Revenge, xbleedingbulletx [jenna bush book club .TXT] 📗

Her heart shattered along with the silence as the gunfire rang out in the quiet street. As the body beside her crumpled, so did she. All her strength fled and she fell to her knees beside his lifeless form. The gunner fled, his job done and his brutal mind satisfied with the blood of the innocent. Her eyes locked on her lover’s body, she tilted his head, to allow the rain to fall along with her tears onto his sweet, peaceful face. She closed his ice blue, sightless eyes with a shaking but gentle hand. Her body wracked with sobs, she held his body against hers, feeling his slowly losing heat and stiffening with the cold nothingness of death. Her wraith-like shrieks of loss filled the air as she keened her sorrow. Her short black hair was plastered to her head as his brown was to his. She smoothed some curls away from his face, his still, beautiful, cold face, and pressed her hand to her mouth, stifling more cries. The vacant street and pregnant gray clouds suited the mood, for the clouds would soon go, leaving the streets alone and pregnant with water, as he had left her, alone and pregnant with his unborn child. She pressed her hand to her slightly swelled stomach and keened her sorrow that their child would never know its father, and that he had never known he was a father. The day had started so innocently, with plans to take a walk in the street; she was going to tell him the joyful news, and he was going to propose. They had decided after an hour or so of contented conversation, to walk down a more secluded road, to have more privacy. The gunner’s day had started out much differently with his landlord beating on his door and waving an eviction notice in his face. With three hours to get out, he hastily packed, his rage building with every item he stuffed in his tattered bags until it had reached a fierce peak. He felt the smooth metal against his leg, a sharp contrast with the rough denim; the single bullet was originally intended for himself, to end this never ending streak of disappointments, but as he paced the streets in search of a safe place to end it, he spotted the happy couple. His rage peaked even higher than before as a memory surged to the front of his mind. His own fiance slapping him, her free hand on her own pregnant belly, her bags already out in the other man’s car. He snapped back to reality, his head clutched in his hands, eyes scrunched up and stomach ill as if he had been physically punched. His eyes, blackened by hate, shot daggers at the unsuspecting couple. He lifted the gun, seeing himself and his ex fiance instead of that couple. He looked down the sights at the man; in his bizarre, grief warped mind he reasoned that if he could kill this boy, everything would be right again. His finger clenched and the eager bullet leapt from the chamber to fly across the space and right through the man’s heart. He heard the woman’s grief filled wails, and smiled with pleasure at having caused someone else to feel the same aching pain he himself had felt. He turned from the now alone girl and the corpse and quickly walked back down the road, where he discarded the gun in a garbage can, and promptly ran into a police officer in full uniform. The officer turned slowly, reaching out to help the gunner stay on his feet. “You ok there?” the officer...no...Officer Brent, the gunner, Jason, noticed from the name tag. “Um…yea.” Jason stammered back, reminding himself to keep cool, as if nothing had happened and nothing was wrong. “Say, you look like you need a job. Well, we could use another officer. Are you interested?” Officer Brent asked, looking Jason up and down. Jason nodded his head and studied Brent as he asked, “How much is the pay?” Officer Brent laughed and gently slapped Jason on the back. “I like your style…what is your name?” the officer asked, his eyes shining with mirth. “Jason.” “Well Jason, why don’t we go to the station and get you filling out the proper paperwork, eh?” A few months later, after long hours and generous paychecks, Jason proudly unlocked the door to his new home. A big white two bedroom two bath, it was perfect for him and his new girlfriend. They had met not long after he started his new career as a police officer, in a little coffee shop not far from their new home. She hugged him as the movers carried their furniture in and pressed her lips firmly against his. Her face radiated an inner joy as she moved his hand to her enlarged stomach to feel his child moving within her womb. A another couple of months later, he sat on the edge of their bed with his mind spinning. She was at work, leaving him alone with their baby again since he had been laid off. His mind, as it had so many countless times before, had drifted back to that fateful day. The day he ended an innocent man’s life. With his mind clear, he wondered if he had actually saved the man from a horrible mistake, as he had thought before, or just ended a what could have been the start of a wonderful future for the two. His conscience weighed heavy within him, burdened with the knowledge of his own wrong doing. He rocked back and forth on the bed, battling once again with the demons in his mind that waged war every day. He finally grew tired of them and frantically raced through the house, searching and finding a rope, a stool, and a suitable closet. Here, he decided, he would finally end what he had meant to begin. He had tied the rope and climbed onto the stool before he realized that his wife would have no clue why he had done it, and no one else would know why he had to go to extremes. He walked purposefully into the kitchen and, with shaking hands, found pen and paper and began writing his note. His story finally told on the paper, he pinned the declaration to the front of his chest and slid the rough noose around his own neck. With a quick burst of courage, he jumped, and with a final snap, his demons finally ceased their fighting. His wife’s scream rang out and shattered the community’s silence a mere two hours later when she arrived home from work to find her child crying alone in his crib, and her husband hanging in the closet. As she noticed the white on his shirt, she gently pulled it free and began to read.

“If you are reading this, then I am sorry. I love you and our child, but I had to do what must be done. A year ago today, I killed another man, to keep him from a pain I had once experienced. I know I was wrong and I am tired of living with these monsters in my head telling me I am nothing but a sad excuse for a coward. That bullet was meant for me, but in my selfishness, I used it on another and ruined a woman’s future. I am sorry Amanda, please raise our child with love, and let her know that her father did love her. I love you.”

Amanda sank to the floor, the crying of her baby no longer rang in her ears, her body didn’t register the fact that she had hit the floor, her eyes didn’t see the feet of her dead husband dangling a few feet away. Her mind had gone away, gone back to her past, to the day she got the abortion, then back to the day she had held her lover as her tears mingled and fell with the rain on eyes that no longer saw, as her eyes no longer saw.

Publication Date: 05-28-2011

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