Worthless

Life is worthless. It was hard to shake off the thought these days. It haunted me day and night, made me look longingly at stray knives lying about.

I couldn’t stand on a balcony without imagining what a body would look like on the ground below if it fell from that height. I sought out the medicine cabinet if I was invited to someone’s home for a party. Not that I got invited to that many in the first place.

My girlfriend told me there was something wrong with me before she left me. Well, of course there is. I know I stopped talking to her near the end. I was all alone in the echo-chamber of my own head, obsessively thinking over what I had or had not done during the day, constantly looking over my shoulder. She told me to get help. But who would help someone like me.

The sky bled rain as I walked down the empty street in this run-down stretch of town. All eyes had taken shelter in the rain, and that brought me some relief; isolation felt like a necessity sometimes, and it was suffocating. I was soaked through to the skin, and it made my small five-two frame shiver. Drops of water ran down my acne-scarred face, like tears.

I put my shoulder to the wooden door, and pushed it open. “Hey! Who are y…” began the big, bald guard before I’d stabbed him in the eye with the screw-driver I had in my pocket. I took the gun from his waist as he fell, and put a bullet each in the heads of the five men who were playing cards around the table inside.

“Is he dead?” said the voice on the phone when I took the call on my cell.

“Yes. There was some collateral damage,” I replied.

“No matter. We’re wiring you the $50,000.”

I sighed, as I surveyed the scene. I could have been a bit more surgical, it occurred to me. There were five men dead who didn’t need to be. But after all, life is worthless.