He was eating an apple while reading a manual on how to smoke a waterpipe. I told him to stay away from dung, gins, and drag ins.. I told him to find his way to the liberation section. Past the potted plants and perishable goods, mountains of mouthwash and rows of tropical T-shirts. He took a three point turn at the electronics aisle and ended up somewhere between hardware and sports equipment. He had one of those hand baskets, and in it was a half gallon of goatmilk, margarine, and a small jar of black pepper. I asked him what it was for, and he replied:

"It's to soak up the sweet butters from the rock

The store guard wouldn't let him near the gunstore - said his beard was too long, said it could conceal firearms or bullets. Gilgamesh cackled at the employee's attention to caution, and proposed that he shave off his beard, then and there, buy a tropical T-shirt, buy a condo in the Himalayas and retire his sweet butters from under the black, peppery rocks. It then occured to him that he would need a razor and some shaving cream, so Gilgamesh retrieved the items and headed for the washroom.

"Now may I purchase something?" he asked the cashier at the gunstore.

"Yessir, you may."

Gilgamesh did not buy a gun. All he bought was a guncase so when he left Wal-Mart, nobody would think he was trying to rob the place. I saw this all, waiting for my film to develop at the camera counter. The young Brazilian clerk gnawed noisily at her gum guava as Gilgamesh scrawled on the walls of martyrdom.

Gilgamesh reached within his trench coat and brought up a M1 Carbine assault rifle. Employees and bystanders tried to flee the grounds, but Gilgamesh gunned them all down, even the people in the returned items aisle. It mattered not to him who was innocent and who was guilty of conforming to mass production, for he himself had transformed to mass destruction.

How did I not get shot, you ask?

Gilgamesh ran out of bullets, tilted his head at me in a dignified gesture, and went out the parting doors into the winter evening.

I looked to a small grocery basket lying beside the dead body of a pharmacist: there lied the goatmilk, the margarine, and the black pepper.

I felt liberated at this new beginning.