{"id":21561,"date":"2025-08-01T10:12:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T14:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=21561"},"modified":"2025-08-01T10:12:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T14:12:04","slug":"bullets-are-not-circles-but-they-leave-circles-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/flash-fiction\/bullets-are-not-circles-but-they-leave-circles-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"Bullets are not circles but they leave circles behind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When the elevator doors wheeze open your apartment lobby is like a movie set cops swarming ON THE GROUND ON THE GROUND ON THE GROUND while cops pin three men to the floor and you step back back back until your butt hits solid metal and your breath stutters to a halt and cops are grinding grinding the men\u2019s faces into cold marble and now you are slammed back to that summer day, Jamar splayed on the hood of your car as the cops are grinding grinding his face into the hot metal and you\u2019re in the passenger seat hands high and visible cause you know what to do Mama drilled that in good and proper and now in the elevator you raise your hands high and keep still keep praying the elevator doors will shield you will swallow you whole like the whale swallowed Jonah but no this blond cop\u2019s coming at you and what good are Bible stories anyway surely you\u2019ve learned that by now and he\u2019s coming at you arms extended and his Glock is coming at you and your blood churns burns yearns and you whisper don\u2019t shoot don\u2019t shoot but it all depends on this cop in your face shouting HANDS UP HANDS UP HANDS UP but your hands are already up so why is he shouting and all you can see is the youth in him the indecisive trigger-fingered youth of him holding that cold hard circle of the barrel like an eye like Jamar\u2019s eyes that summer day that day a car passed and he lifted his head and then\u2014<em>bam!<\/em>\u2014his precious body slumping sliding slipping and now in the elevator all you can see is circles like buttons circles like coins circles like Jamar\u2019s ring still on your finger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jamar splayed on the hood of your car as the cops are grinding grinding his face into the hot metal and you\u2019re in the passenger seat hands high and visible cause you know what to do Mama drilled that in good and proper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-cole-beauchamp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21561"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22861,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21561\/revisions\/22861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}