had held the beautiful glow of youth. That glow had long since passed, those eyes that once likely glimmered when she was a school girl wrapped up in those childish fancies of love had now grown dim with the passage of time. And those eyes were reddened.

She knew of tears of course. She had seen them before on the man in his intimate moments of weakness. But those eyes, puffy with tears constantly shed, were eyes she were familiar with, his eyes.

This must be his mother.

She was surprised when she saw his mother’s face contort with wrath. She was even more surprised when the woman slammed the drawer shut, leaving her once again in that familiar darkness. She felt something deep within her action hint at movement; as if she had come to some realization that had veiled itself to her consciousness. Her mind felt numb; why would his mother come here? She never had come here before. The man never had visitors before. Why would she come now, with others? Her mind raced, but her thoughts kept colliding against a fuzzy wall. She knew she had to get around this wall, this blockage in her mind, but the more she thought about it, the less sense it made.

Her frantic thoughts were interrupted by the wailing of a woman. The mother. She tried to pay attention to the words she was saying, to glean a hint from the cries. The woman was inconsolable; the men with her spoke to her with hushed voices but she screamed. She never wanted to see another one of those damned things again, she said. She was going to have it crushed, melted, destroyed, she said. It was the fault of those things, those wretched things that… that…

Took her son’s life.

And with that, the block was lifted. She felt the numbness come back, but she paid it no mind. A gun took the man’s life? One of her kind was pointed at that man, that pitiable boy really, who only ever played at violence, who kept her as a secret charm against the evils of the world? Who would even think of killing that man, who sang softly in the shower each morning before work, who lived such a solitary life that he never had a visitor once in all these years? That man who always oiled her too much, who never used a snap-cap to dry fire her with, who almost got a bull’s eye at 5 yards…

That man whose name she never learned?

She didn’t even notice when a man that was with the mother pulled her out of the drawer, out of the holster. She was too deep into her own thoughts to recognize that that person dropped the magazine out of her, racked her slide a few times before putting her in a box. Her thoughts walked along in circles as she wondered why anyone would kill such a harmless man. Hours passed and the woman was escorted out by another man, leaving behind three others in that empty apartment. This time, she heard what they said.

It was an incident of workplace violence. Was it another case of Islamic terrorism? A pissed off employee who went off the deep end? Was it just another sad story of a crazed individual who had an axe to grind and didn’t care where he did it? The men didn’t know, and she didn’t really care. All she knew was that she had failed. She wasn’t there in his hand when he needed her most. She failed, and he died.

When the men finally picked up that box to take her away to be destroyed, out of that place where the man who owned her used to live, out of the apartment where he spent his idle time chasing away figments of his imagination with her in his hands, out of that building where he first brought her home those years ago, the men found the bottom of the box to be wet with oil.

He always did oil her too much, didn’t he?