Whiskey and Guns: Always a Good Idea

It was a hot humid summer day down in South Carolina; Rex had traveled all the way down here from his home in Washington to hangout with his old war buddy Dale.  Dale had invited Rex down to his house out in the middle of the styx because he knew the man could use a little vacation time.  Rex gladly agreed to the invite, and went down as soon as he could.  The two had been the best of friends ever since they went through Special Forces training together.

            Sitting on the back porch enjoying nature with a bottle of Jack Daniels in between them, the two were having a grand old time.  It didn’t take long for their old competitive nature to kick in.

            “I bet I can drink you under the table, you always were a little Nancy boy when it came to handling your alcohol,” challenged Dale

           

“I’ll take that bet you stupid hick,” Rex said as he grabbed the bottle poured himself a shot and immediately downed it.  After about half an hour the bottle was entirely gone and both were plenty drunk by this point.

“Well that didn’t settle anything, we both had twelve shots and are still standing,” said Rex.

“Clearly we should settle this like the gentleman we are, I’ll go grab some guns.  You grab some cans, we’ll see who has better aim” said Dale.

 Now Rex knew alcohol and guns were not a smart idea, for regular people at least.  But this was not his first rodeo, he had shot firearms while trashed plenty of times before with his old war buddies.  They reasoned they were trained to handle their firearms after going days on end without sleeping, and it only takes three days without sleep before you are legally considered drunk, so this activity was perfectly safe for them.

Well Dale got the guns and Rex set up the cans deep in the woods were they usually went.  Rex was up first, and managed to perfectly shoot down all ten cans with ten shots.

“Well it looks like I still got it,” Rex managed to drunkenly say.

“It appears your not completely useless after all.  Be a dear and set up the next round for me?”  Dale asked, and Rex cordially agreed.

He stumbled over to the rack that held the cans and attempted to hop over the ditch that was right and front of it but drunkenly failed and fell in.  He could hear Dale laughing his ass off at the sight while he was sitting in the ditch then suddenly he felt an extremely sharp pain in his neck.  It was rattlesnake, an eastern diamondback to be more precise.  The little bastard must have been hunting, that’s why it never made a sound.

Rex let out a sigh of pain but Dale didn’t pay it any mind and continued laughing his ass off.  Rex knew he was fucked.  The bastard had bit him in the neck, right near a main vein, he could hope that it was only a dry bight, and no venom would come out, but he could somehow feel it running through him.  If it bit him anywhere else he knew he would live but that bastard had hit him in the sweet spot.