Chapter 68

68

Inadequate.
Incompetent.
Impotent.
A calculated cut across my arm.
I can’t feel anything anymore.

I’ve locked the door for the final time, settled myself in front of my typewriter. The sound of the flames engulf the house around me. I’m a character in a burning book who has finally discovered that the end of his novel is just like the beginning. Cyclical, bound by a hardened outer shell, there is no need to escape the flames. Everything in between can be read out of order, a hodgepodge collection of memories that are creeping in under the door. They’re suffocating. But of course they are. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

A .44 across my lap.
A .44 complete with shells.
I am leaving it you.
I am leaving this.
Maybe you’ll miss me.

Coughing. Choking. Lungs breathing in the billowing smoke. I can see the kitchen from here, succumbing to the heat. The clock, remember the clock? I was fighting...with you...with myself...with the wind surrounding me. It matters not which. I took this same gun. The gun across my lap. And put a bullet into the midnight hour. The flames are tickling at it’s toes. Soon both hands will melt together. But I wasn’t there to see it.

It was quick.
A thought struck me.
Like an arctic breeze.
That 50 years was simply too long.
To be over in an instant.

And I laid there for days. My body waiting for your arrival. I thought you might come back, I thought you’d need to see if I was ok. Charred from the fire, they had a hard time recognizing me from the pieces of smoldering timber lying around me. The gunshot took off the back of my head. And the flames engulfed me. I wish you would have called.

But I wouldn’t have answered.
You could have called.
And I couldn’t have answered.
I died so very long ago.
When suddenly I stopped answering.

These words seem so hollow and meaningless now that everything lies in ruin around me. Hollow and meaningless as the surrounding air grows silent. Hollow and meaningless as I become smaller, and smaller, my memory fading, ashes of my former self being carried away by the wind. Hollow and meaningless because I am no longer here, or there, or anywhere for that matter. Hollow and meaningless until I am left with only one sentence...one sentence that summarizes my time here with you. One sentence that is neither hollow or meaningless:

Within you, I had found a home.

And those words will linger in the air long after the wind blows this all away.