- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
Fate moved her like a chess piece. Simon marched, left arm locked straight, gripping the gun firmly. He felt like one of Alec’s action figures and wondered, as the blonde woman in the black raincoat appeared from around the corner, if he would be able to pull the trigger or if the gun would just sit atilt in his hand uselessly; plastic fingers frozen by fear. This is what risk felt like, the on rush of reality and the question of immobility. Simon knew it was why he’d never rolled the dice before, the whale of uncertainly swallowing him, and like Jonah, he found terrified salvation in the dark. Closer. Closer still. Her hair was wavy, messed. She was looking across Hess, away from him, now waiting for the crosswalk signal. A sixteen wheeler semi pulled up with the whine of its breaks and started a wide right onto Gammons. Simon raised his arm, elbow still locked with action-figure rigidity. The truck continued its slow turn and Simon wanted this done before the vehicle cleared the corner. He crossed the final distance between toil and ease, poor and rich, life and death, and stopped walking when the barrel of the gun nuzzled the back of her head. He was death, the winter, the raging force of a tsunami and he saw the eyes of his children as she reacted to the metal touching her head. “Oh,” she said. And that’s when he knew her, seized by undeniable familairity. “I’m sorry,” she stated, quietly resigned. And Simon, frightened but sharp with anger from her disheveled hair and the fact he knew she’d left a lover’s embrace only moments prior, broke his plastic mold, threaded his finger around the trigger and pulled. The gun whispered and the bed-matted blonde hair exploded in a mess of crimson. She fell immediately, lifeless after a single shot to the head. The truck completed its turn. The buildings groaned against the echo of its roaring engine and the sun blasted him in a spotlight as if he should take a bow. The gray sidewalk seeped in the red of her memories and guilt, and Simon slid the gun into his pocket and ran down Hess, toward where she’d come from. He half-expected to see Jaimie down there, smelling of sex and Simon’s wife’s sweat. (To be continued…)