JOSH

 

“I met Heather when we were only fourteen,” I began. “We were the same age and had the same indifferent attitude to life. She was so different from everyone else. I felt different too and was drawn to her like a doomed ship to a clifftop campfire. She was utterly insane, of course—even more so than myself—and I was intrigued by it. We began hanging out, getting into trouble at our boarding school. We’d run away together and spend days and weeks on the road, using our parents’ stolen credit cards and cash to survive, until we were found again and dragged back to St Christopher’s.”

I had to pause here, my mind’s eye filled with flashes of Heather, her crazy brown eyes glittering at me from the murky shadows of myself.

“Why was she like that?” Sarah asked. “Was she like you; had she been hurt when she was young?”

“Not the same as me. Worse. I never knew my mother, and that was my pain. But she got to know her father, and that was hers.”

“He abused her?”

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible,” she uttered with genuine horror shining in her green eyes. “She sounds like she was so hurt. Did she ever receive professional help?”

“Only meds from doctors. She never saw a shrink. Her father was too concerned that she’d say too much, and her mother wasn’t concerned at all. No. Heather simply got to suffer and attempt to work it all out herself. I tried to help her, but I wasn’t much good. I couldn’t get to grips with my own life let alone try to help someone else. In the end I was pulled into her world and we both suffered together. During our four years at school she attempted to commit suicide several times. On one of the occasions I woke up in my bedroom to find her unconscious on a chair with her back to me, surrounded by lit candles. When I got out of bed, I found a pool of red viscous liquid at her feet and thought that she’d spilt wax from a red candle. It was only when I spotted the blood trailing down the side of the chair from her dangling wrists that I realized what she’d done.”

“It was probably a cry for help,” Sarah remarked to me. “That's why she did it with you in the room; knew you’d wake up in time and find her.”

“It could have been. Or maybe it was her macabre sense of humor.”

I had to pause for a moment as I tossed this harrowing experience around in my head for the billionth time, the pool of blood circling in my eyes.

“I probably should have left her then,” I went on. “We were sixteen at the time and I should have ended it and allowed her to continue her life without me. It would have saved us so much pain.”

I paused once more in thought and realized how futile it is to wish to change the past. Your own personal experiences were unalterable; you could never change a single aspect of them. You could change your opinion of them, look at them differently, but the actual events would always stay the same. All that is really left to you is to resolve yourself to your history and no longer allow it to hold such a tight grip on your present. Because, after all, the present is all you really have.

“I would have told you all of this eventually,” I felt the need to comment. “Of my own freewill.”

“I know you would have,” she replied faintly.

We sat in silence for a moment and I closed my eyes. The sedatives still had ahold of my body and I felt so weak that I imagined I was made of translucent jello. I actually believed in that moment that if I brought my hand up to my face, I would see the sun shining on the other side.

“For another two years,” I said rejoining my earlier tale and reopening my eyes, “we stayed together and our relationship drew us further into darkness. Did they tell you about the gun?” I added, breaking into my own tale.

“Just that there was a gun.”

“Well, it was a revolver—the old type with the rotating chamber. One day we were at my father’s house in Malibu when we came across it. We were both high at the time and Heather placed a bullet in the chamber, spun it and dared me to play Russian roulette with her. Being indifferent to life myself—and very high—I agreed. I went to take it off her, not because I was scared she’d hurt herself, but because it was my turn first. But she drew back and said that we should pull the trigger for each other. She aimed the gun straight at my temple and I froze. Time appeared to slow down to the beating of my slow heart and I didn't breathe a single breath of air until I heard the click of the empty chamber. My heart immediately raced into action, time speeding up all at once. ‘Now my turn,’ she said, handing me the gun. I pointed it at her and watched as she closed her eyes, a devilish grin emerging on her lips as she rested her forehead upon the barrel. I pulled the trigger, the same click. We took hold of each other and made love there and then on the floor; we both felt we’d been spared from death—as if the Grim Reaper himself had blessed our love.”

“Is that what happened the night you shot her?”

“I’ll get to it in a moment,” I insisted, before carrying on, “Since that day, Heather became obsessed with the revolver and the game. She said it was a declaration of our love and proved we were meant to be, that our fates were sealed together. Being obsessed with her, I became drawn into it. Whenever we’d argue badly, and we argued all the time, she’d insist on playing out this game of Russian roulette, getting the revolver out and proving our love; our destiny.”

“My word!” Sarah let out placing her hand over her mouth.

“The night she died, we’d argued all day. She’d disappeared for two days before that.”

“I know about that.”

“Ah! They told you that then.”

“Yes. But what I want to know is what happened in the room once you’d locked the door behind you.”

“Okay,” I said, readying myself. “What I’m about to tell you, I’ve never revealed to another living soul. Not even Holman, who asked me a hundred times about it.”

“But what happened?” she was eager to know.

I took in a shivering, deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I locked the door behind me,” I began. “I was furious with her. She was shouting that I was a coward for letting her go off with those Mexicans, like it was all my fault. Then she leapt toward the wardrobe and dipped her hand inside and brought out the revolver. ‘It’s already loaded,’ she said to me. ‘Do you still love me?’ she asked. I told her I did. ‘Then prove it.’ She spun the chamber of the gun and pointed it at me as I approached her. I stopped in the center of the floor, raising my hands to the air. I was scared. Really scared. Everything that had happened, as well as the look on her face, made this different from all the other stupid times we’d pulled this shit. She pointed it at me and pulled the trigger. Click! I breathed out. ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Now let’s see if you love me.’ She tried to hand me the gun, but I refused to take it. ‘Take it,’ she screamed at me. But I continued to refuse.”

I paused for a second or two. My eyes had filled with the image of Heather standing there with tear-stained face, her mascara running down her cheeks, her eyes bulging at me, daring me to prove my love, her waif hand holding out that huge gun.

“She said that if I didn’t have the guts,” I went on in a shaky voice, “she’d do it herself. And with that, she pointed the barrel of the gun straight against her eye, pulled the trigger and the back of her head exploded.”

Again I saw for the countless time her face explode in a vapor cloud of blood, her body blown back against the wall, the explosion of the gun and the crash of her body ringing in my ears. My Heather, my love, destroyed by our terrible stupidity.

“I ran up to her,” I said with her vision still staining my eyes, “and for some reason felt the need to take the gun from her. It was still in her hand and I prized it from her thin fingers. Then I just remained there standing with it in my hand as people began banging on the door. In the end I unlocked it and they saw me standing over her. But I guess that you know.”

A strange feeling overtook me then. I felt a gentle weight lift from me, several stones in my heart floating away like balloons on a windy day. Telling someone for the first time—and it being Sarah—made it all somehow less of a burden. I continued to stare ahead. Everything was opaque and I realized that my eyes were misty with tears. I must have been crying for some time. As for Sarah, she remained silent and I sensed that it must have been as exhausting to hear as it had been to confess.

As I sat gazing forlornly ahead of me, I felt the warmth of her hand press into mine and take it so very tenderly. I turned to face her and saw that she too was crying. Without a further thought, we both leaned forward and took each other in our arms.

“You’re not to blame,” she whispered into my ear.

“I should have taken the gun and thrown it away.”

“You can’t be blamed for that.”

Looking into her beautiful eyes, I said, “And you, will you be with me from now on? Now that you know I never pulled the trigger?”

She instantly smiled and replied, “Of course. All the way.”

I was so happy that I took her face in my hands and kissed her supple lips. She reacted to it the way I’d wished and her own hands worked their way over my body. Her warm, soft touch felt so good when she gently ran her fingers up my arms, her lips joining mine as we melted into each other. What I held in my arms was my future, my love, my all.

And with that future ahead of us, we spent the rest of her visit holding one another and gazing at the birds, the plants, the trees and, most of all, the horizon. The world lay endless before us and for the first time since Heather’s death I felt free. With Sarah in my arms, I felt truly free.