Death Row

I remember once the composure of revenge consumed me. Prickling each tentacle of my nerve cells, eradicating any common sense that I once possessed. He’d strike me with no remorse, only desperate madness masking his eyes. This man who whispered ‘I love you’ in my ear in the morning would return home from the pub and take his hand and scapegoat my body for his troubles. It would return me to a stupid state of mind that only a child’s mentality, as I’d thought, could own.

I was drawn to these types. A magnet to a paperclip, I being the defenseless, weaker paper clip. My family was incredulous to my explanations that I gave to the devils rainbow that decorated my limbs and torso. I’d always be falling down the stairs, running into open doors, shutting the car door on my shin. I was never that clumsy as a child, how could I possibly believe that they would trust my word for it.

The shotgun was tucked in the closet. The small, inconspicuous cardboard of shells was tucked inside a towel behind it, as if this would conceal the dark intentions behind each bullet. I found it, by pure accident, one day while rummaging through the closet, desperate to keep my mind occupied from the thoughts that haunted and tore at my minds eye. My arms ached from the evening before beatings, a brand new wooden spoon had to be disposed of afterwards.

I recall my initial shock of discovering the dull metal of the gun barely tracing the edge of the top shelf. My fingers were trembling as I lifted to touch the smooth barrel, animating warily my digits to wrap about it, pulling its heavy bulk from the shelf with a distressed grunt. With both hands barely steady, I traced my widened green sphere down its length. My mind rampaged. What was it there for? How long has it been there? Who’s was it? Was it his?

That night, a night that made me a believer in fate, was the peek of my hatred.

My skin broke with one hit of his belt, splinting droplets of blood across the wall. I screamed and endeavored to escape his rough grasp twisting and chocking the blood from my wrist. I remember begging, with all my heart and soul, trembling and feverish with pain. I just wanted to be left alone! I didn’t want my body to be ravaged for no apparent reason any longer! With a perverse hackle he released my wrist and let me stubble from his looming shadow. I fled. My fingers left memories of blood across the wall that refuse to be painted over till this day as I scrambled to the bedroom, his laughter reverberating behind me. This was a game.

It took only two shots. Two loud, ear piecing roars to stops his laughter. Now his face was filled with blunder, a fitting beginning to the shock that would soon turn into realizations that two holes now pierced and bloodied his shirt. With quivering hands he felt his chest, his legs releasing their strength to leave him stranded on the ground with tears enveloping his eyes. I could do nothing but watch, my heart neither lurched nor mourned that moment. It wasn’t for several minutes that I finally came to from my undivided trance. The shot gun plummet to the floor with a thud as I finally began to recognize what I had just accomplished.

Till this day I’m not sure what took me to that gun and let me handle the trigger so viciously. But I regret it now, not for killing the beast that murdered my soul, but for killing my life by taking his.

And then the needle entered my vein.