Chapter One: Shift
I suppose I didn't have much of a life to return to. I never had much to return to after the… incident of ten years ago. I was just a boy, and yet… oh! Tragedy how cruel can you be? I had the intelligence, I had the skill, I had the will to reach my dreams, yet apprehension had gotten the better of me. My life was forfeit at this point; day in and day out, being treated as a menace to society over accusations of horrid proportions. I hadn't hurt anybody, no, that would mean that such slanders upon my name were justified. No, I just stuck up for the wrong people at the wrong time. I saved somebody who had begged me to do so, and for that unmitigated scorn was my reward.
It doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter that I could and would have changed if given the opportunity. It doesn't matter that I was willing to turn over a new life, and it certainly didn't matter that I was as innocent as the man standing next to the bus-stop, or the man in his office performing the duties of an accountant (which were also the duties I performed for pay that wasn't worth the menial terror).
I've learned that, simply put, when you fall down, you don't exactly have the opportunity to lift yourself back up again. In fact, your opportunities disappear one after one, and your dreams shatter.
Shattered…
Shattered…
I recalled the woman whom I had saved from the agonizing pain of this world, in her gown, sprawled out on the bed. Tears glazed over in her eyes, her bones reduced to mere fragments from an illness that couldn't be treated. Her words were clear, filled with concise brevity.
That was the last image that swung into my mind, as the chair under me was kicked over, and my neck swung within the loops of the noose.
I let out a cold, shrill chortle. At least I went out on my own terms…at least there was no afterlife to die for, at least I was dying with a smile across my face.
And then my windpipe shattered.