THE REST OF MY LIFE
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If you won't forgive me the rest of my life
Let me apologise while I'm still alive
I know it's time to face all of my past mistakes
They're going to kill me for the rest of my life
'Rest Of My Life' – Less Than Jake
"I'll make it up to you, even if it takes me the rest of my life."
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Prologue.
Being shot is like a heavy punch to the solar plexus. It stops you. Shocks you. There is no pain, not as such, merely a sense of ultimate suspension. Cold floods through you, eating up the space left by the departing blood, and with it a terminal fatigue. And all the while, with this hot wetness dripping down your stomach, with this heavy salt oozing out into the night, you stand there, thinking, how did I get here?
Bullets have become a cliché in this modern world of ours, almost like a fairytale. Things like this don't happen to real people, real people die stupid, mundane deaths. Car crashes and breast cancer and broken hearts.
Broken heart? Isn't that the nice way of dressing up liver cirrhosis for the children.
But yet here you are, lying on the ground, with all your life spread out around you, all red over the damp cobblestones.
Had you the breath, you would say thank you. Because dying alone in some back alley of Prague's redlight district is preferable.
You close your eyes, and stop thinking. You know how you got here.