The Banana Gun

Okay, let’s say you commission an engineer to build you a “Banana Gun” because you think it would be really funny to be able to accurately fire bananas at unsuspecting fools. Your main concern is that the gun peel the banana in the process as you wouldn’t want to smack somebody with a high-speed, intact fruit (could put out an eye), but rather that they get whapped with harmlessly hilarious banana cream. The engineer, doodling, nods absently. 

 

After great expense and anticipation, the Banana Gun arrives. You uncrate it, clear away the excelsior and behold its gleaming beauty as it sucks the breath from your lungs: it’s all blued steel and carbon-fiber scaffolding, with exotic hardwood grips and stock. And, of course, a skeletal high-capacity banana clip within which the nascent fruit missiles can clearly be seen. 

 

You pick it up slowly and get your first twinge of disappointment: it’s just this side of unwieldy. Still, you thumb the ON switch and all doubt flees as the thing hums to life and the gyroscopic stabilizer spins up, balancing it as fine as a stage magician’s throwing knife. 

 

Pants tight, you jack the first banana into the chamber. The gun whines and a series of holo displays strobe from red, through yellow and into green with a cupcakes-done DING! 

 

You run to the front door and throw it wide, scanning for targets—for some reason, the Ice Cream Man is going through your mailbox! He bolts upright, startled, eyes wide at the sight of you, turgid and armed. You swing the gun up and the gyro takes over, pointing the barrel dead at the Ice Cream Man as if magnetically attracted to his fear. 

 

“Asta la—” you begin when the gun suddenly discharges with a deafening thunderclap and searing flash of heat and light. You stagger back, blind and deaf, exposed skin sunburned, hair and clothes smoking. 

 

Your vision clears before your mind does. At the end of the driveway you see boots, a roiling cloud of wet smoke, and an alluvial fan of gore and ruin slapped across the street, cars, front yards and neighbors’ houses. 

 

Barking dogs accompany a chorus of wailing car alarms, all to the back-beat of your throbbing tinnitus. 

 

“HIT HIT HIT,” says the Banana Gun distantly in a sexy-lady computer voice as it ejects the spent banana peel onto your porch. 

 

My question is: Dessert or plantain?