Monday, April 10, 2006

Part 1

This was it, he thought

He had chewed on it for several weeks but the storm within his head never seemed to abate. Ever-mounting debts had driven him to the point of no return. His best friend had betrayed him. His wife had ditched him for death. There were just no reasons left for him to live.

Suicide had never been an option he considered. But with only his life left to lose, it seemed perfect that he lost that also. Life was like fighting a losing battle. Every road he took was a dead end, and every decision, a mistake. There was always something terrible in the offing.

Life was indeed one mean sonova bitch.

But even suicide seemed complex. Was poison better? Or Hanging? Poison doesn’t work at times. A seizure and 3 days in the hospital was all that it took you to get back on track. Hanging was a good option, but with his kind of luck, you could never say. Besides, he wanted death to be instantaneous. No last fighting moments. He had lost all his strength to grapple with life. What he wanted now was an UNCOMPLICATED death.

As he stared out of the window and at the setting sun, he took another drag of his cigarette. His house was small and dingy but he loved it. After all it was where he dreamt his dreams, where those dreams took shape and where those dreams ultimately died.
His clothes were all soiled and smelly. But then, who really cared? After all in a couple of hours he was going to be history. That brought him back to the contentious topic that had been lingering on his mind. The passage to history.

The distant sound of a train snapped him from his own train of thoughts. He stared out and saw the express tearing across with unbridled speed. He looked at it with disgust. It was the same train that had woken him up from sleep on many occasions.

He hated trains. The commotion they created. The traffic jams and the long waiting hours. Almost anything even remotely connected to a train repelled him.

He took another drag of his cigarette and looked at his table. He had a poster of Al Pacino just above the table with “The Godfather” written in big bold letters on it. Godfather had been one of his all time favorite movies and had seen it at least a dozen times. He reminisced some of the lines from the movie and said his favorite one aloud

“Keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer”

He couldn’t help but laugh when he thought of the significance of that line in his life. Friends, did he have any? Enemies, well a handful of them provided he had ten sets of hands. Maybe more. Another giggle and the last drag.

The cigarette left an acrid taste in his mouth.

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