Chamber Music

Title: Chamber Music
Note: This was the second in a series of self-imposed writing prompts, and features original characters from my own comic/fiction series, Apostasy...Now?!
Additional Information: The character speaking is the primary character, who, earlier in the series had attempted suicide after being raped.

You hate English class.

Think about your life, and come up with one moment that defines it. Then, imagine that moment is actually a physical thing, like a box. In that box, there is the event, and your thoughts, and how you felt about it. Take these things out and look at them, and write me a paper about them.

Laughter.

Under your bed there is an old shoebox.

The box was your mother's, and for years, you kept colour pencils in it, until Seth bought you that kick-ass art table you'd been nagging him for.

You reach under your bed to pull it out.

The box is grey now, instead of white, and the sides are mostly duct tape.

It has been a long time since you opened this box. Inside it are only four things.

The set of rosary beads that had once belonged to your grandmother gleams a little in the low light. Holding them up to the light, you smile a little at the soft, worn warmth of these ageless green stones. The last time you touched these was when you held them up to the woman at the salon, and said, "This Exact Shade. Yeah. Green."

There are also two photographs.

The first one shows a boy and a girl who look as though they should be going to the prom, rather than to the altar. She is smiling brilliantly, and he is looking to the side, an almost confused expression on his face. You found that in her purse once when you were nine years old, and you took it, because she always ended up losing stuff like this, or else she threw it away. Once, she burned all of your baby pictures and cried, and when she looked up at you, she didn't know who you were because the drugs in her system were choking her mind out of her...

The second photograph is ripped in two. One side of it is gone, and you have no idea what's become of it. In the remaining section, two boys stand side by side, smiling. The missing third party's hand is on your own shoulder, resting on the centre boy's back. There are tearstains just above Daken's head, and you can clearly hear the soft splat of them as they fell. The sounds of your own screams were strangely quiet to you at that moment, but the teardrops sounded like thunder.

Crazy.

The final item is one you bought for yourself on a whim.

See, in your wallet, there is a little piece of plastic that you paid the boy with the Neo-Nazi wardrobe to print for you in Graphic Arts. It buys you liquor, it buys you porn, it used to buy Daken cigarettes until he coughed up the $50 to get his own, and it bought you this gun.

You don't know a thing about calibers and molds, but to you, it seems pretty enough, for a gun.
It would be small, if your hands weren't more so.
Silver.
Shiny.
Heavy..
Simultaneous strains of both Springsteen and System of a Down vie for dominance in your brain when you touch it.

Guns are very cold.

Most people do not realize this, because most people do not press them to their own temple.

You did it, though.
No one will ever get that.
Tanien doesn't get that.

See, it never matters what happens to you next.
It doesn't matter, not for the rest of your whole life, if you live to be a thousand, because you did it.
You did.

You committed suicide.

You did it.

You pulled the trigger.

You put the gun to your own head.
You crouched here, in the corner by the window, and you put this shiny, pretty gun to your head.
You could hear him out there in the hallway, shouldering his weight against hard wood and screaming for you to open the door, and you...

You...

Pulled
The Trigger.

Soiled.
Dirty.
Unclean.
Used.
Trigger.
Dead.
BANG
Clean Slate.
Okay.

Only, you didn't buy any bullets, and apparently, the chambers don't come pre-furnished.

Motherfuckers.

You climb up to your knees, and climb over to the desk, and open the drawer under the one where you keep the colour pencils now. The box you bought last week is still there, wrapped in plain brown paper.

12 little bullets for $29.95 that live in a box named Caution.

Caution.

You snort.

It's a lot heavier with something in it, you realize.

"A man's sport..." You murmur.

Standing up, you kick the box back under the bed.

"Yeah, baby, called Life..."

And you laugh when you realize that you're probably going to fail English again this six weeks.