This is pretty self-expalatory. |
The barrel of the rifle tastes dark, oily. I have shoved it far enough in my mouth to choke. Cool metal grazes my tonsils. There is a succinct note taped to my chest. Its one brief line reads, "I'm sorry." Nothing more needs to be said. Every millisecond bears the weight of an hour. Details swim @ me from all angles: the distant drip of a faucet, the low drone of the AC. The broken clock whose second hand perpetually alternates between 1:32:45 & 1:32:46. Its stilted ticking is a death rattle. The detail most prominent in my mind, however, is the mirror on the kitchen table. Two lines of coke are cut there, waiting for the nose that will never come. I had gotten so far as to lower my head to the mirror, rolled twenty in hand, when I realized I could no longer hide form my problems under the influence of drugs. My tired brain longed for a stronger, more permanent substance: Oblivion. I know behind me the family portrait hangs. A mom, a dad, and a smiling twelve year-old. Five years and ages later, the faery-tale facade has fallen through, and mommy's in an institution, daddy's facing years of jail-time, and darling daughter is sticking a gun in her mouth. And they all live happily ever after. It is both pointless and painfull to recall the past. Somewhere, a dog barks, extracting me from my thoughts. I discover tears sliding down my cheeks. That won't do. I wipe @ my eyes, and my fingertips come back black. Best be on w/ it. I want to die before I lose my composure completely. Please grant me that last dignity. My mouth is tired. The taste of the rifle is now the taste of blood, & I suppose there isn't much difference anymore. I kick off my shoe and put my toe on the trigger. "Sorry," I whisper around the barrel. Pull. It is as though I am both in my body and across the room. I can feel my mouth burn as the rifle's flash illuminates my teeth from w/in. The thunderous crack of the gun begats deafening silence. As my head snaps back, strings of crimson gore and blood-mottled clots of hair splat against my family's picture. A few droplets of backspray fly to the mirror, dyeing some of the cocaine red. Acrid smoke pours from my mouth and nostrils. The calamity over, the room has returned to being nothing more than random details. The dripping faucet. The unused cocaine. The faces of my past smeared w/ blood and the part of my brain that made me snort when I laughed and sing in the shower. And the clock. ...1:32:46... ...1:32:45... ...1:32:46... |