Throwing Thursday Back

#throwbackthursdays

I know it's been a while since I've posted and I apologize for leaving you hanging. I've been working on a novella I'd like to publish this year and it's taken up a lot of my time. So, I'm trying my best to get back into the groove of at least posting here once a week and today I thought I would do a throwback post. This is a flash fiction piece I wrote for a class, the parameters of said assignment are lost to me now. I hope you enjoy it.

Die Already

“Jiiiillll!” She heard her name being shouted from across the crowded parking lot by a shrill voice. “Why won't you just die?” Jill turned to see a 20-something blonde in a leopard print top and tight-fitting black capri pants standing behind her. Legs wide in a firing stance, she pointed her 9-millimeter directly at Jill.

Jill couldn't help but notice how the high wedges the blonde wore made the gun she was pointing look almost comic if the gun hadn't been pointed at her; it was reminiscent of Charlie's angels show she watched as a child. The crowd screamed, and people scattered away from the crazed lady who reminded Jill a little of Farrah Fawcett without the trademark hairdo. She wondered why she wasn't more scared, like the others running for their lives all around her.

The Arizona sun beat down upon the now-emptying parking lot of the strip mall. Her milk was going to ruin out in this heat, Jill thought to herself. She had just been doing the weekly grocery shopping; they were nearly out of everything.

“First you’re sick and they don't know what's wrong with you.” the blonde steps toward Jill, her gun still aimed at Jill. “So he spends a little more time with you.” Two steps closer. “Then he finds out you have cancer! Cancer!”

She throws her free hand up skyward in anger. “So he spends a little more time with you.” The blonde took three more steps closer with both hands holding the gun tightly. “He finds out you have only three months to live. Then Stephen feels guilty about seeing me, so we can't date each other anymore until you die” The blonde moves one step closer; her finger on the trigger.

“Three months! Three months but you don't die! Now it's in remission, and we still can’t be together!” The blonde's knuckles were white, her body shaking, her chest rising and falling quickly. “What is it gonna take for you to die already?”

Jill had no answer for the woman standing before her. Mascara shaded her tan face, her eyes red from weeping. The blonde clutched the gun until her knuckles were white as if the gun were her lifeline. Jill shrugged her thin shoulders, and shook her head at the blonde, opening her mouth to find nothing would come out.

It had been over two years since she and Stephen had lost that connection to one another. Between the business meetings and the banquets, they had stopped trying to connect with one another. She still loved him, but they had forgotten to show that to one another when life had gotten too busy. Was it one big specific instance or a bunch of little instances that added up to this?

That time when the kids went away to camp, Stephen decided to go on a golfing trip, and she on a spa retreat. I think we didn’t talk to each other for a week, she thought to herself. Before that how long had it been since they had spent quality time together? Should they have done something together instead? If they had, would things have happened differently?

Jill had known about the blonde almost since it began; she had accepted it, and forgiven them both.

Now all the feeling she could scrape from her depleted being was one of pity and understanding. This might have been her in another time, another place, another situation. Staring at the blonde waiting for her answer, finding she had none.

“I'm sorry you feel slighted honey but...” she just shook her head.

“Slighted! He was the love of my life. We could've been together if only you would've just died.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks unchecked. “He was the only person to ever love me.”

“I don't know what to say. Whatever he did was his own doing, not mine.”

“Yeah right like you didn't know and play that card for all it was worth.” She spat the words from her full lips, curling her nose in disgust at Jill.

“I honestly didn't but I doubt you will ever believe anything I say.”

“You got that right.”

From the corner of her eye, Jill could see police officers in their blue and black uniforms approaching crouching low, hiding in between the abandoned cars of the lot. The blonde seemed oblivious to this as she worked through her inner demons about Jill and her husband.

Jill thought back to the smell of rubbing alcohol, and the occasional beeping of the machines. The loneliness of the chemo treatments is where she laid it all down and walked away. How could she harbor resentment toward Stephen when she was dying? Thank God you can’t take that with you. She had even forgiven him for breaking their vows. Why hold onto such things when you’re facing eternity?

“He loves me, not you. He told me so.” Jill cringed inside and out; that one hurt. “The only way we can ever be together is for you to die.” Her face filled with rage, nostrils flaring, and her eyes hardening. She had almost worked up enough nerve Jill thought.

“Ma'am this is the Mesa Police Department. Put down your weapon and put your hands behind your head.” She ignored the voice over the loudspeaker as if it had never happened. The voice continued a constant buzzing in their ears. The police continued to converge on the couple.

“If you and Stephen want to be together then I won't stop you. Stephen knows that.”

“He won’t leave you while you’re still alive!”

“Do you understand what it's like to lose somebody you love so much?”

Jill felt the air knocked from her lungs as if the blonde had physically struck her. She did know what it was like to lose someone she loved so much. Someone she had given everything to be with and someone who hurt her and betrayed her; Stephen had been the love of her life.

She remembered their honeymoon in some backwater hotel which was all they could afford. The Jacuzzi seemed like a good idea but when they tried to use it, it flooded the room. She had never packed so fast in her life. They spent the night in his old Monte Carlo cuddled up in the back seat; good thing it was summer.

The blonde was the end of a long line of other blondes Jill had had to deal with in the course of their marriage. Jill realized she could not nor wanted to compete with such women; how could she at her age? She was tired, tired of hurting, tired of hurting others; she just wanted peace.

The buzzing grew more intense in her ears. She knew she should listen but found she didn't really care what they were saying. Everything slowed down to where it seemed it took five minutes to take a single breath. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Jill said a sing-song quality to her words as they were slow and muffled to her ears.

She looked to the officers, their guns trained on the blonde. They were giving her one last warning. Jill sent the signal through her body, mustering the last reserves of her meager strength from her heedless body for one last feat. She bunched her depleted muscles for a single spring.

The officer’s finger twitched, squeezing the trigger to release the firing pin which struck the cap of the cartridge. Jill springs from her spot toward the blonde, fear and regret knotting themselves in her stomach at the knowledge that she will most likely die, and never have the chance to make things right with Stephen. Jill hoped he appreciated the second chance she was giving him.

The cap ignites; combustion gases expand forcing the bullet through the barrel to release the pressure. Jill knocks the blonde to the pavement, facing the officer’s smoking gun. She watches the bullet suspended in the air coming toward her. She was shorter than the blonde; it will hit her in the head.

Her surroundings, shouting, all the flailing limbs, and such chaos, barely register. She will be glad to be rid of it; the heaviness of life.