The Choice

He sat alone in the tiny apartment. Darkness surrounded him, and the silence of the one bedroom prison he had spent the last two years in amplified how alone he felt in this place. He looked around the small bland bedroom and stared at the empty walls and mounds of clothes on his floor. He had long ago lost the motivation to even so much as fold or put away laundry, on the rare occasions he even cared enough to do the wash. A lone picture sat on the dresser next to his bed. Him at 18, holding the love of of his life, wearing his dress uniform and smiling. He no longer recognized the young man in that picture. For being only a few years old there was nothing of that confident, happy young man left. Even though he came home from the war, the man he was looking at had died there.

He pushed aside a few beer cans, letting them fall to the floor, warm days old beer splashing into the carpet as he picked up the wooden frame and brought it close. He was looking at her now, regret, anger, and sadness filled his mind. A million ‘what ifs’ always came to mind whenever he thought about their life together. For almost a decade they had been an almost perfect couple. Then just months after he came home she had left, unable to stand the man he had become and the coldness that now filled him.

He put the picture back face down on the dresser and picked up the bottle that had been sitting beside him on the floor. He brought the plastic bottle of warm, cheap whiskey to his lips and drunk deeply from it. It was hot and bitter, cheap, and burned all the way down. But he wasn’t drinking for enjoyment, he was seeking the last bit of strength he needed for this night. He drained about half the bottle, feeling almost sick from the harsh cheap liquor as he sat the bottle down on the floor.

He picked up his phone, and looked at his call log, almost a week since anyone had even called or texted him, with the exception of telemarketers, his asshole boss, or some monotone voice mail from the V.A. letting him know his appointments were being pushed back again. Just more people who couldn’t care less about the man now that he no longer served a purpose for them. He lightly touched the message button and for a second thought about reaching out to someone, anyone, from his past that he thought might want to talk, or could still care. But they had their own problems and he wasn’t willing to put his issues on someone else. The warm haze of the liquor was finally working its way to his head and he felt tears forming in his eyes. The weight in his chest becoming heavier as he sat thinking over the last few years and who he had become. He wept.

With a final sense of purpose, he pulled the bottom drawer open, and removed the heavy black revolver from the drawer. His hands were shaking and his vision blurred as he fumbled to open the cylinder and pick up the loose shell rolling in the bottom of the drawer. His fingers trembled and it took him a second to place the single round into the chamber and close the cylinder. With tear stained cheeks and a shaking hand he laid back head propped against the wall. He placed the cold metal barrel against the base of his chin, and felt his tremors running from his hands through the barrel and creating a light vibration through his jaw. He knew from loading the weapon that the round was in the fourth chamber. He hoped the three dry fires would give him the courage, or he would forget and this would be the time he actually had the strength to go through with this.

He felt the light vibration as the hammer fell on the first empty chamber. He though of the warm July Day when he got the message that she was ending it with him, a seven year relationship ended with a short text message from someone who could no longer stand who he was. As the hammer fell on the second, he though of that day when he was given his discharge papers, the country he had given his youth and health to sent him on his way with no care or help, just a hollow ‘thank you for your service’ as it determined he was no longer of use. On the third he thought of the numerous trips to the V.A., desperately trying to get his disability started, or even just someone to talk to him, treat him like a human, or even pretend they cared, and the relentless calls from debt collectors hounding him for money he didn’t have and couldn’t make.

He closed his eyes, felt the last few tears squeeze out and roll down his face, as he put his thumb on the hammer, and brought the fourth chamber under the hammer…