“Five…four…three…two…one….” He sighs. I close my eyes. “Five…four…three…two…one….” The cold metal presses farther into my skull and my skin into it. Shaking. Bruising. Waiting. I take a deep breath and open my eyes to yell. Just do it. But the gun jerks back before I can. The bang drowns out the plea. The flame drains out my life. He looks at the ceiling, allowing the fluorescents to glare into my eyes, and he throws the gun away. It rattles and scrapes across the cold tile floor. And stops. The silence fills with buzzing, covering the murmurs from the hallway. It is replaced by footsteps, and an alarm is replaced by his cries. Tears make a stream from the corners of his closed eyes…in front of his ears…down his throat. He growls and his eyes fly open with a gasp revealing…what is that? Hope? Faith? Had something gone wrong?
Or right? He looks from my hand…up my arm...my shoulder…and my skull. His face crinkles and he looks back to the ceiling, though he still sees it. The entrance—a star. The exit—same size. A child’s first painting splattered across his knee and the old, hard floor. Was it like I’d imagined? Like the research? “No, no, no—” he keeps repeating it. Over and over. Voice clenched. Rocking back and forth. Looking at the bright white room. My body pressed to his. Too close. “—No, no, no, no, no.” He finally squints back at me. Right in my glass eyes, framed in crimson. Tears drip from his, down flushed cheeks, filling cracks his mouth discovers, and then to my chest…down my shoulders…my sticky blonde hair. He traces the blood back to the start. It’s swollen—warped, with a dark outline of the barrel near the center. He purses his lips and looks straight ahead. Shaking. Still rocking. Still crying. Still whispering, “No.” Finally, back down. He wipes at the tears on his cheeks to no avail. They’re replaced just as fast, but now the blood splatter is smeared too. His hand lands over his mouth in a fist. His face crinkles again. His lips pull back. Yellowing teeth. Saliva strings from them to his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He tries to force my eyelids down. They fight to stay open—always three-quarters. He gives up before they do. He moves hair out of my face, his hand coming back glistening red. His stomach clenches against my arm to hold back a scream that he will surely release later. He stops breathing and bares his teeth, eyes shut as tight as he forces his throat to remain. Finally, a moan disrupts the silence and he gasps for air before continuing to sob, jostling the body he is convincing himself isn’t in his lap… Gone. But, I am there. Gone. He clutches my body and pulls me in, too tight, adding his tears to my now-crimson hair. My nose—bent to the right. My mouth—swinging open. My blood—sticking to his face. He places me back down, exit against his knee, sliding down. Sprinting gets louder. Wiping away tears and replacing them with smudges he would rather not see when he looks in his mirror tonight. He shakes his head. He pulls my hair back out of the entrance and pushes it behind my ears. It sticks, but he continues playing with it until he lets out a shaky sigh. He shuts his eyes tight once more before he jostles my body, pulling his legs out from under it and laying it against the floor. I’m almost as cold as it is. He untangles his fingers from my crimson hair and my head hits the floor—a quiet thump. He leans down and kisses my cheek. The clearest spot. He sniffs as he stands above me, blocking the light. He sighs and stammers numbers until he can convince himself to leave. “Five…four…three…two…one….” Footsteps. Five…four…three…two…one…. Comments are closed.
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