I awaken, sitting bolt upright and choking off a scream. Nothing’s changed, despite my week of therapy and the drugs Dr. Mulkavey has prescribed. I’m still having the dream every night. The last thing I remember before I wake up is the taste of oiled gunmetal upon my lips, the tensing of my finger upon the trigger of the pistol, and then the blast which is meant to end everything.
And I’m still no wiser as to why I would even want to do such a thing. The Doctor and I explored the possibility that it was some sort of viral meme I’d contracted. But there are no recorded cases of any others suffering from such a meme. And there’s nothing out of place in my thoughts… except for the dream itself, of course.
The sheets are smooth on May’s side, as though they’ve never been turned back. She’d still been up last night when I got home, watching the vid. When I had asked her how long she’d be, May had said she’d be right up.
I complete my morning ritual; five minutes in the sonic shower, apply shavepaste briskly to my face and then rinse away a day’s growth in the sink, dress, and then head downstairs for breakfast. As I pass by the living room, the vid is still on. I send the vid unit the command to shut down through my implanted commlink before I even notice that May’s still lying there on the couch asleep.
The kitchen AI is programmed to whip up a great omelet. I eat my breakfast in silence, not wanting to wake her. May and I have never had a problem in the past, always seeming able to work things through. Seven years of marriage, all of them happy memories. And now this; there’s a sort of tenseness growing between us and her not coming to bed with me last night just seems to exacerbate things on my end.
She doesn’t understand why I am having the dream. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about it, maybe this should have been one secret I kept between us. But I’ve never held back anything from May. I tell myself that she just needed some sleep, just needed to wake up without hearing someone screaming themselves hoarse next to her.
But the comfort that I find in her arms when I wake up like that is something that I desperately need. Something in my head tells me that until I find a solution to this problem, that comfort’s not going to be there. Something darker in my head says it’s already gone.
I move into the living room as I finish my breakfast, heading out the door to another day’s work. My hand reaches towards her lovely, thick dark brown hair as I bend to kiss her. That’s when I see that she is wearing ear plugs.
I rise sharply, moving quickly out the door and onto the people mover. A bit of shock, a slight sense of betrayal creeps into my bones. In moments, I am whisked towards the industrial center amidst a throng of people heading for their day to day lives. I am alone with my thoughts about this turn in my life and the horrible dream, yet surrounded by the vast sea of Ibrium City’s mobilized workforce.
Looking up through the geodesic dome’s clear roof, a dizzying sense of vertigo catches me suddenly as I view the stars. They don’t care, I realize, as they look down upon us scuttling about in our myriad short and meaningless lives. They don’t take pause even a moment to notice us. If everything we are, everything we’ve made, was gone in an instant, it would matter not a bit.
I gasp and grip another passenger’s shoulder to keep from bowling over. Where the hell did that come from?
And I am hit by the sudden, strong scent of cordite.
Tags: Bullet Revolver Killyourself
