An attempt at a second-person short story, in a psuedo-film noir drama type. |
First Job Your hands are clammy and cold. As if all life has flowed out of them, into the cold alloy of steel and nickel. That noise, that horrible noise is rattling around in your eardrum. It must have lasted a second. A millisecond. It continues for an eternity. That's how long you've been standing here. Forever. You've always been in this position, looking down into those eyes, which in their last moments displayed a brilliant depth brought on by emotional feedback they may have never felt before. You've always heard that noise, that ear-splitting crack. Somehow, you try to convince yourself that you haven't been here forever. That you've never really been here in the first place. This is a dream, you say, this can't be real. I can't murder. Yet you still stand in the same place and still look down into those brilliant blue eyes that will forever haunt you and still hear that shot ring out into the night, through the shatter of rain on the flooded cement. You can't stop. You can't move. You really can't even breathe. Somewhere in the back of your numbed mind, somewhere you've been taught to ignore ever since you were young, you hear a voice. A calm, reassuring voice which crackles into life as a mere whisper. You don't know what it is saying, not exactly anyways. But meaning trickles through your whole body. Justification. Necessity. For the greater good. He deserved it. These are some of the phrases of meaning now running through your body. And as you slowly begin to believe what it is saying, slowly understand that you're done, you don't need to fear anymore, you begin to breathe again. The noise finally begins to die. Forever ends. And then begins again. Because that is how long you now have. Forever. Lifetimes. You can now finally let comfort settle in. This is your new life. Your new forever. And you can now completely ignore the other voice. The ringing in your ears which sprang from the gunshot and then crawled back into the dark recesses of your mind, patiently awaiting forever to end (as you know, deep down, it will). The whisper which you will run away from for a lifetime. Murderer. Last Job It doesn't hurt. Not anymore. The fear is gone too. You didn't expect that. You no longer cringe when you look down at your blood soaked hands. You face death now, and you can't feel the shivers run down your spine as you contemplate that this is really the end. No second chances. No excuses. Nothing entirely matters anymore. No one will remember you. No one will care that you're gone. You will live on for maybe 2 more days in other people's words, as they mention in passing that you were killed "on the job". Then you will be gone. Forever. Here, now, as the black closes around your eyes... As your head's constant throbbing finally cools down... You finally feel a pang of something you've never sensed before, at least not for a lifetime. Regret. You could have lived so differently. You could have left a legacy. You could have lived on, forever. But that was then. This is now. Now is ending so fast... And you realize the true trap you fell into was time. Forever. You thought you had it. You thought you controlled it. You thought it was your safeguard, your backup. Only now do you realize... Forever never existed in the first place. Feeling returns. Now you're cold. You can't see anymore. The stars aren't shining. Only rolling clouds, never-ending into the horizons... The voices are all quieting down, for the first time you can remember. You take in one deep breath of rigid, freezing air. Forever ends. |