Time has stopped.
I know how that sounds – I’m not crazy – but it is a fact. One minute everything was fine and the next, well…there were no more minutes. The planes stopped flying, the televisions stopped broadcasting, the cars stopped running, and the people…everything stopped. I couldn’t do anything, nobody could. The human race just slipped away. So, here I sit, in the big leather chair by the window, watching the snow fall. It’s oddly beautiful; the street lamp creates a small portal of light that glints off the snowflakes, each one unique to the next. They melt against the windowpane and are gone. In the darkness beyond the portal of light, there exists nothing – only wasteland. Can you see the snow? The stillness of the night is calming, almost surreal, and broken only by the bark of the Maxwells’ dog. Can you hear him? I used to hate that dog but I don’t mind anymore. The sound is a gift. It allows me to believe that I’m not alone, that I am not the last woman left on a dying planet.
I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I only know that the cool metal resting on my thigh is waiting and I have to. How did it come to this, how did I get here? You have to know and understand why. But how do I begin?
My throat is so dry these days. That’s one reason I made this drink. The other was for courage. Yes, it is the last of the Vodka but I figured there was no reason to horde it now. The liquor is warm and burns my throat, in a good way, and the warmth it sends through my body is a welcome relief from the cold. I’m not sure why it’s so chilly tonight or why it’s snowing. It was summer only this morning. My God, how long have I been sitting here? It’s impossible to tell. Has it been only one night? If so, how long has it lasted? One endless night since it happened – nothing but cold and darkness.

As I said, Time has stopped. I don’t know if it ever existed or if it was just a dream, the kind you don’t really believe once you’ve waken. It didn’t slow to a halt, it didn’t wind down like a watch – Time simply ceased to be. I try to remember when the ticking minutes still gave structure to my life. When there were mornings and nights, sunrises and sunsets, days and weeks, months and years, centuries and millennia. In the end, however, I know even the small comforts of seconds are gone, torn away along with everything else.
The Maxwells’ dog knows, but he’s not ready to accept it yet. Defiantly, he keeps barking, trying to wake his masters from their long sleep. On and on, he barks. It used to drive me mad. But the Maxwells’ dog is my only companion, my last anchor to a world now lost. I count the barks, knowing each one represents a second and each second means my existence has moved one tick forward. Of course, this is just a vague theory. But is this the first bark or the thousandth? I don’t know and quickly loose count.
How to begin?
I was a Systems Analyst before Time ended, but then you knew that. Do you know why I became one? Neither do I – not really. How many people actually know what a Systems Analyst does? I think most assume every system eventually has a nervous breakdown and is in need of a good shrink. I didn’t know what a Systems Analyst was when I made that career choice. All I knew was the job carried a certain amount of prestige and status, an ambiguous title that would impress but not interesting enough to invite further discussion. As it turned out, I had a natural talent for the job. Its systematic quality appealed to me. All solutions were in binary, either 1 or 0. That works for me. I think most people like their answers to be black or white. They want simple answers to their complex questions. It doesn’t matter if the answers aren’t exactly true. Whether it is a meaningless question like “what is a Systems Analyst?” or the big questions like war, genocide, and the national debt, we want our answers wrapped in a nice clean cliché. Where would we be without our clichés? They provide us with a comfortable understanding of the world and our roles in life. They are our Gods. They were mine.
Most of the decisions I’ve made in my life have earned the same level of forethought I put into picking my career. As a child, the question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” was enough to send me into a panic. Others shouted firefighter or doctor and eventually I learned to do the same – it was the expected answer and didn’t invite further discussion. In 1963, the assassination of John F. Kennedy shocked the world and I cried. I was a junior in high school and everyone was crying so I did as well but for me it was just a television show. I was far more concerned with my popular standing at school. In college, I protested the war and tried to determine which mushrooms produced the desired effect. I listened to many people speak passionately about ending the war and bringing our troops home. It meant something to them. Did it mean anything to me? I thought so. The war ended in the 70’s and the nation partied. We had been wound up like a coil for so long and this was the release. I was there; I indulged in more than my fair share of cocaine and floated along with the revelry. In the 80’s, I was ready to settle down and grow up. I put my pocket book and myself first and chose the exciting world of Systems Analysis. I married Gary and gave birth to our two children. We had the suburban house with the two-car garage and we lived beyond our means. It was a sacrifice demanded by the Gods of Cliché and we joyfully obeyed. In the 90’s, Gary and I had our trendy divorce and we divided the kids into summer and school years. My Starbucks habit, cell phone, and tailored business suit now defined me but I was happy to have a definition. I reminisced with my peers about the free love, drugs, and music of the 60’s but never about the protests. However, we did all agree that there was probably something fishy about the Kennedy assassination – it makes for good water cooler talk. The Gods of Cliché guided me onward with the promise of acceptance – if not substance or real happiness. Now the Gods are dead, the demon wolf has devoured them and the sun, judgment has come. It is just my barking friend and me, alone, the last ones to leave – lock up on your way out.
In some ways, I was alone before Time decided to give up the ghost. Ironically, I was happy – well, content at least. Gary was gone so there were no more 2 am trips to some dirty bar to bring him home and no more strange calls from strange women. Jeff had grown up, graduated college, and married a scrap of a woman who delighted in calling me mom. They popped out a few little ones of their own. I insisted their kids call me “Brenda,” just to annoy their mother. Jeff had gone to work at a lending firm and I guess they were happy. As for you…well, things were different, weren’t they Brandon?
The street lamp is flickering outside. I’m surprised that the power has lasted this long, I guess the generators keep generating even though Time is over – they don’t know there’s no point. There are so many insects now – unusual for a snowy night. They attack the light like mad kamikazes. Gary hated insects. “God Damn bugs will rule the world if we let’em” was his cliché commentary whenever the subject arose. Once, shortly after we were married, we went to a county fair – we often did such things then – anyway, a bee decided to have a taste of Gary’s candied apple. It stung his tongue. He went into a rage and trashed some of the venders’ stands. Someone called the police and they carted Gary off to jail where he punched the stone wall of his cell and broke his little finger. Of course, he was drunk. After that, Gary would never go anywhere there might be insects.
I used to love the outdoors.
The Vodka burns my throat and sends a chill down my spine but my god it hits the spot. I feel a little nauseous. I don’t want to cough…it hurts. No use...I’m okay…it’s not bad…it’s okay.
Where was I? Oh yeah, your father. Gary wasn’t all bad. He could be very loving. Some nights, he would lay his head on my lap and we would stay up all night talking. Did you know he wanted to be a singer? I doubt that he ever told you, he had given up on that dream shortly after you were born. Yeah, there are some good memories of Gary, like the night we met at Brian’s party, our first Christmas, the trip to San Antonio, the wedding, and the births of our two children. Jeff was an accident. Gary loved him but he always said that Jeff took after me. I guess so. He was a good student and tried to be a model son but Jeff wasn’t the creative genius that Gary wanted. He held it against the boy and once accused Jeff of being a robot. “The boy’s eyes are like a shark’s, Brenda! There is no feeling there at all.” Gary didn’t see Jeff run from the room, didn’t hear him cry that night, Gary was drunk.
We planned you, Brandon. I had you for Gary. You were to be the one he could connect with, the one that would fulfill his desires to be a singer. It seemed like a nice gift for Gary, but it came with a price. He had to stop drinking – a logical motivation for him. Gary wanted another boy but I secretly was hoping for a little girl – it would have balanced out our household.
Gary claimed you from the moment you were born – I was not to interfere. Not the father you remember, is it? Gary did stop drinking for the first three years of your life. He was being a real father and I gladly stepped aside and focused on my career and socializing with the Junior League. It’s not that I didn’t love you but it seemed fair. We each had our child, Jeff was mine and now Gary had you.
Gary started drinking again when you were four. I don’t really know why, maybe he sensed then that something was different about you. He tried to balance the drinking with being a husband and father. He succeeded, for a while. As long as I could still introduce him at parties without embarrassment, as long as he could entertain my friends with his wit and charm, well then we were fine. The incident with the bee was isolated but should have been a clue.
I think you were ten when Gary finally gave up the dream of you becoming a rock star. It was also around then I first heard him refer to you as a “sissy”. The funny thing was you were everything Gary always said he wanted. You were a creative genius – it was obvious even then. The problem was you weren’t his creative genius. Maybe Gary should have stuck with Jeff; he might have had more luck. I know you think that your father started hating you the day you came out. I just admit it was a shock, Brandon. I guess we both suspected, but no one is ever prepared for their thirteen-year-old son to tell them he’s gay. Homosexuality was just the excuse, Gary wrote you off the day you refused to sing.
Caressing the cold revolver in my lap brings a smile to my face. I wonder where Gary and his new bride were when Time ended. Did it come as a shock to them? Did they notice? I’m not angry, maybe I should be but, honestly, I’m just a curious. The truth is Gary and Angela made the perfect couple – she was a young girl looking for a new father to take care of her. And Gary…well Gary just saw her tits. They were perfect for each other. At least after the wedding he stopped harassing me. The divorce was hard on Gary. I’d pretty much made up my mind the night you told us your secret and he punched you but Gary never saw it coming. I stayed the extra year to get my affairs in order and make sure I was financially ready. It was prudent. Even long after the papers were signed, he assumed I would change my mind. I wonder if he married Angela in some misguided attempt to make me jealous. I hope not, for that poor girl’s sake if not for his. She was just…
Oh God…this cough hits without warning…it rapes my insides…all I can do is cover my mouth and wait for it to end. I think it’s tapering off…breathing feels like I’m sucking broken glass into my lungs. It is so much worse than before. My hands are full of mucus and puss but I’ve hacked up something else too, some unrecognizable bloody mass…oh god what is that…there is no more denying it, I’m dying, it’s the same thing Brandon, it’s the same, what have I done, oh God I can’t live like this, not anymore, oh God, why…
Why…
Why do you think you are dying? Stupid girl? For god’s sake, get a grip, Brenda! It’s a cold, pneumonia at the worst. It is treatable. There are medicines. Wipe the tears from your eyes and calm down. Concentrate on the streetlamp outside, watch the snow fall. God I’m sweating like a pig. I wish I could turn the heat down. Tomorrow I’ll go to the doctor and get some antibiotics. That will take care of this cough. Tomorrow things will be better. Tomorrow, Time will start again. It has to. Things can’t go on like this forever; it’s against the laws of nature. It is not what the Gods intended. Time will start again. The power will come back on There will be people and cars and loud music and airplanes. It just can’t be all gone. The sun will come out tomorrow, Annie. Bet your bottom dollar on that one little girl.
I focus on the streetlamp; it flickers once or twice and dies. That’s it, the last of the manmade light is gone and I’m blind. The darkness mocks me, “here is your tomorrow child.” I push that voice away. It’s not real. My eyes adjust to the remaining light. I see…
My scream is stuck in my throat…do you see her? Do you? She’s right there, standing at the window peering back in at me. An old naked woman with dead eyes and her mouth agape like some damned zombie. I try not to move. Maybe she will just move on. But she doesn’t, she just stares at me. She looks lost; her wild gray hair frames her mindless prune of a face. Yet there is something familiar about her. She…she look like my mother. Understanding the absurdity of this doesn’t stop me from calling out to this creature. Only then do I realize this horrible old crone is my own reflection in the window. She has been there all along, hiding in the light from the streetlamp.
How can that be me? Breast sagging to my navel, bone thin, and hair that would look more appropriate on some storybook witch. Did I look like that yesterday morning? Surely not, yesterday morning Time existed, I was fifty-four and in pretty good shape. I had auburn hair with only a hint of gray. Yesterday morning I didn’t cough my guts into my hands. I could not have been the husk staring back through the window. Yesterday morning, mom was dead.
I look at my hands; there is no mucus or hunk of my insides. Did I wipe them off?
I wonder what mom would think of her daughter now, sitting here alone, thinking the thoughts I’m thinking, with a gun in my lap. I doubt she would have approved. But then she didn’t approve of much. Mom never understood that sometimes the easy way out was also the right way. I think, if you took after anybody, it was your grandmother. I never understood either of you. Both fiercely independent and completely – annoyingly – unwilling to accept things for what they were. It drove me crazy. So you wanted to be a painter instead of Gary’s little singer. That was fine, but you insisted on painting such bizarre and dark images. No one was ever going to pay for that kind of stuff. I know you didn’t appreciate that I pushed you to paint landscapes or portraits, but that is what people buy. I just wanted you to grow up and plan for your future. I never thought I’d drive you away. I never wanted that.
My mother loved your paintings. She was so proud of you and told anyone willing to listen all about her artist grandson. I’m sure you remember the set of oils she bought for your sixteenth birthday. You’d never used oils before and I think you actually teared up a little when you saw them. She and I fought about that for months. I felt she was contradicting my parenting by encouraging you to continue painting when you were flunking out of high school. She told me I was being a fool to let academics come before your God given talents. I was a fool, seems obvious now. A year after you left, Mom showed me the oil painting you created for her. She told me you painted it to thank her. It was your first attempt using oils and it was beautiful. It really was, Brandon, I just wish I could have told you that before you left. Mom cried as she told me the story. I was envious of her, I felt like crying but the tears never came.
Do you want to know what my first memory of mom is? I don’t know what made me think of this but it was when I was just a baby. It’s the earliest memory I have. Mom was giving me a bath. She left for some reason, although why she would leave a child that young alone in a full bathtub, I’ll never know. I had an accident. There I was sitting in the tub, circumnavigated by my own feces, and filled with the absolute dread of my mother’s reaction. I was too young to know how to clean up or hide my crime so I sat there and waited for the inevitable. That fear is what I remember most. Why my mind holds this memory and not the thousands of others I’ve lost is beyond me.
Mom was a very fearful woman when I was growing up. You never knew that woman but you also never knew her second husband, Frank – my stepfather. When mom was young, she was desperate for affection and being alone was a fate worse than death. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because of her parents. In my memory, they are stoic and cold people but I don’t know much about them. What I do know is Frank used mom’s fears against her. He was a big man, brutish and intimidating. He was violent as well and thought nothing of giving mom or me a good smack. We rarely knew why. But Frank’s most powerful weapon by far was mom’s fear of abandonment and he used it to tear her down and keep her in check. One night, when I was fourteen, mom grabbed me and we fled the house. And that was the end of Frank. I never thought mom would do it – I never even considered it possible. Everything changed in one night. She divorced him and she survived – surprised her as much as it did Frank.
Yeah, Frank was gone but mom never stopped hating him and that hate gave her strength. She hated him more than I’ve ever hated anyone. Years later, I told her, quoting my therapist, that hate was self-destructive and that she needed to let it go and make her peace with Frank. Her response was simple but to the point; “When you are in an intolerable situation, Brenda, you use whatever you’ve got to survive. Hate is like any other weapon, used correctly, it can set you free.” It sent chills down my spine. Now I see that her hate was really determination. She would never allow anyone to control her again. It changed her. The divorce brought out a zest for life in mom that she had never known before. My mother was gone and I didn’t know this new woman.
Oddly, I never hated or loved Frank. I was indifferent. I didn’t like when he would beat mother or me, but when the pain went away so did all emotion. He was the ogre we had to navigate around in order to live. That’s all.
I have often wondered what the final straw had been. What was the moment mom knew she had to leave Frank. She would never talk about it but it must have been big. With Gary and me, it was a simple decision. I caught him with another woman (it wasn’t Angela but he was seeing her as well) and that was it. I told him I wanted a divorce. I had been planning to end the marriage for the better part of a year, I was financially ready, and I knew I could get custody of you and Jeff. His infidelity was just the spark I needed. It was a very cold decision. My love for him had died long before – if it ever existed – divorce was the logical choice. I didn’t hate him; he was just another human being in the world. Surely, this indifference hurt Gary the most.
After her divorce from Frank, mom and I had several hard years where we lived hand to mouth. Mom took any job she could get just to put food on the table. She also managed to get a degree in social work. She was always busy so I pretty much raised myself in those years. As for your grandmother, as I said, she had changed. Her rebirth wasn’t all at once; it slowly grew until I could hardly remember her any other way. She had several new lovers. Some were serious, some were not, and some weren’t much more than babysitters to keep an eye on me. However, she never sought out married life again and she never let one of them hit her or me again.
Once I grew up and was on my own, our relationship grew stronger. She became very loving and always wanted to do things together. I suspect this was a reaction to guilt. She blamed herself for not being able to stop Frank’s abuse. It was silly, she was as much a victim as me, but she wanted to earn my love. She didn’t have to. Of course, I loved her. She was my mother. But sometimes, when I looked in her eyes, I could see the words meant so much more to her. It had meaning on a level I could never relate to and that…scared me. Maybe that is why I started to push her away. I imagine it was painful for her.
Mom thought Gary was a shit (and I guess she was right,) she loved Jeff, but she truly loved you, Brandon. It broke her heart the day you ran away and she blamed me. I wasn’t nurturing you, I didn’t give you the attention you deserved. Maybe she was right; maybe I am to blame. After all Gary was long gone by then so who else was there. Mom never stopped loving me but the rift between us started when you left and lasted until the day she died.
You would have liked your grandmother in the last years of her life. She got into politics and she was a pit bull. She would stand before the political elite and unashamedly charge them with their sins. Everything I did in the 60’s, every march, every paper, every lecture looked childish by comparison. She fought with the right, she fought with the left, and she fought with me. One night we got in to a huge argument and I told her that she was an embarrassment. I begged her to stop. I was afraid something might happen to her if she continued. I guess part of me admired her and maybe I was a little jealous but I said what I said for her own good. She died two years later – we had only spoken on four occasions in those two years. I wish I…
Ugh! This cough again! It’s bad, it hurts. God, I hate the taste of blood. Another handful of horror, quick, Brenda, fling it away, don’t look at it, don’t think about it. God, oh God, my belly hurts, I can’t feel my legs…what’s happening to me?
It’s over, there is no pain in your stomach, Brenda, and your legs are right where you left them. The cough is just an annoyance. Nothing more than that. Nothing to fear, no reason for concern.
A sharp yelp outside. One last yelp and the Maxwells’ dog barks no more. I am truly alone now. Alone in the darkness and in the silence. The pistol actually calms me; it’s heavy and solid, something to hold on to. Just knowing there is an end helps me to bear life without Time for a little longer.
Of course, it was all a lie that – crap about my mother. You didn’t believe it did you? Don’t feel bad if you did – it was all true and it was all a lie – it was a cliché. A tale told by the Gods, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. My mother was a mystery to me. She loved me and I hated her. She hated me and I loved her. She was weak and strong, frightened and brave, proud and ashamed. She was whatever I wanted her to be. I can admit that now because it doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever my mother really was, I never knew. We were just two people who grew old in the same house and got beat by the same man. It is an age-old story and it is all I have to offer you. Did I even cry when she died? The real answer is, no.
It’s been years since I’ve held this gun. It is surprisingly clean, looks brand new and it’s still fully loaded. Well, almost fully loaded. Gary bought the .38 when we were living on the south end of Chicago, the “bad section of town.” I hated the gun then and I hate it now, yet it is my salvation.
They say suicide is a sin, that if you take your own life it is a one-way ticket to Hell. Honestly, I never thought too much about Heaven or Hell. I was raised Catholic because Frank was Catholic. I believed in the Catholic God and the Catholic Devil. It was simpler that way. So perhaps I’ll go to the Catholic Hell.
When Time ended yesterday (how long ago – days, months, years,) I’d just come home from work and I was so happy. It had only been two months, but having you back, living with me again, Brandon…well it felt so right. I know you don’t believe this, but when that clinic in New York called and told me what you had been through, how you had survived on the streets, I felt awful but I was so glad they’d found you – so glad to have you back. I left that night to bring you home. I guess I didn’t allow myself to see how sick you really were. I ignored the cough and the lesions; I ignored your skeletal frame and your constant fevers. All I knew was you were back and we were getting along. That was wonderful. I brought the flowers home for you, I knew they’d give you a laugh. Margaret pawned them off on me. It was her last day before she transferred to the California branch and we had thrown her a party. Bob, the little brown-nose, had bought the biggest, nastiest arrangement of Carnations I’d ever seen. Naturally, Margaret didn’t want them and I knew you could make something beautiful out of them – the thought made me happy.
I was struggling to get the arrangement into the house when I noticed all the clocks were flashing “12:00” in that hideous, blood red digital light. And that was it. Time was no more.
As a child, whenever Frank and mom fought, I would grab my dolls and play in the closet, hoping to avoid the violence around me. So, once again, at fifty-four, I hid in my house and played with my toys. Outside, Time may have ended without warning but the people were still trying to cope. There were screams and loud noises and chaos. All sound and fury. Eventually the screams ended (much like mom and Frank’s arguments.) Then there was just me, the Maxwells’ dog and the insects. Now there is just me. It all happened so fast. I had everything sorted out at last – I was on top. I blinked my eyes and you were just a cold lump on the floor next to a smoking gun. I don’t understand Brandon. Why couldn’t you give me the chance to make things right? Was this your way of punishing me for driving you away? What happened to you was not my fault. I didn’t put you on the streets, I didn’t put the spike in your arm, I didn’t pimp you out, I didn’t make you sick, and I didn’t cause Time to stop ticking. Maybe if you’d listened to me once in your goddamned life none of this would have happened. You were selfish, Brandon. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy and successful but you refused to do what was necessary. Now you are gone and I’m alone in a world that is dead and dying.
I miss you. God, I miss you so much. I’ve never felt this way and I don’t want to. I’m sick. I’m not committing suicide, I’ve just decided I’d rather not sit here alone waiting for the inevitable…it’s logical. I hope you can forgive me, Brandon…please tell me you understand…
Looking past mom, who still sits in the window looking back at me, I can see…a horizon. The houses, trees, and power lines are all black silhouettes but framing them is the sky – slowly becoming a hazy shade of gray. I sit and I watch as the gray turns to red, then to orange and lastly the yellow of morning sun. Slowly, ever so slowly the room floods with brilliance. I sit and I watch and I wait. I wait for Time to resume. But it doesn’t. My mind swims with the contradiction. If dawn has arrived, if the sun is rising, then, by definition, Time must have passed. If all that is true, then Time must exist. Right? Apparently not. Time is still dead. I don’t know how this can be; I only know that it is. The sun is coming, with or without Time, setting light to a dead world. Is this your answer, Brandon? If it is, I don’t understand. Maybe it’s not the sun at all. Maybe it’s a God come to survey the dead.
Your grandmother believed the sun was a God. Did you know that? When she was married to Frank, we were Catholic. After she divorced Frank, mom sought guidance from the church but it wasn’t for her. She began studying other religions and formed her own beliefs. She loved the sunset and sunrise because they were the two moments of the day when the sun and moon shared the sky. “That’s when Mother Night (the moon) and Father Day (the sun) meet and make love.” She would say with a smile, like a little girl with a secret. God Sex – she called it. Sounded like New Age bullshit to me but it’s what she believed. I guess I’ll never understand her.
All right then, if that is what mom believed, so be it. I’ll go outside and watch the God Sex.
It is difficult to stand. My body has molded itself to the chair and doesn’t want to break free. The carnations are still on the table where I left them but they’ve dried up – dead. The lump on the floor next to them, that’s not you, Brandon. I know that. It doesn’t even look like you anymore.
We think a person who commits suicide is weak or depressed beyond the point of finding an alternative. We call them victims – victims of suicide – as if it were some external force. We pity and vilify them – a bit like a rape victim, I suppose. We pretend that we simply can’t understand why a person would do something so awful. The truth is too painful to face. I lied when I told you that I don’t understand. I do Brandon, I really do.
The outside air is cold but I barely feel a chill. I’m sure I make quite a sight – and old naked woman carrying a gun, framed by the doorway in broad daylight. It’s almost funny but there is no one to see the joke. No one to laugh, or cry, no one to stop me. No one to help me.
Suicide is the logical choice. It was for you and it is for me. You were not a victim. You made your own choice just as you always did. You were selfish, as you always were. But can I really blame you? Who wants to linger and die slowly in a world without Time, a world of constant misery? I don’t.
In the backyard, I’ll have a clear view of the sex. The flowerbeds we started working on last month are dead. That is a shame. You said it was good therapy. You wanted to take a job as a gardener and get your own apartment once you were feeling better. You wanted to show me you’d grown up. The illness got the better of you and the flowerbeds had to wait. Things change so fast but if a fruit fly can live an entire lifetime in twenty-four hours, should the changes a day brings really be a surprise?
The backyard stinks of morning dew and decay. Can you smell it? The snow has stopped; there wasn’t much accumulation. It is silent, not even a breeze. There’s a feeling in the pit of my stomach I recognize. It is anticipation.
I am neither happy nor sad. Why should I be sad? I’ve had a good life. So my childhood could have been better – so what. Whose couldn’t have been? I’ve always had enough money, enough friends, enough love…I’ve had enough time. Gary accused me of being cold and indifferent. Not just towards him but to everything. I thought he was a fool but maybe I am, even to my own death.
Standing naked, looking up at the sun, feeling its warmth on my skin. I try to see the sun as my mother saw him. It’s just a ball of fiery gasses to me. I look at the moon, starting to fade away in the growing light, and try to see her as my mother did. A rock that orbits the earth – that’s all I see.
I bet you could see more, couldn’t you? You saw the world in ways I could never begin to imagine and you turned them into the most beautiful paintings. I told you your grandmother showed me the painting you did of her – your first oil painting. It was amazing. For some reason I could not admit that to her, I couldn’t admit she had been right to buy the paints for you. I couldn’t admit I had lost you. I was going to tell you this the night I came home with the flowers and Time ended. I was going to buy some oil paints and set up an easel in the office. I wanted you to know that I was wrong.
I’m smiling; it’s over at last. The sun is so bright in my eyes and, in some distant part of my soul, I can imagine it smiling back at me. In the movies, our tragic heroine would put the gun in her mouth and the dashing hero would rush in to save the day. Too bad, there are no more dashing heroes. But the mouth seems like the right way to go – it worked for you.
The taste is awful, gun oil…oh god, I can feel the vodka coming back up…
Ah, damn it. I hate to throw up. Can nothing be as picturesque as Hollywood portrays it? I need to sit down. Suddenly I’m shaking. Calm down, Brenda – it’s almost over.
For some reason I’m thinking about my real father. All I know about him is what mom told me; he died the day I was born. The army was about to ship him off to Korea. He attempted to get a leave so he could be there when I was born. When that failed, he went AWOL. In the ultimate cliché – a careless driver ran him down before he could get to the hospital. I was born as my father died. Where is the logic in that?
I guess the Gods of cliché put their mark on me early.
The gun-in-the-mouth bit just isn’t going to work. The next logical choice is under the chin. I’m trying to see the smile in the sun – just fiery gas. There is no hesitation, no fear. Why should there be?

………there is an echoing thud, thud, thud, like the sound of someone hitting a hollow tube underwater. I’m blind. My ears are useless, made deaf with the constant thud, thud, thud of the tube. Slowly, a ringing sound fills my head and the thud, thud, thud changes to a sharper sound. Over and over again, the sound repeats, counting down each second. After a couple of minutes, I start to recognize the sound. It’s the Maxwells’ dog, he’s barking again. I begin to laugh; the sound comes out garbled and wet. A joke leaps to my mind. The world has ended and everyone is dead except for one man. He can’t stand the thought of being alone, so he climbs to the top of the Sears Tower and takes the plunge. He whizzes down, past flight after flight of the giant building. Just as he passes the third floor window, he hears a phone ring.
I laugh even harder.
Time has begun.
I am dying – but not cleanly, as I had planned. I can only guess at the damage. What a macabre sight I must be – a laughing, faceless beast. There is no pain. I can hear now but not like before. The unearthly sound of bird song floats around me. I can hear the strength of the dog’s bark and feel his muscles tighten as he runs. I hear the insects buzzing around me and feel their light touch. I feel the earth circling the sun at 67,000 miles per hour. I feel the sky above and the freedom in the wind. I feel the trees and hear their whispers. Everything is crystal clear in my mind’s eye and it is so beautiful.
Is this what you were trying to tell me Brandon?
Decades of repressed feelings swarm over me. A billion and one emotions fight for space within my fragile mind – love, hate, despair, joy, lust, longing, greed, honor, fear – endless varieties, thousands of subtleties. I laugh with my parents as I take my first steps. I smile at the warmth of my mother’s embrace as she lifts me from filthy bath water. I cry as my mother and Frank scream at each other. I fret over a seemingly endless stream of pimples. I lust for hundreds of boys. I shiver with a thousand orgasms. I relive the shock of a murdered president. I am infuriated at a pointless war. I am overjoyed at my wedding. I am the embodiment of love with the birth of my children. I am embittered over Gary’s many affairs. I am devastated when you run away. I weep at mom’s funeral. You return and I am complete. You use the evil bullet and I am broken.
The emotions are unceasing. I have denied myself so much of life – wonders of existence ignored and betrayed by my fear. They are all here, in this single instance and I don’t want it to end, would give anything to undo the damage the bullet has caused. But it is too late. Only in the end do I understand, only in the end do I want to live.

I…

Step…

Across…

THE END