Part 1
My father had always kept a gun in the house, for protection, probably. He never told my mother or I why. He was not in a job that required use of a gun, he was not a manic about action and fighting films, but he had a gun in the house. I was probably eleven or twelve when I first found it; that's what happens when you're alone in the house and no games to play. Boredom can make the world anew.
Anyways, I found it, checked it out, and with a beating heart, I jammed it down
my pants and ran to my friend's house. You should have seen his face when I pointed the gun at him and said "Boom."
Me and him had played with it all day. Don't blame me; I was eleven.
When I got home, and when no one was still home, I tried something. I held the gun to my head. I'd seen the bullets next to the gun in that drawer, but I hadn't loaded the gun. With a very unsteady hand, my finger was on the trigger, a tentative grin on my face and adrenaline running through my veins, even when I knew that nothing would happen, if I pulled it. But the idea that something could happen was what fueled everything. What if I left a bullet in there? What if you didn't need a bullet to fire the gun? What if some force, like gunpowder or whatever, blew me up?
I stood there for five minutes, dripping sweat the the very prospect of dying, and then...
I pulled the trigger.
I'm quite happy to say that I never met death... But I was close, as I found out later that, as a matter of fact, there was an extra bullet that I had missed, being so young.
I would have been happier if it was raining. Actually, because it was winter, it might have snowed. However, it had neither snowed or rained or hailed or sleet. Nature had the audacity to grace us with a blue sky and a sun that shined brilliantly. The day was not right. It mocked us, as we buried the body of Jennifer G. Fare.
The lowered her into the earth. The coffin was closed, obviously; who would want to see the mutilated body of a teenage girl, when you were teenage yourself? It was not an open wake, either way.
Everyone wore black, and we were like an abyss of darkness as we stood within the bluff of graves. Although at present it snowed not, last night it had stormed, further showing the ironies of the world. Because of that storm, the landscape was now a land of white and ice. Icicles lined the trees, threatening to fall at any moment. Our black contrasted with the world, as if we were not supposed to be there, as if we mocked nature rather than nature mocking us.
Then again, we shouldn't be here, not at all. She shouldn't die.
They started to cover her coffin with earth, and the task was not easy. The ground was frozen, repelling the shovels. Half of what they dug in was ice and water. I knew that within a couple of weeks, there would be a depression where her grave layed, the ice turned water, and water permeating away.
"How you mock us," I told mother nature.
The parents and relatives of the deceased girl cried. My classmates, particularly the girly girls, cried, or at least put of a front of crying, so they could have their boyfriends hug them and give them warmth. One or two kids just got up and walked away.
I didn't cry.
Two weeks ago, there was a party. It was just New Years, so of course you'd have a party. At Mark Weldon's house, it was the usual super bash, but of course it was more of a blow out than normal, which was every party, basically.
Jennifer, like the rest of the student body (including me), was there. We partied, we played, we drank, we smoked, we screwed. Maybe it was a bit cold, but with alcohol (along with some other unnamed substances) in you, and your body beside another's, you didn't feel the cold. It was a celebration, and that made you warm.
Someone drugged her. They dragged her outside, on the earth, breaking the skin on her back and bottom, making a trail of blood. Into the woods they took her, and they harmed her. When they finished, they had a knife, and they hurt her. When she was crying, they ignored her. When she begged for mercy, that only made them feel better. When she finally lost herself, silent and dreaming for the death that would not come, they were content, even daring to dangle the actualization of her wish in front of her before returning to what they wore doing, denying her. The coroner said they couldn't even recognize her face in the photo.
We screamed as we saw the trail of crimson red, we cried as we saw the bits of skin, we fainted and ran away when we saw the body.
Jennifer had a 3.2 GPA, was one of the cheerleaders, recently broke up with her boyfriends and looking for new love. She liked to text. She liked to talk. She was nice sometimes, she had mood swings the other times. She joked, she played, the got angry and cried, and othertimes she was just bored. By the way, she hated her parents.
She was a teenager.
She was dead.
She was killed.
Murdered.
That was my first experience with death.
Part 2
I skipped school when the counselors came that first week. I took my bike, and just rode it to the bookstore nearby. Parking it, chaining it, I would enter, and feel the warmth inside, a warmth that felt strangely missing within the school.
I went over to the counseling sections, and quickly found the familiar place with all the books talking about death and murder and whatever. I took them out and read them.
Honestly, I was not usually a reader. I played games and messed around more, save for the couple of books assigned in school, so this was pretty unusual for me. However, I soon discovered I was an avid reader. I consumed these counseling books, those self teaching books about death and getting closure or whatever.
After that first week was over, and counseling sessions were no longer mandatory, I stopped skipping, but I went and bought one of the books. It was one of those thick ones that seemed to scream that it had all the answers one could need.
I went home, and for the next three days, that was all I did. Even at school, I lugged it around, although it wasn't too unusual; others did similar thigns, and I even saw two or three others with the same book as I.
On the third day, I finished the book. When I did, I ripped up the book, every single page that it had held, and then burned it. I spat on the ashes.
I cannot believe in closure, especially when someone tells me that I should be able to get closure now that the killers were caught.
Hamilton and Eric Jones were two middle aged men. They worked for a company that had recently gone bankrupt in the depression, and were the first ones fired. They had no spouse nor recent girlfriends, they had no relatives, they barely contacted the outside world. Five days after the company went bankrupt, it was New Years, and the two decided to say "Screw it," and have some fun.
They entered the party, just like normal people (there were some adults there, but they were worse than the teenagers). They looked around, got some free booze, they smoked a bit, and they took a girl to forcefully have some "fun" with her and killed her.
They went home, apparently, and washed up. The next day, they went out to look for a job. They actually landed one, if you could believe it, and it was even higher paying than the last one.
Unfortunately for them, however, a guy from the party recognized them, and informed his dad, who was a cop. They questioned the men, and then, when they took sperm samples and DNA samples, it matched up, with pretty much no chance of error.
The two men casually confessed their crimes. They pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to life in prison.
A person got hurt, and justice prevailed. Everyone can get closure now.
The end.
I knew that in two, three weeks, everything would become normal again, although Jennifer's name was thrown around a lot, everything would be back to normal. Sure, at the end of the year, there would probably be a speech or something, but that would be it.
A girl died, and that was the end.
The end.
The damn end.
I didn't know Jennifer, or at least I didn't know her that well. She was sort of attractive, I guess. Pure blonde of that New England descent, although she wasn't old money rich or stuck up or whatever. She was tall and thin, although she had a few freckles and acne and pimple problems that some things couldn't cure. Honestly, she would be that all american girl that grew up to be a lawyer or doctor or whatever. I didn't know what she wanted to be or what she would have become. I guess no one will.
Honestly, I think I had a crush on her. Then again, I'm type the that falls for all the girls. When we pass in the hallway, we'd greet each other with a warm smile. Our social circles weren't close, but we did talk every once in a while. I'd sit by her. Smile.
I also did that to Alica. To Sabrina. To Shelby. Jennifer was just another girl, I guess, just another person, just like me.
But still, though. In school, there's no one to greet in the hallways. The person whom I joke around with isn't on the bus. There's a missing space where someone should be.
When I remember her, I can see her face. We were in the same grades for years, so I can remember her from when she was younger, when we were twelve. Of course, you never saw yourself or others change; it's just what happens, and that young face you saw is just a little bit older. There are pimples and acne, those usual signs of puberty, the chest gets a little bit more noticeable, and you feel just a little bit less digusted at the idea of spending time with them. It never happens all at once, though. It happens slowly, and you'll never be able to actually feel yourself change. One day, you'll just awake to the idea of asking them out. One day, you'll just notice the pimples and acne and freckles or whatever. Over the break, the girls would come back completely unrecognizable. That was life.
But that was life, and this was death. Jennifer was dead, mutilated and hurt, and the public weren't even allowed to see her because it was just that horrible. Pictures and our memory, that was all that could be allowed to remember her with. Pictures of when she was young, swinging on that tire tied to the tree, pictures in the yearbook with her and her boyfriend(s), memories of her, smiling and talking with her, memories and pictures.
That was all. In her death, in her murder, in her abscence of life, there will be no more memories to make. There's going to be no picture of her in her graduation gown, throwing the hat into the air. There's going to be no picture of her holding up her first degree, no picture of her and her husband getting married, no memories of her and her children, and no one will be standing by her deathbed, to reminisce about the long and fulfilling life she'd had. No, nothing, none of that will exist anymore, there will be no possibility to exist, because she was dead.
The possibility was gone.
What will happen now? Two murderers are in jail, the public is at peace, justice(vengeance) has been served, and so life moves on.
That was the end.
The end.
Part 3
It was the second week after Jennifer's burial, the fourth week after she died, I guess. I'd quit all of my clubs, citing emotional stress. Despite this, however I refused any counselor or psychiatrist. I wanted to deal with it on my own.
Outside, the wintry snow still made the land like white, but it was getting better; there will be no more blizzard that'll knock out the power for days, no chilling wind you have to march through, no more hail that shall pierce the roofs. Soon, spring will come.
I declined any invitations to parties or dances or whatever. I checked out my watch, and contentedly marched home.
No one was home, as my parents were at work, like always, leaving me alone in the house. I plopped down on my bed, and sighed.
Finally, I got up, walked to where the gun was hidden, and loaded a single bullet, then spun the barrel. I put it to my head, and pulled the trigger.
I had stood at the edge of the pond, staring into the water. Most of the pond had frozen over the winter, and turned into the usual skating ring. However, as the weather warmed, or at least decided not to cool anymore, parts of the ice had thawed, rendering the place dangerous for skating. The place I stood at had melted long ago, although bits of ice still floated. I stared into the water, at my own reflection.
I had been playing Russian Roulette with the gun for seven days straight, and out of those days not a single time has the bullet ever been shot, although if it had I guess I wouldn't be here. There was something calming about this ritual of death. I never met death in this idiotic dealing, but I have to admit, I got close.
A single feather, from some bird perhaps, drifted down. I glanced up, but there was nothing there. The single white feather fell to the icy aqua, and ripples spread out, distorting my reflection.
Are we bound to die?
I pulled the trigger on that eighth day.
Is that the sum of our existence?
I pulled the trigger on that ninth day.
Is closure just forgetting?
I pulled the trigger on that tenth day.
There was no bullet.
No one cares, and no one remembers. Going through school, I had a fake smile plastered on my face, half listening to anything that anyone said to me, a hollow laugh. Of course, everyone else was the same, so it didn't matter. Those days after her death, those days after her funeral, no one smiled completely, the halls were lethargy and silent, and just about everything was cancelled. A hollow laugh.
But two weeks later, they had forgotten. These kids smiled, sometimes so fake that it looked real, they laughed to drown out their tears, and they soon forgot her. Play an actor soon enough, and that is who you shall become. These kids, they had gotten closure, supposedly. They accepted her death, they felt that justice had been served. The killers were caught, there was nothing to worry about anymore.
The end.
They had forgotten her, Jennifer was gone.
That day, after seeing my friends smile and laugh and not care anymore, I had come home distraught. I had curled up on my bed, crying, crying, just feeling this deep dark pit in my heart.
I didn't love Jennifer while I was alive. I had a crush on her, but I had a crush on everyone. I knew her, but then again, I knew hundreds of people.
It was Jennifer after she died, it was the death of Jennifer, it was the idea of Jennifer's existence that I have begun to love. What could she have become? When she grew up, what did she want to be? The world was so big, so vast, how much of it would she have known?
There were possibilities, so many damn possibilities in this world. She was one person in six or seven billion, and she was one possibility.
And now she was gone. There was no life, only death, and that was what made me insane.
That feeling... There would be no more smiles on her face. If I try to remember her, I would only see her as I had last seen her. In ten years, if I tried to remember her, I would only see her as a teenager. That was the sum of her existence, the sum of her entire life, the end of her possibility.
That was death, that was her murder.
Which I cannot stand.
I will forget this.
The fact is, I cannot just keep remembering her forever. I am human, I will forget.
I can't find closure. What is closure? Is it the acceptance of one's death? Is it finding some structure of life to fit into, after being shaken out of it? I can't understand, no matter how much I have read. I can't grasp it.
I read no more books about death. The words just sort of blend into one another after the sixth thick book. In the end, what I needed to find was closure, and what the hell was that?
People in the school have accepted her death, and in their existence they have forgotten her. They decide not to remember. They don't want to remember, for it shows them the fluidity of their lives.
We are ripples in a pond. Anything can make us, can create us, can change us, even the lightest feather that kisses the water's edge. In turn, we can affect each other, can change each other, can create ripples of our own in conjunctions with one another.
But in the end, we will dissipate. The ripple doesn't last forever. Possibilities are gone, destroyed.
That is the sum of our existence. We face it, we face this truth when confronted with death, the end of a ripple, the end of a little bit of possibility. We are hurt, we fear and hate, find someone to blame, or if we are unable to, we find acceptance.
I can't find acceptance.
To be ripples, to be a just that small little bit of existence? That's alright, maybe I can understand that, but... for possibility like this to simply go out, every hour of every day. There's so much pain, and we accept that. There's so much hurt, and we forget this. Time shows the fluidity of our lives, and that's how we can find closure.
I load the bullet.
Death, horrible it is. Death, how disillusioning it is.
I spin the barrel.
I won't forget. Time will decay me. Maybe my own possibility lies in time, but... to forget hers, to forget what could have been hers?
I put the barrel to my head.
Tears streaming down my eyes, my finger tensing, as always, as always, I won't forget.
I pull the trigger.
I won't forget, ever, that was my promise.
I won't forget.
My father had always kept a gun in the house, for protection, probably. He never told my mother or I why. He was not in a job that required use of a gun, he was not a manic about action and fighting films, but he had a gun in the house. I was probably eleven or twelve when I first found it; that's what happens when you're alone in the house and no games to play. Boredom can make the world anew.
Anyways, I found it, checked it out, and with a beating heart, I jammed it down
my pants and ran to my friend's house. You should have seen his face when I pointed the gun at him and said "Boom."
Me and him had played with it all day. Don't blame me; I was eleven.
When I got home, and when no one was still home, I tried something. I held the gun to my head. I'd seen the bullets next to the gun in that drawer, but I hadn't loaded the gun. With a very unsteady hand, my finger was on the trigger, a tentative grin on my face and adrenaline running through my veins, even when I knew that nothing would happen, if I pulled it. But the idea that something could happen was what fueled everything. What if I left a bullet in there? What if you didn't need a bullet to fire the gun? What if some force, like gunpowder or whatever, blew me up?
I stood there for five minutes, dripping sweat the the very prospect of dying, and then...
I pulled the trigger.
I'm quite happy to say that I never met death... But I was close, as I found out later that, as a matter of fact, there was an extra bullet that I had missed, being so young.
I would have been happier if it was raining. Actually, because it was winter, it might have snowed. However, it had neither snowed or rained or hailed or sleet. Nature had the audacity to grace us with a blue sky and a sun that shined brilliantly. The day was not right. It mocked us, as we buried the body of Jennifer G. Fare.
The lowered her into the earth. The coffin was closed, obviously; who would want to see the mutilated body of a teenage girl, when you were teenage yourself? It was not an open wake, either way.
Everyone wore black, and we were like an abyss of darkness as we stood within the bluff of graves. Although at present it snowed not, last night it had stormed, further showing the ironies of the world. Because of that storm, the landscape was now a land of white and ice. Icicles lined the trees, threatening to fall at any moment. Our black contrasted with the world, as if we were not supposed to be there, as if we mocked nature rather than nature mocking us.
Then again, we shouldn't be here, not at all. She shouldn't die.
They started to cover her coffin with earth, and the task was not easy. The ground was frozen, repelling the shovels. Half of what they dug in was ice and water. I knew that within a couple of weeks, there would be a depression where her grave layed, the ice turned water, and water permeating away.
"How you mock us," I told mother nature.
The parents and relatives of the deceased girl cried. My classmates, particularly the girly girls, cried, or at least put of a front of crying, so they could have their boyfriends hug them and give them warmth. One or two kids just got up and walked away.
I didn't cry.
Two weeks ago, there was a party. It was just New Years, so of course you'd have a party. At Mark Weldon's house, it was the usual super bash, but of course it was more of a blow out than normal, which was every party, basically.
Jennifer, like the rest of the student body (including me), was there. We partied, we played, we drank, we smoked, we screwed. Maybe it was a bit cold, but with alcohol (along with some other unnamed substances) in you, and your body beside another's, you didn't feel the cold. It was a celebration, and that made you warm.
Someone drugged her. They dragged her outside, on the earth, breaking the skin on her back and bottom, making a trail of blood. Into the woods they took her, and they harmed her. When they finished, they had a knife, and they hurt her. When she was crying, they ignored her. When she begged for mercy, that only made them feel better. When she finally lost herself, silent and dreaming for the death that would not come, they were content, even daring to dangle the actualization of her wish in front of her before returning to what they wore doing, denying her. The coroner said they couldn't even recognize her face in the photo.
We screamed as we saw the trail of crimson red, we cried as we saw the bits of skin, we fainted and ran away when we saw the body.
Jennifer had a 3.2 GPA, was one of the cheerleaders, recently broke up with her boyfriends and looking for new love. She liked to text. She liked to talk. She was nice sometimes, she had mood swings the other times. She joked, she played, the got angry and cried, and othertimes she was just bored. By the way, she hated her parents.
She was a teenager.
She was dead.
She was killed.
Murdered.
That was my first experience with death.
Part 2
I skipped school when the counselors came that first week. I took my bike, and just rode it to the bookstore nearby. Parking it, chaining it, I would enter, and feel the warmth inside, a warmth that felt strangely missing within the school.
I went over to the counseling sections, and quickly found the familiar place with all the books talking about death and murder and whatever. I took them out and read them.
Honestly, I was not usually a reader. I played games and messed around more, save for the couple of books assigned in school, so this was pretty unusual for me. However, I soon discovered I was an avid reader. I consumed these counseling books, those self teaching books about death and getting closure or whatever.
After that first week was over, and counseling sessions were no longer mandatory, I stopped skipping, but I went and bought one of the books. It was one of those thick ones that seemed to scream that it had all the answers one could need.
I went home, and for the next three days, that was all I did. Even at school, I lugged it around, although it wasn't too unusual; others did similar thigns, and I even saw two or three others with the same book as I.
On the third day, I finished the book. When I did, I ripped up the book, every single page that it had held, and then burned it. I spat on the ashes.
I cannot believe in closure, especially when someone tells me that I should be able to get closure now that the killers were caught.
Hamilton and Eric Jones were two middle aged men. They worked for a company that had recently gone bankrupt in the depression, and were the first ones fired. They had no spouse nor recent girlfriends, they had no relatives, they barely contacted the outside world. Five days after the company went bankrupt, it was New Years, and the two decided to say "Screw it," and have some fun.
They entered the party, just like normal people (there were some adults there, but they were worse than the teenagers). They looked around, got some free booze, they smoked a bit, and they took a girl to forcefully have some "fun" with her and killed her.
They went home, apparently, and washed up. The next day, they went out to look for a job. They actually landed one, if you could believe it, and it was even higher paying than the last one.
Unfortunately for them, however, a guy from the party recognized them, and informed his dad, who was a cop. They questioned the men, and then, when they took sperm samples and DNA samples, it matched up, with pretty much no chance of error.
The two men casually confessed their crimes. They pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to life in prison.
A person got hurt, and justice prevailed. Everyone can get closure now.
The end.
I knew that in two, three weeks, everything would become normal again, although Jennifer's name was thrown around a lot, everything would be back to normal. Sure, at the end of the year, there would probably be a speech or something, but that would be it.
A girl died, and that was the end.
The end.
The damn end.
I didn't know Jennifer, or at least I didn't know her that well. She was sort of attractive, I guess. Pure blonde of that New England descent, although she wasn't old money rich or stuck up or whatever. She was tall and thin, although she had a few freckles and acne and pimple problems that some things couldn't cure. Honestly, she would be that all american girl that grew up to be a lawyer or doctor or whatever. I didn't know what she wanted to be or what she would have become. I guess no one will.
Honestly, I think I had a crush on her. Then again, I'm type the that falls for all the girls. When we pass in the hallway, we'd greet each other with a warm smile. Our social circles weren't close, but we did talk every once in a while. I'd sit by her. Smile.
I also did that to Alica. To Sabrina. To Shelby. Jennifer was just another girl, I guess, just another person, just like me.
But still, though. In school, there's no one to greet in the hallways. The person whom I joke around with isn't on the bus. There's a missing space where someone should be.
When I remember her, I can see her face. We were in the same grades for years, so I can remember her from when she was younger, when we were twelve. Of course, you never saw yourself or others change; it's just what happens, and that young face you saw is just a little bit older. There are pimples and acne, those usual signs of puberty, the chest gets a little bit more noticeable, and you feel just a little bit less digusted at the idea of spending time with them. It never happens all at once, though. It happens slowly, and you'll never be able to actually feel yourself change. One day, you'll just awake to the idea of asking them out. One day, you'll just notice the pimples and acne and freckles or whatever. Over the break, the girls would come back completely unrecognizable. That was life.
But that was life, and this was death. Jennifer was dead, mutilated and hurt, and the public weren't even allowed to see her because it was just that horrible. Pictures and our memory, that was all that could be allowed to remember her with. Pictures of when she was young, swinging on that tire tied to the tree, pictures in the yearbook with her and her boyfriend(s), memories of her, smiling and talking with her, memories and pictures.
That was all. In her death, in her murder, in her abscence of life, there will be no more memories to make. There's going to be no picture of her in her graduation gown, throwing the hat into the air. There's going to be no picture of her holding up her first degree, no picture of her and her husband getting married, no memories of her and her children, and no one will be standing by her deathbed, to reminisce about the long and fulfilling life she'd had. No, nothing, none of that will exist anymore, there will be no possibility to exist, because she was dead.
The possibility was gone.
What will happen now? Two murderers are in jail, the public is at peace, justice(vengeance) has been served, and so life moves on.
That was the end.
The end.
Part 3
It was the second week after Jennifer's burial, the fourth week after she died, I guess. I'd quit all of my clubs, citing emotional stress. Despite this, however I refused any counselor or psychiatrist. I wanted to deal with it on my own.
Outside, the wintry snow still made the land like white, but it was getting better; there will be no more blizzard that'll knock out the power for days, no chilling wind you have to march through, no more hail that shall pierce the roofs. Soon, spring will come.
I declined any invitations to parties or dances or whatever. I checked out my watch, and contentedly marched home.
No one was home, as my parents were at work, like always, leaving me alone in the house. I plopped down on my bed, and sighed.
Finally, I got up, walked to where the gun was hidden, and loaded a single bullet, then spun the barrel. I put it to my head, and pulled the trigger.
I had stood at the edge of the pond, staring into the water. Most of the pond had frozen over the winter, and turned into the usual skating ring. However, as the weather warmed, or at least decided not to cool anymore, parts of the ice had thawed, rendering the place dangerous for skating. The place I stood at had melted long ago, although bits of ice still floated. I stared into the water, at my own reflection.
I had been playing Russian Roulette with the gun for seven days straight, and out of those days not a single time has the bullet ever been shot, although if it had I guess I wouldn't be here. There was something calming about this ritual of death. I never met death in this idiotic dealing, but I have to admit, I got close.
A single feather, from some bird perhaps, drifted down. I glanced up, but there was nothing there. The single white feather fell to the icy aqua, and ripples spread out, distorting my reflection.
Are we bound to die?
I pulled the trigger on that eighth day.
Is that the sum of our existence?
I pulled the trigger on that ninth day.
Is closure just forgetting?
I pulled the trigger on that tenth day.
There was no bullet.
No one cares, and no one remembers. Going through school, I had a fake smile plastered on my face, half listening to anything that anyone said to me, a hollow laugh. Of course, everyone else was the same, so it didn't matter. Those days after her death, those days after her funeral, no one smiled completely, the halls were lethargy and silent, and just about everything was cancelled. A hollow laugh.
But two weeks later, they had forgotten. These kids smiled, sometimes so fake that it looked real, they laughed to drown out their tears, and they soon forgot her. Play an actor soon enough, and that is who you shall become. These kids, they had gotten closure, supposedly. They accepted her death, they felt that justice had been served. The killers were caught, there was nothing to worry about anymore.
The end.
They had forgotten her, Jennifer was gone.
That day, after seeing my friends smile and laugh and not care anymore, I had come home distraught. I had curled up on my bed, crying, crying, just feeling this deep dark pit in my heart.
I didn't love Jennifer while I was alive. I had a crush on her, but I had a crush on everyone. I knew her, but then again, I knew hundreds of people.
It was Jennifer after she died, it was the death of Jennifer, it was the idea of Jennifer's existence that I have begun to love. What could she have become? When she grew up, what did she want to be? The world was so big, so vast, how much of it would she have known?
There were possibilities, so many damn possibilities in this world. She was one person in six or seven billion, and she was one possibility.
And now she was gone. There was no life, only death, and that was what made me insane.
That feeling... There would be no more smiles on her face. If I try to remember her, I would only see her as I had last seen her. In ten years, if I tried to remember her, I would only see her as a teenager. That was the sum of her existence, the sum of her entire life, the end of her possibility.
That was death, that was her murder.
Which I cannot stand.
I will forget this.
The fact is, I cannot just keep remembering her forever. I am human, I will forget.
I can't find closure. What is closure? Is it the acceptance of one's death? Is it finding some structure of life to fit into, after being shaken out of it? I can't understand, no matter how much I have read. I can't grasp it.
I read no more books about death. The words just sort of blend into one another after the sixth thick book. In the end, what I needed to find was closure, and what the hell was that?
People in the school have accepted her death, and in their existence they have forgotten her. They decide not to remember. They don't want to remember, for it shows them the fluidity of their lives.
We are ripples in a pond. Anything can make us, can create us, can change us, even the lightest feather that kisses the water's edge. In turn, we can affect each other, can change each other, can create ripples of our own in conjunctions with one another.
But in the end, we will dissipate. The ripple doesn't last forever. Possibilities are gone, destroyed.
That is the sum of our existence. We face it, we face this truth when confronted with death, the end of a ripple, the end of a little bit of possibility. We are hurt, we fear and hate, find someone to blame, or if we are unable to, we find acceptance.
I can't find acceptance.
To be ripples, to be a just that small little bit of existence? That's alright, maybe I can understand that, but... for possibility like this to simply go out, every hour of every day. There's so much pain, and we accept that. There's so much hurt, and we forget this. Time shows the fluidity of our lives, and that's how we can find closure.
I load the bullet.
Death, horrible it is. Death, how disillusioning it is.
I spin the barrel.
I won't forget. Time will decay me. Maybe my own possibility lies in time, but... to forget hers, to forget what could have been hers?
I put the barrel to my head.
Tears streaming down my eyes, my finger tensing, as always, as always, I won't forget.
I pull the trigger.
I won't forget, ever, that was my promise.
I won't forget.
