Alexmiotti
08-08-2010, 12:51 AM
I am an insecure, spiteful, and weary man. My head is an anchor and my heart is a broken mast. Even as I sit in my back yard, the salty air kissing my scarred chest, the dragonflies dancing down over the steps of my small sea, I find no relief. I pick up my pistol then set it back on the stone table. I notice once again the tattoos on my wrists winding up my right arm to my shoulder. Promises, memories and threats patched together on a canvas of skin and flesh. My regrets are my own, yet I wear them like the medals on a soldier. The years at sea have made my bitterness over take my confidence and my impulse outweigh my fidelity. I no longer bear the name of my father for I could never stand to see him attached to the atrocities I have committed. I prefer to keep my name to myself, it like my regrets are my own.
I look back out over the beach. On nights such as these it tends to offer me no such distraction from the storms that are my thoughts, but tonight is different. A small fire adds what light it can and a couple open up a bottle of what I assume is wine some thirty meters away. I can see their silhouettes behind a castle of sheets and whale bones. I can hear their laughter as the effects of the wine begin to seep in. I take a deep breath of the cold air and feel the pistol’s trigger on my finger. The barrel is smooth and its pressure against my head is surprisingly relieving.
It isn’t long before I feel the muzzle on my temple, tracing my jaw line and ending under my chin. I am tired of this, this isn’t life, this is simply existence. I load my last bullet into my revolver and place it back on the stone table. I look up to the sky and make peace with my God. I thank him for the opportunities he’s given me and apologize for this life I’ve wasted. I pick the pistol back up and recount my failures and successes. Once more I thank God and stare straight down the barrel of the gun.
Screams, not my own, cut through the night like so many from my past. I avert my eyes from the gun and point them and the gun in the direction of the sound. The small fire is now smoldering and I can barely make out the shape of the man pulling the girl out of their make shift castle by her hair. It is only by my years of experience navigating through the night that I make out the man pounce on the woman and begin choking her. And it is only by my calloused heart that I waste the bullet on myself.
I look back out over the beach. On nights such as these it tends to offer me no such distraction from the storms that are my thoughts, but tonight is different. A small fire adds what light it can and a couple open up a bottle of what I assume is wine some thirty meters away. I can see their silhouettes behind a castle of sheets and whale bones. I can hear their laughter as the effects of the wine begin to seep in. I take a deep breath of the cold air and feel the pistol’s trigger on my finger. The barrel is smooth and its pressure against my head is surprisingly relieving.
It isn’t long before I feel the muzzle on my temple, tracing my jaw line and ending under my chin. I am tired of this, this isn’t life, this is simply existence. I load my last bullet into my revolver and place it back on the stone table. I look up to the sky and make peace with my God. I thank him for the opportunities he’s given me and apologize for this life I’ve wasted. I pick the pistol back up and recount my failures and successes. Once more I thank God and stare straight down the barrel of the gun.
Screams, not my own, cut through the night like so many from my past. I avert my eyes from the gun and point them and the gun in the direction of the sound. The small fire is now smoldering and I can barely make out the shape of the man pulling the girl out of their make shift castle by her hair. It is only by my years of experience navigating through the night that I make out the man pounce on the woman and begin choking her. And it is only by my calloused heart that I waste the bullet on myself.