The Man Whose Penis Started Shooting Bullets One Day

As the morning desert sun began blasting in through the bedroom window of his small stucco cottage, Magnus Gompers started the day the way he always did—by masturbating in bed.

This day would be different, though. Whereas he’d normally squirt about a half-teaspoon’s worth of watery jizz on his belly and then fall back asleep until noon, this time upon reaching climax, a 9mm bullet came rocketing out of his penis and shot straight through his wooden headboard, nearly taking off his left ear in the process.

Well, that had never happened before. Talk about ruining the mood.

Magnus flopped onto his stomach and examined the bullet hole that had whizzed clean through his headboard, then through his plaster wall, finally getting stuck in the back of his refrigerator in the kitchen. He probed the hole in the wood with his forefinger. It still felt warm.

Despite having just shot a 9mm bullet out of his penis, Magnus remained calm. He was always calm—so calm, sometimes you weren’t sure if he was awake. After all, he was born and raised in the serene desert wastelands of southern New Mexico—the small town of Elephant Butte, to be exact. Time moved slowly down here. No one ever got upset about anything. Even during the occasional stabbing, nobody bothered to even break a sweat.

As his erection slowly deflated, Magnus scratched his balls, swung his legs out of bed, and ambled into the kitchen, where he prepared himself a bowl of Cheerios.

Magnus Gompers had long, greasy hair and bad skin. He was a slam poet and herbal healer who mostly subsisted on a lavish inheritance from his grandparents, who’d made a fortune in the copper and potash industries. After stripping the local mountains of their natural riches, Grandma and Grandpa Gompers moved to a Las Vegas mansion and left the locals to fend for themselves. Magnus’s days were typically filled with watching television, writing poetry, and collecting herbs. At night he’d rendezvous with his longtime girlfriend, Octavia.

Octavia Pruneridge was part Native and had long, flowing black hair, a capacious bosom, and the fires of a thousand nighttime desert marshmallow roasts in her eyes. She taught English as a Second Language to the local Hispanic and Native communities. She also collected guns and could dismantle, clean, oil, and reassemble an AR-15 in under seven minutes.

Her real passion, though, was ornithology. Octavia loved birds and could name all 543 species in the state—alphabetically. This included the tundra swan, the black-bellied whistling-duck, and the green-winged teal. Her favorite bird, though, was the roadrunner—New Mexico’s state bird. She even briefly kept a roadrunner in her back yard as a pet. His name was Charlie. One day, though, Charlie pecked at Octavia’s newborn kitten and killed it, causing her to grab a clawhammer and smash the roadrunner to death. The experience proved so traumatic that Octavia was prescribed antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, which she’s been taking for over seven years now without missing a dose.

Shortly after Octavia’s medication grabbed her by the soul and pushed her along the path toward healing and wellness, she met Magnus at a local dive bar called the Roadrunner Lounge. They both hated each other at first, which led to tremendous tension, which then led to sex.

Octavia fell in love with Magnus for his kindness, his warmth, his skills at oral sex, and his inheritance. Magnus fell in love with Octavia because of her breasts.

After eating his Cheerios and feeding his iguana—who ate dry Cheerios and would throw up if they were even mildly soaked in milk—Magnus stood staring out of the kitchen window and wondering whether he should call a doctor to ask why his male organ had suddenly morphed into a deadly firearm. Instead, he decided to do what he usually does—masturbate.

This time, though, he would take precautions. He realized that if his penis had been pointed a mere two degrees to the right during his morning jackoff, he would already be dead.

He walked into his yard, pulled down his underwear, and began tugging at his manhood until it achieved firmness. He then aimed it toward a row of cacti that stood in front of the stucco wall that separated his property from the loud immigrant neighbors whom he suspected hated him for reasons that were primarily racial.

He thought of Octavia’s hips—their cello-like shape. He thought of her pubic hair—it was so perfectly triangular. He thought of her shiny, coal-black hair and her full lips and her bronzed skin. But it wasn’t until he thought of her perfect melony boobs that a clear drop of pre-cum splashed to the dusty desert ground. He wanted to make love to each boob individually—the left one (his favorite), the right one—and then both boobs simultaneously. He dreamed of getting a tattoo artist to monogram each of her nipples—one with an “M” (for Magnus), the other with an “O” (for Octavia). He knew that when he died and he went to heaven, he’d float up there on her pillowy boobs.

Then came a loud BANG!

The bullet had lopped off the top half of a cactus and got lodged in the brown stucco wall.

It then became clear to Magnus that for the rest of his life, his penis would shoot bullets rather than semen. No man wants to hear this, much less confront the grim implications. And how would he tell Octavia?

Octavia would be getting off work at 7. She was supposed to shower—which was a good thing, because the stress of teaching English to a group of mostly unwilling school kids often made her develop a sharp and highly unpleasant underarm odor—and then meet him at the Italian restaurant for dinner at 8.

Although she was the one who actually worked for a living, he was the one who was always late. Magnus ambled into the Italian restaurant shortly before 8:30, after Octavia had already consumed four dinner rolls and three glasses of wine.

“Sorry, babe, got caught up with the herbals again,” Magnus said, pecking her lightly on the cheek. “Did you order?”

“Yes, I ordered,” she said, slightly annoyed not only at his tardiness, but at his shallow attempt at apologizing. “You always get the same thing, because, you know, that’s your style.”

Magnus sensed her hostility but ignored it. “Listen, babe, something crazy happened today. When I was having my morning wank, a bullet shot out of my dick when I came instead of cum.”

“OK, I’m waiting for the punchline here,” Octavia said, picking a morsel of dinner roll from between her teeth with a long nail from her right pinkie.

“No, babe, I’m serious,” Magnus said. Octavia stopped picking her teeth. She could tell that he was, indeed, serious.

“Magnus, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s crazy, right? But it happened a second time. I went out into the back yard, tugged one out again, and the bullet shot through a cactus and got stuck in the wall. This seems like an irreversible condition.”

Silent for a moment, Octavia began to blush. “I think it’s kind of hot,” she said, looking down.

“What do you mean?”

“You know that danger always makes me wet. What’s more dangerous than the idea that a guy could kill you when he cums? I would cum buckets just from the thought of it alone.”

Magnus did a double-take. “You want me to kill you?”

“No, dummy,” Octavia laughed. “You always pull out anyway because you know I don’t want kids. Of course I’d not only want you to pull out, but to spin in the other direction before you cum. I like danger, but I’m not stupid.”

Magnus began blushing, too.

Octavia leaned in toward him. “It’s getting dark. Let’s go up to the lake and try this out.”

As they reached Elephant Butte Lake at twilight, Magnus parked the car, grabbed a blanket from the trunk, and laid it behind the car on the cracked desert floor.

For Magnus and Octavia, sex never lasted more than two minutes. This time it lasted only 27 seconds before Magnus pulled out, stood up, spun around, and shot his penile projectile into the darkness.

“Wow,” Octavia gasped. “That didn’t last long at all, but I already came twice.”

It was completely dark as they got back into the car. But as they pulled out of the parking lot, the car’s headlights showed something was dead in the road. Magnus hopped out and looked.

It was a roadrunner.

A roadrunner with a bullet in it.

As Octavia came up from behind, he turned around and said, “I think I killed…the…roadrunner…when I came.”

Octavia ran back to the car and grabbed her small white purse. Walking slowly back toward Magnus, she pulled a small pearl-handled revolver from her purse and shot Magnus three times in the chest and head.

She had to kill him. Although she liked him, she loved birds. And he had killed her favorite bird of all.