This chapter is named, A Deal Called Death. Let me give you the set-up for this scene… Matty, the main character, is about to kill himself! That’s it. No more. You have to read for yourself. Give the snippet a read and decide if it’s a story you’d like to partake in.
Page 1
Matty pauses for a few seconds and again begins to speak to his reflection in the mirror. His reflection had almost become another person in his eyes. He wholly disconnected from the fact he was the same person on both sides of that mirror. He cried, and his voice sounded a bit muddled. But he pushed on and continued to talk to the fat man who stared back at him.
“ I wished you could have been six-feet-two-inches tall—maybe even six-foot-three, but you’re not!” He shook his head from left to right and then wiped his eyes free of tears. “Nope, you’re a mere five-foot-six inches tall. Shit, I guess you can let that one slide. We can’t have everything, can we?”
He looked directly into his reflection’s eyes. “How about your eyes? Maybe blue? No? What about green?” He put his head down and shook it rapidly again. “No, no, they couldn’t even be a cool-ass gray color. We would have loved a cool gray color. Naw, Matty’s eye’s had to be brown.”
He pulled his lower left eyelid down to see his eye color more clearly. “Look, they are shit brown at that!” Frustrated, he let go of his eyelid, threw his hands in the air and shook his body dramatically then slapped his hands down on his thighs in disgust. “FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! YOU WANTED TO BE THIN AND ATHLETIC, BUT HERE YOU STAND, A THREE-HUNDRED-AND-SIX-POUND PILE OF SLOUCHY SHIT!” he yelled. “YOU, MATTY, SUCK AND ARE NOT WORTH SAVING! YOU’RE FUCKING PATHETIC!” He finishes with an angry glare.
As he glared at his reflection, he noticed it’s holding a gun in its left hand. Matty’s reflection, facing the barrel of the weapon, twisted the flat part of the magazine clip from side to side for Matty to see. It was as though his reflection tried to frighten Matty into stopping him from killing them both. It didn’t even phase Matty.
Matty watched his reflection with a sense of intrigue. It was as if he was watching a new thriller at the movie theater. What would to happen to his reflected self? They were in a game of chicken without cars. There was an eerie silence that neither was willing to break. Matty and the reflected image of himself, stand, both stern, both have their heads cocked a bit to one side. Matty’s was cocked to the right, just touching the barrel of the gun. His reflection was to the left, also slightly grazing the barrel of the gun. Matty’s reflected self finally breaks the tension.
“You see, Matty? You can’t be six-feet-two, and you can’t have green eyes, and you can’t change the way you lived as a child. It is what it is. We can’t change what Em did all those years ago. We can’t change the fact Josh turned out to be an asshole. And we can’t change the fact Gamma died!”
Matty, full of tension, flexed his fingers the same ones wrapped around the gun handle. He raised his pinky, and as he laid it back down, he lifted his ring finger. As he lays that down, up comes his middle finger. It was like a fan-filled stadium doing the wave in unison. He did that twice and then squeezed back down on the grip of the gun tightly. He stared again at his reflection in anger, and this time he decided to speak.
Page 2
“You always thought your word meant everything. I can’t control anything else in this world, but I can control if I will stay true to my word.” He paused and looked back at his bed behind him where the picture of his Gamma was. “Gamma, I gave you my word that I would wait ten years before harming myself. I hoped things would be better, and I trusted that they would be. I don’t blame you, but you were wrong. I still feel the pain of my heart being ripped from my body that day. I still feel the pain of not having Em in my life. I have no friends. I don’t have you. I stuck to my word, now can you please stick to yours and allow me the strength to stick to my promise? My word to myself, to take my own life?” He waited for an answer.
His answer came with a sense of calmness. Matty softly turned back to face his reflection in the mirror. His tears were soft and more of a sniffle than a cry. His reflected self was calm, and Matty knew it understood what they had to do.
He shut his eyes tightly for about three or four seconds then opened them wide. “Pull the trigger, Matty,” he said. “All your life you have been afraid. Don’t let fear beat you anymore!”
His hand trembled, but his reflection smiled, and that seemed to stop the trembles.
“You are Fatty Matty Gumdrop. You will never be able to change that.” His reflection declared.
He took a deep breath and held it; then he slowly released it. As he released his breath, his reflection began to speak. “Please, Matty, for our sanity, please, just pull the fucking trigger!”
Matty shook his head up and down slowly as if to say yes and closed his eyes tightly, and the room went dark. Matty was ready. His reflection prepared itself for its final action in life. Their gun is cocked and ready. He counted down from ten in his mind. When he reached five, a familiar voice in his head took its turn and spoke, breaking his mindful, silent count.
“Life without love is a journey without a destination; however, dying after having had love is reaching a destination without knowing you were ever on a journey. The winds of change will someday fall dark and cold on this warm and peaceful summer season. The sun will run to hide as the vicious rain comes to chase it away. Thunder will roar and mock us in the form of an evil laugh, and many a tree will shake full of fear. That once subtle sound, a bird named Jim, who would sing us that familiar tune, will fly far away. Being replaced that very same day. Instead of music from Jim, a screech of a branch rubbing against a window pane. And now, baby.” He grinned.
“NOW WE DIE!” His Gamma’s voice says to him.
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