Shooting Owls

by Abraham Torres
(Yuma, Arizona)

One night as I lay on my bed trying to go to sleep, I heard an owl screech and shirk into the night. The terrible noise that came out of the owl was so horrid that it made you play that same sound over and over again in your head. The noise proved too much as I tossed and turned trying to comfort my body to sleep. That did no good.

The owl's noise was too much for me to stand for a minute longer. My next action was quick and without thought. I grabbed my rifle and stepped outside and waited for that horrid screech. Finally there was a brief silence that seemed eternal. Then that horrid screech again. Without thought I aimed my rifle and down dropped the owl from the tree that it stood on. I sighed in relief and went back into bed.... I slept pretty good that night.

The next mourning as I woke up, I decided to go see the owl that I shot. There, under the tree, laid the corpse of an old lady, dead from a gun shot wound.

People who knew her say that she often practiced witchcraft.