At sundown in the shopping mall parking lot, boys shoot at each other with cap guns. They converge under the wide amber sky, aiming at each other’s faces, rounds spilling from pockets as they pause to reload. Their coordination is fluid, animal. They don’t say a word. 

***
In 30, 40 years, they will meet again in air conditioned boardrooms, fine restaurants, the pews of musty churches. In saunas, where they sit stewing in their jealousies and plotting minor acts of revenge. And when they are killed by a heart attack on the golf course, they will still be boys, the snapping of toy pistols ringing in their ears.

…

Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. His debut short story collection Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father was published from Transmission Press. He is co-editor-in-chief of 3:AM Magazine.