!
One by one we counted off our lane numbers, right to left, so that we knew for sure which lane we were shooting in and wouldn’t fuck up and hit someone else’s target. I chambered my one and only round, got myself settled into my natural point of aim as best I could, target aligned and on sights, felt the tide of my respiration ebb to its lowest point, and in the short moment of that stillness squeezed the trigger —
And missed the target completely.
“Oh, man,” I thought. Right off the bat, I was in the hole: a 0. I couldn’t afford many more of those if I hoped to survive.