Jake
Every night for three weeks, it’s been the same routine, with the same outcome. He puts the gun to his head, and he fails to pull the trigger. The worst part is he can’t even understand why his finger betrays him. The wick has burned, the trigger is light, the grip is firm, the gun feels right.
His mind was never going to set him free. Being a prisoner of your own self-inflicted anguish is exhausting to the point of demise. The untimely end is all that seems fitting. Yet this exercise in futility itself has become cumbersome.
It was impossible to forget the sounds of screeching tires, crunching steel, and shattering glass. But the worst sounds were the moans of agony issuing from the human bodies that endured the chaos. No matter how hard he tried, he wasn’t getting the sounds and images out of his head without the help of the memory-cleansing bullet from the dark chamber of this pistol.
Jake had second-guessed himself about a thousand times since that night. There was no way around it, the fault rested squarely on his shoulders. The frayed rope of his sanity had unraveled. He’d run out of time, energy, and money. It was time to get this over and done with.
This was Cassie’s favorite place in the world, the large stones that formed the breakers at Fort Fisher. After leaving the beach, she’d always wanted to come here and climb the large rocks. Jake always tried to discourage her, not because of the large signs that said, ‘Keep Off,’ but because it was dangerous. There were large gaps one could slip into and easily break an ankle, sprain a knee, or worse.
That ironic fact was not lost on him. Jake had always been the smart one, the safe one. He didn’t take stupid chances or put himself in danger. At least not since he was a teen, which is what made his actions that night even harder to understand.
There was no point thinking anymore. He was done. His brain was just too tired, too worn down. This was a fight he no longer wanted, a battle of attrition with no winner.
Just like the previous nights, he slid the pistol out of his pocket and glared at it in his hand. The black weapon looked menacing just sitting still. The lethal power was resting silently in the chamber, a twitch of his finger away from killing him. It seemed so easy to access. But easy was never simple.
Tears formed in his eyes and slid down his cheeks. If Cassie could see him now she’d cry too, she’d beg him not to do it, not to end it. But he just couldn’t take the pain anymore, it was too hard. The loneliness was so palpable it shook him in fits of cold shiver. He’d loved Cassie with every bit of his soul and he knew in his heart he’d never find that again. Life was not worth living without her and that was that.
He looked at the nearly full moon. Swallowed his tears behind a spray of seawater and put the gun to his temple. The finger on his right hand would not betray him tonight. It was happening and he didn’t have the will to stop himself this time.
With his finger pressed to the trigger, he screamed at the moon, into the night. A soft squeeze didn’t get it done, and he was about to do what he’d failed to do so many times before. In that brief silence before death, a soft voice said, “Please no, please stop!”
Jake let up and blinked away the tears. He searched around for the source of the voice, looked down. At the edge of the rocks, lapped by waves and touched by the moon’s light, he saw a beautiful blonde girl in the surf.
He couldn’t find a single word. He could see her clearly enough to see the sparkle in her eyes and the apple cheekbones. Was this even real? Had he already pulled the trigger?
Then he managed to utter a raspy, “Hello?”
She didn’t reply with words, only a smile, the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. But when he stood up and saw her entire form, his jaw fell open, wordless.
Her smile quickly faded and a look of panic struck her. In one move, she dove off the rocks and into the water. With one swift flip, she was gone.
Jake stood there; he didn’t even realize at some point he’d dropped the pistol into one of the deep fissures between the huge boulders. But what he’d just seen was something he could not explain. And even if he could explain it, he couldn’t possibly tell anyone about it without sounding like a psychotic.
He slumped back onto the rock and looked across the waves. There she was again, bobbing out in the breakers like a surfer waiting for a set.
Jake started down the rocks, running toward the sand of the nearby beach to his right. He chugged over to the loose soil and saw her. He wanted to yell or something, but no sounds formed for his tongue to sculpt. Instead, he stuck his arm up to wave. After a brief moment, she sank under the sea and was gone.
Jake was unable to move for several seconds, or perhaps it was minutes, or even hours. Time ceased to exist. Finally, he decided it was time to get back to reality with a long shake of his head.
After an extensive search for the gun, he was unable to find it. That was bothersome because he worried it would end up in the wrong hands. In the morning, he’d come back and return to the search effort.
Right now, he just sat in his car trying to understand what he’d seen. With his phone in hand, he started doing some searches for mermaids. He knew they weren’t real, or at least he’d never believed they were. They were a child’s fantasy, certainly not a real thing.
Maybe his eyes had deceived him. Maybe there was never anything there at all. If his body had released some sort of pre-death hormone that caused him to hallucinate, he’d believe that more than the fact he’d just seen a mermaid.
With nothing left to think, and no gun with which to blow his brains out, he started his car and headed home.