Payback Of The Past

The beginning of the end of her life began on a Tuesday morning - only she wasn't there. The Spring dew had just burned off by a rising sun as Nature had rubbed her eyes awake, filling the air with  sweet scents of suburban grass and honeysuckle bushes and carefully arranged flowers. To an innocent, it was a chance to live forever, breathe in life's eternal promise long rejected by Mankind; a time to join to the infinite universe. Hope was all there was.

But the tragic figure who fell onto her front lawn from his exclusive world-class sports car had cut the strings of hope, leaving him with one final desperate act: Payback. To him, the shining bliss of the morning sun was a curious enemy to betray his shortcomings. Buying the stairway to heaven had been a devil's bargain and the bill had come due. The ugly repulsive gun he held under the chin was his last friend in the world. It did not torture him with questions, it simply obeyed. None of his other decisions had worked out - either from his own sabotage or Nature's refusal. All he asked was one moment where his will be done - for appearance's sake he would allege it to be God's.

He kept waiting for the moment of interference that always sidetracked his plans. What would it be this time? A neighbor rushing in in the nick of time? A sudden downpour from the blue sky? Or maybe a failure of physics with the gun malfunctioning. It's always something.

"Time to put God to the test."

His body lurched forward with the shot, leaving a twisted lump of tragic lawn art. Within the hour she'd been horrified at her downtown office. She needed to come home right away. An unthinkable event had occurred.

A month before she'd received an unsigned post card in the mail: I AM IN TROUBLE. The words were printed with a shaky hand, infuriating her to the bone. "I'm sorry, I cannot help you! Don't do this to me. Leave me alone! Go your own way."

But the card had no ears and under no circumstance would she speak to the sender directly. He'd made his bed and now he could die in it for all she knew. "I am not your savior!" How could her silence not make him understand? She was pushing 40, childless and alone. She kept her door closed lest he walk in. That kept everyone else out too.

The police cars, the hearse, the yellow tape, the curious onlookers, and the oblivious bees greeted her arrival. The downtown job she had taken was supposed to have given her life meaning. It had failed. Pulling into her driveway she couldn't help but feel a connection between the sight on her front lawn and the void in her own life. Damn him! Painful, awkward questions would attack her like Custer's last stand. She was perfectly trapped. They'd seen her drive up. She couldn't stay in the car. She couldn't hide in the house. Inquiring minds wanted to know.

"Do you know this man?" "What was the nature of your relationship?" "Had he contacted you recently?" "Why would he come here if you barely knew him?" "A note in the car said: 'Now you know the truth.' What does that mean to you?" "We're going to need a full statement."

In my time of dying

She begged off claiming illness in her stomach. She burst into the house, scaring the beloved cat. She gulped a glass of hastily drawn water wishing she could exchange places with the lifeless form outside. None of the old escape tricks would work. Yes, this must have been the same doomed sinking feeling of foolishness Custer felt. But neither then nor now was an accident of fate.

The next few days and weeks were a drunken blur. In her previous life she was a political junkie cursing the governmental policies of perpetually kicking the day of reckoning down the road. "You can't go on like that. It only makes it worse!" The immediacy of her own dilemma made those thoughts yesterday's news. A steady drinker her entire adult life, she immersed herself whole hog as even the slightest whiff of sobriety sent her into a tailspin of black unreality. How can this be happening to me? I can't go on like this. I can't go on...

Sympathetic friends and neighbors offered support but reserved an eye for judgement. She'd had to of done something to bring this on. She knew his name. It was not random. Had she help drive the poor man to suicide? What was the real story? Spoken or not, the demand was there. Again, no way forward. How could her silence not make them understand?

The FOR SALE sign went up soon after. But upon thinking it through, where could she go? She didn't want to run across her neighbors at the grocery store where she'd be pointed out as That Suicide Woman. Yet she'd grown up in this part of town and yearned to keep her roots. Should she move to new jack city, be a stranger with a mysterious past? The literary side of her loved that story-line but she had no desire to live a life of sighing lies. In fact, it was her hidden desire to be a literary star that led to this trap. How ironic that in her efforts to avoid public embarrassment by secreting her dream she'd constructed that very outcome - irreversibly. Nature collects in full.

The relationship with him was supposed to be safely buried, perpetually kicking the day of reckoning down the road. They'd once shared a harmony in their words, reaching a place not to be found apart. But how real was this dream? Rather than face the possible ruination of lifelong ridicule, they aborted the dream in its womb. Later, he realized his fears had driven him too far, reaching out to her over the years in vain hope. In his final act of desperation, he'd branded her for life.

"Dream or die," she wordlessly cried. How could anyone not understand her silence?