John always heard that when one faces the end of their life it all flashes before them. On the battlefield, in the face of death by faceless targets and robotically aimed bombs, he never saw it. In prison, cornered and desperate in the face of his enemies, he never saw it. But in his office, looking down the barrel of the gun his former friend-turned enemy held John saw it.
Perhaps because he now had a wife. Perhaps because he had a son. Perhaps because now, unlike those other times, he had something to live for. Death is much more frightening when there's everything to lose.
And it came like a thundering stampeded. All his memories, from the time he was a child, filtered through the situation to leave him facing the reality of the moments that mattered most. At the end of one's life, who cares about the spilled drinks in pubs or the undertipping from shop jobs or the insane rental prices?
No one and that's not what one sees.
It was not what John saw.
He saw the moment, in primary school, when a small boy took a punch from an older bully in his class. John rushed over, planting his fist firmly in the boy's face to leave him bleeding on the ground and helped the other boy to stand. The teacher soon arrived, dragging all three to the headmaster's office but John kept a tight hold over the younger boy's shoulders.
John remembered facing his mother and father about it, sneaking furtive glances at the smaller boy's father giving him a similar lecture. He saw the moments the smaller boy soon sought John's company and the two formed a friendship. One bound closer when John lost his father that same year.
The black of the funeral was almost too vivid. The hand on his shoulder from his friend giving him comfort an actual weight. And the whispered pact to always be there for one another a blood oath in words.
Momentary snapshots of two friends exchanging hopes, dreams, and even secrete crushes just to argue, fight, and make up over shared cricket bats and rugby balls filled his mind. He remembered when they both got into the same college and passed the same A-levels for university. And when the black of his mother's funeral forced him down a different path.
As if it were yesterday John could see the day he shipped off to the army with only his friend to wave him off at the bus terminal. He remembered exchanging joke-filled emails and memories when his battle brothers came back scared and broken… if they came back at all. Those anxious moments hoping his friend's date went well, or the match results, or news on the fluctuating health of his friend's father kept him up at night when he should have worried over his own safety.
But when his friend retrieved him from the airport. When his friend's father offered him a job. When he got his place at University because someone pulled strings to help him. Those moments reminded John of all he shared with the man holding a gun to his head.
In a second they faded. None of those things mattered after Anna. Her blonde hair haloed in his memory from the moment she accidently spilled her fruity drink down his shirt to the time he bought rings for her. Every dark night in his cells as he loved her, hated her, dreamed of her, berated her memory, and wished to have died before he met her hit like a tidal wave of emotions.
And when he got her back. When he realized the little boy he saw in Trafalgar Square was his boy and not his friend's. When she said yes to the proposal he wanted to give so many years earlier. When they slid rings on one another's fingers.
His eyes caught the glint of the band on his finger. The band she placed there. The band he would die wearing.
The death that might happen right now.
At the hands of the friend he defended, befriended, and stood by through thick and thin. The friend who betrayed him, framed him, and tried to kill. The friend about to kill him because he did not get the girl he wanted, because his father was disappointed in him, because he was not the man he wanted to be.
For a second John remembered, more vividly than all the rest, the birthday where he received the cricket bat. The birthday he shared with his friend. The birthday where his friend got a pony. The birthday where his friend broke the cricket bat by "accident" and he always believed it.
This was just another in the long line of cricket bats. John had been happy in his little flat, teaching school, about to propose to the woman of his dreams, about to be officially divorced from the woman he married in a mistaken rush, and his friend could not stand it. Could not stand John's satisfaction with his lack when he was so unsatisfied with his possession.
This would not be another of those moments. John would not sacrifice another bat to his friend's entitlement. He would not sacrifice himself on the altar of Alex Green's pride anymore.
It was time to end this.