Page 92 of Devious Gambit

THIRTY SIX

Jace

I was under a mesmerizing spell watching the snow fall, waiting for the windscreen to be covered completely in white. The radio was on, but I wasn’t really listening to it. My phone was beeping with notification signals, but I wasn’t really registering it.

On my lap was a handgun.

It was Cody who taught me how to fire a gun when were kids, using cans on a fence as target practice. A handgun didn’t exactly feel comfortable in my hand, but it certainly didn’t feel like a foreign object. I knew how to load a gun with bullets and I knew how to fire one, so you could say, I could protect myself if push came to shove.

It ends here.

I struggled to see my future as anything but an endless cave in pitch black, sharps rocks under my bare feet, and the sound of the ocean in the distance. I just couldn’t reach it. I just couldn’t quite see a way out. There’s no light at the end of this cave, just more of the same. Darkness. Nothingness. A void.

Another couple of inches and the windscreen will be completely white.

Lake Michigan was my chosen destination and I found a park by the Theater on the Lake. I figured I’d honor Chicago and KV all in one go, being by a lake the state was named after. Michigan; Ojibwa word for ‘large lake.’ Actually, I wasn’t thinking too deeply about anything. Fuck it. Fuck them all.

The gun belonged to Erin.

She called it her ‘escape piece.’ She kept it in the third drawer in her home office desk. A couple of years back, I stumbled across it when I was searching for some paperclips. It was bundled up in a sheet of purple velvet at arm’s reach. She said then it was her escape plan when life and her disease got too hard.

Now, it was my escape plan.

The windscreen was completely covered in white.

It was time.

I checked the bullets were loaded correctly. It had to be one bullet, one shot. I didn’t want a slow death or to be so seriously injured that I couldn’t shoot myself again.

One bullet. One shot.

I placed the muzzle in my mouth and gazed at the vision of white before me. I wondered for a second if anyone was going to greet me on the other side. My great grandparents, maybe.

I felt for the trigger and was about pull it when a message came through on my phone. My eyes traveled to the device lying on the seat next to me. Gallagher’s name flashed up on the screen, replying to the message I sent her hours ago.

Gallagher: Merry Christmas to you too.

The distraction unnerved me, pulling me away from my objective. I couldn’t concentrate and lowered the gun to ring her.

“I thought you hated me,” I reminded her when she finally answered the phone. I imagined her staring at it, wondering if it was wise to answer it.

She hesitated before she replied, “I do.” The sound of her voice prickled my skin all over.

“Most people don’t answer calls from people they hate,” I told her.

“I know, but it’s Christmas, so I thought why not?”

“Did you get the gift?”

“I’m looking at it now. I especially love the Dante quote.”

“That dude has a lot of good things to say. It was hard choosing which quote to use.”

She chuckled. “I like that one. From a poem of unrequited love.”

“Was it? Bad choice, maybe.”

“Not really.”

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