Earth
Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method

They looked into each other's eyes. There was nothing noble, nothing courageous. It simply had to be this way. Both knew it, even though it was the first time for both of them. However, they knew it would happen. Facing each other, they had learned long ago that the bullet would take with it, far away from them, every regret and every stomachache. They were ready. Opposite them was not a man, just an enemy. This they had learned well. Load the weapon, ready the hand, they awaited the moment. That moment of motionless violence in which everything stops and the shot explodes. The awareness of doing what must be done and the joy of still being there would then allow one of them, just one, to survive the remorse. The suspension of all judgment in the face of death or life. Never in this case is the point of view so essential.

Great men stay away from guns. Little men think they don't know it and chase themselves, armed and dangerous. And there is no escape. That moment must come. The enemy in front, so similar yet so different and distant as to need to be erased. Uprooted from the ground he has walked on for so many years by a bullet that today bears his name. Destiny, perhaps. Idiocy, for the most part. From humanity, some distant echo only serves to remind how easy it is to stray from it. And once there, far away, how easy it is to get lost. The hand already grazing the grip. Gleaming brutality. The moment in which the mind flees the body and eternity is fixed in the instant. It doesn't matter who fires first. No shot will ever explode. Two men on the brink of their humanity. Motionless. Prisoners of the fact that nothing will ever happen because nothing ever happened.