Click

There was a whirring noise, and Jack set down the bottle of whiskey after taking a stiff swig. Then a brief snapping noise. Jack then turned off the Television that he had playing in the background. He had always hated the basic idea of Television, fake friendship, fake believers, fakers faking life for people who refused to live their own.

Not to mention that Television made Jack pass right out and no matter how he tried he just couldn't get past that first ten minutes of any mindless sitcom, much less a documentary on the breeding habits of the Mongolian Butt Toad.

Jack raised the whiskey glass to his lips and took a quick swallow and grimaced from the deep burning sensation that went down his throat and wafted up to his nose. Like the smell of a doctor's office right before being stuck with a needle, the whiskey wafted through his sense of smell. The shot glass just rubbed barely against his lips as he rolled it across his mouth before setting it back down.

Click.

Jack laughs for a second. "Shit, you never know." He flicked through the pictures on the table before him, his mother had passed last year and he sat pouring over a pile of pictures that seems rather scarce for the 38 years that he knew her. How could he only have 75 pictures of him and his mother from the day he was born to the day that she was finally ate apart by the cancer that rotted away who she was long before she ever really left. There were pictures of him at his first birthday party, his mother still young and beautiful, her hair jet black and her eyes like shining pools of joy. Her smile was radiant and was everything good in the world.

Is there anything better than a mother to anyone? Jack supposed not.

There was a picture of Jack riding his bicycle with his mother right before his father left them when he was eight years old, he supposed that his father was the person taking the picture though it was nicer to think it was someone else who took the picture.

Click.

Jack grunts and takes another shot, and then stares at the other various pictures on the table in front of him. He only has one of him and his father, his father who sent tattered birthday cards a week late every year until he was 18, when he no longer had to pay child support. Then since he didn't have any other reason to remember Jack seems to have forgotten about him.

He heard from one of his various step-brothers, from his fathers various marriages after his mother, that his father died while taking a shit on a toilet. An aneurysm had burst in his brain. They said it was painless that he didn't suffer.

Jack wondered if he would burn in hell for hoping that he did suffer.

Father and Son relationships are often love and hate. But Jack's feelings about his worthless father were definitely more toward the hate side.

Jack said to the air, "Shit, people worry about getting to heaven, I'm worried there is one."

Click.

He took another shot of whiskey and knocked over his shot glass wetting several pictures on the single person table that he was sitting at. He quickly got up and went to the sink and pulled out a few handy paper towels and wiped off the offended pictures. As he did he saw one from four years before. He remembered that picture well, in it he was smiling and holding Suzanne's hand. What had went wrong he often wondered before everything had unraveled between them.

She was the sweetest person he had ever met, but every time he spoke to her in the end all he saw was sadness in her eyes and he couldn't bear it. The divorce was finalized three years after that picture, two years after his mothers death.

Irreconcilable differences.

Irreconcilable silences.

Irreconcilable quiet.

He never cheated on her, he was certain she hadn't either. Oh not that he hadn't been tempted, but you can't be human and not have those temptations. No, it came down to a lot of small things that just built up over time and many wrongs said when they shouldn't have been. Pain led to suffering, and suffering led to numbness, numbness... well it led to a severing.

Sometimes Jack found that the most important things aren't said at all.

Click.

Jack began to cry.

His arm shook and he couldn't hold it up anymore.

Jack looked down at the Colt 357 he held in his hand and saw that when he had spun the barrel, somehow the bullet ended up in the last chamber.

One more pull.

One more bit of pressure, and this would all be gone.

Two pounds of pressure against the trigger according to the manufacturer.

Just two pounds; That's more than a baby weighs in its mothers belly at 5 months pregnancy.

Just barely smaller than the cancer lump they pulled out of his mothers head right before she died.

In the background the phone began to ring, and Jack looked down at the gun again.

Jack picked up the phone.

"Jack?"

"Hey?"

"What are you up to?"

"Just looking over old pictures you know me, always the ponderer."

A laugh came over the phone, "Hey, I've been thinking, wanna go to dinner? You busy?"

Jack said, "No."

"Oh" she said.

Jack laughed, "Oh! I mean, no I am not busy. Yes I would love dinner with you."

"Ok see you in a bit"

"Ok. Can you come pick me up? I have had a few drinks." Jack said then picked up the whiskey and poured it down the drain of his dirty sink.

The voice laughed again "Same ol' Jack." Then she said, "Of course, we'll get a cab, see you in an hour then." and hung up.

Click.