A.N. – Okay, well, this didn't come out anything like I'd expected, but I kind of like it. Short, and to the point. I didn't exactly have any certain Greaser in mind when I wrote this, but I suppose you could apply it to some of them. I've had a serious case of writer's block since the last Harry Potter book came out, but I'm hoping this drabble means I'm getting over it. ;) My first fic in this genre! I'm a bit proud of myself.
Oh, and if anyone has any ideas for a different title, feel free to suggest them!
Disclaimer: As I said, this doesn't have any real reference to any of the Greasers in S.E. Hinton's novel, but I got the idea from her, so I figured I'd put this in.
Wasted.
I think everyone who's been fighting all their life realizes how stupid it all was in the end. It didn't stop me from dying. It didn't stop anyone from suffering – if it did anything, it made life worse. Fighting didn't bring my dad back. Fighting didn't help my mom raise two kids on her own. It didn't ease the pain, didn't erase the memories, didn't take the alcohol from my hand, didn't take the cig from my mouth. It did nothing.
The adrenaline rush, I've come to realize, is just another way of running. Blind oblivion... and then you come back to reality, and it hits you hard. I can't count the times I've pulled the trigger in a fit of rage only to hate myself when I calmed down and had to face what I'd done.
I hated everything I had become, and the worst part was that I had no real reason behind why I had changed so dramatically in the first place. Sure, I didn't have a lot of money when I was younger, and I didn't live in that great of a neighborhood, and my dad ran out on my family when I was seven, but I had a lot more than I realized. I had my mom, and my brother, and seven years worth of memories of my dad before he lost it. We had a house of our own, which is more than some people can say, and there was always food for us, no matter how little.
I had a life when I was little, and I was so quick to throw all that away for a few highs involving a hunk of metal and some decent punches. I fed off of the expressions of the men at the other end of the gun, the looks on their faces just before they died.
I never figured I would be one of those guys.
It's weird. When you're dying, those last seconds seem go on for all of eternity. My life didn't flash before my eyes like I'd been told it would – at least, not in the way I thought it would. Instead, the strangest thing happened: I had an epiphany. A revelation hit me just then, while I was laying there in a pool of my own blood with two bullets in my chest.
I knew then that none of it was worth it. All the fighting, all the dying... and in the end, it didn't matter. Everything I'd wasted my life on -- guns, cigs, beer -- I'd never see any of it again where I was going. And you know what? I figured I'd be alright there.
A.N. – Weird, huh? Please send a review!