A Single Shot

Now? I don’t know why. Now. But I’m finally writing this. I have changed too often to fit this event into some linear sequence of time. Age 0-100. I’d struggle to call mine a life. I’ve lived lives. Born, turned 80, 54, 2 then I found myself at 26. Numbers are cultural, and some of us don’t belong to One. I don’t write this now to make sense of anything. I don’t believe in sense. Meaning is an invention, a creative act. I write for the Story.

It was midnight. She woke me up by pulling firmly on my dirty blonde hair. I turned over in my sleeping bag and mumbled. She pulled harder. It was odd for her to do that, so I found my light and shone it into the vast expanse of the desert. I stood. Sand fell from me and made a shimmering noise as it hit my bag then spread back onto the red desert floor. “What is it?” I followed her sound. I tripped on a stunted bush. My heart started to beat faster as I awoke. “What is it?” I asked louder. Then my light landed on her. She had drank it. A bottle of poison lay next to her body. 

I immediately picked her up and began swirling her around, trying to induce vomiting. A bit came out, but not enough.

That night curiously lengthened into the longest of any I've ever lived. When the last star went out and the sun had laid itself across the earth, I did it. The thing I would never dream of doing, but somehow, in its non-sensical way, was now the most merciful thing I could do. The shot went into her and burst something deep within me that I’d never again regain. She lay still on the earth. Red spilling into red.

I never let their questions enter me. “What if…” This wasn’t a choice, to walk across the desert. I had to. 

That shot has changed every day and moment I’ve lived since. A single shot. But I still find beauty in the colour Red, for it is a story unto itself.