Page 41 of I Am the Messenger

"Scared out of your mind?"

"Yes."

"Exactly."

I follow him over to the edge, aim the gun, and make sure.

The trigger sweats across my finger.

My shoulders ache.

Breathe, I remind myself. Breathe.

A moment of peace shatters me and I pull the trigger. The noise of it burns through my ears, and just like the day of the bank robbery, the gun now feels warm and soft in my hand.

part two: The Stones of Home

Dryness.

I stagger out of the car and slip toward the flyscreen door. There's a feeling in me that resembles complete and utter desolation. It trips through me. No. It zigzags. I don't care that I'm a messenger anymore. The guilt of it handles me. I shrug it off, but always it climbs back on. No one said this was going to be easy.

The gun.

All I can feel in my hand is the gun. The warm, soft metal merging with my skin. It's in the trunk of the cab now, cold again and stony, feigning innocence.

As I walk toward the porch, I hear his body hit the earth again. I think it was a shock to him that he was still alive. Each breath he took was a gasp, sucking up life, collecting it, to keep. It was over. I'd shot at the sun, but of course it was too far. At the time, I wondered vaguely where the bullet landed.

Often on the way back, my tires retreading the path we'd driven, I looked over at the passenger seat. It was filled with emptiness. An aftermath of a dead man was probably still lying on the flat, flat earth, breathing up the dirt till it lined his lungs.

I find that all I want to do is make it inside and hug the Doorman. I hope he hugs me back.

We share a coffee.

"Good?" I ask him.

Brilliant, he answers.

Sometimes I wish I was a dog.

The sun's well and truly up and people are going to work. I sit at the kitchen table and feel quite sure that no one on my anonymous, dew-covered street has had a night like mine. I picture them all getting up in the night to have a leak or having orgasms together in their beds--while I was out channeling the end of a gun into the neck of another human. Why me? I think, but typically, no answer is forthcoming. I only know it would have been nice to be making love instead of attempting murder. I feel like I've lost something, and my coffee's getting cold. The stench of the Doorman reaches up and pats me. His sleeping comforts me, in spite of my thoughts.

The phone rings pretty soon.

Oh no, you can't handle this, Ed.

It's them, isn't it?

My heartbeat doubles. It tangles itself up.

An incompetent pulse.

I sit.

The phone rings.

Fifteen times.

I step over the Doorman, stare at the receiver, and finally decide to pick it up. My voice crumbles in my throat.