When you attempt to find the sum of your life’s moments and condense it into a single word and that singular descriptor can only be violence, or death, or tragedy, there’s probably something wrong with your life. Unfortunately for me, I came to that realization within moments of the end of my own. The muzzle of a pistol tapping repeatedly (and painfully) against my skull reminded me of the presence of my killer, as though I could have forgotten he was there.
I sat on the couch of my own living room, in the apartment suite I rented in Los Angeles. City of Angels, indeed. I, however, would not be among them when my killer finally bought me a one-way ticket to the judge’s table. My life (take your pick of the aforementioned words to describe it) was far too…interesting to make it into heaven. People have many, many metaphors for life. Life’s rough, get a helmet. Life is a roller coaster. Life is like a box of chocolate. My life is most akin to the rapids of a river of blood, with me caught helpless in its deadly current. I tread water as best as I could, but without anything to keep me afloat, I had been doomed from the start.
The soft but firm cushions gave slightly under my weight as I shifted. I looked up from my hands and into the flat screen television to see my killer. He followed my gaze unconsciously, and our eyes met for as moment. I held his gaze fiercely and smirked, ensuring that he realized exactly who he was holding his gun on, and what it meant to kill me.
He knew.
His eyes were as dead as mine. This was a man whose life was as pathetic as my own, who had been driven mad by the constant violence and ever-present threat of a quick, painful premature death. Interestingly enough, though, he too knew that nothing in this world was premature.
God—Yaweh, Allah—was as omnipotent and all-knowing as the Christians—Jews, Muslims—thought, and more. He was the ultimate architect; a craftsman with no peer; an author whose pages made up the very pages of reality and whose cast was many millions of times that of Dostoyefski’s Masterpiece. Everything happened because He planned it that way. He was the Heavenly Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He was also a kid with a magnifying glass—and we, his ants.
My killer knew that somehow, at the end of it all, none of this was his fault, and that he had had no choice in the matter from the very beginning. He couldn’t have stopped his parents brutal murder, or his unwitting participation in a bank heist gone terribly wrong, sending his life spiraling into control. And though he was armed with that knowledge, he was still human. Somewhere inside, he wanted to kill himself as much as he had to kill me.
His finger tightened on the trigger, the pistol’s hammer raising like the axe of an executioner hovering for one fatal swing. I closed my eyes and awaited the next act of wanton violence--the final chapter in a book penned in blood--my own explosive demise.
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