Charlotte
Ten minutes.
Charlotte stared at the gun in her hand, wondering how much time had elapsed since the radio bulletin. Not long, she thought. Ten minutes was eternity. Ten minutes was hell.
Seconds teased her like bubbling brimstone.
She tapped her foot.
The lightbulb hanging above her head was naked – raped so many times by the darkness that it's light was dim and sickly. Impure and corrupted. The glow painted shadows across the concrete walls of the basement who twisted themselves into oblique shapes and leered at Charlotte with murderous intent. They whispered to her. They stroked at her chair, her back, her thigh.
Come to us.
Pull the trigger.
Charlotte's heart punched at her ribcage with steel knuckles, squeezing her lungs, constricting her breath. The air was like cigarette smoke. It was like mustard gas. Heavy, deadly, overwhelming.
She inhaled deeply and lifted the gun into better light, studying the grooves and contours of the weapon. There was some kind of perverse beauty in it, she decided. There was something irresistible about the way it stretched itself out in the jaundiced light, hard and chiseled: like a sculpture, loaded, safety off. A long neck, a shapely stock, and intricate chamber with an ingrained thread that even Michaelangelo couldn't have reproduced.
And it was going to kill her.
Beauty.
Throbbing dark purple beauty. Neon.
Ten minutes.
Charlotte was pretty sure the bullet would kill her immediately. She was pretty sure that at the moment she pulled the trigger consciousness would vanish like smoke, and streaks of red would join the painted shadows. That was how she wanted it. No pain, no waiting. She didn't like suspense. Charlotte like instantaneous conclusions, endings that quickly superseded beginnings. Maybe that was why she could never finish reading a novel, she realized. Too much rising action, too much climax, and not enough resolution. The thought made her laugh. Hysterically.
The sweet percussion of a bullet leaving her gun would make a fine conclusion.
Crisp.
Like the end of a concerto.
Charlotte heard violins sobbing as she placed the gun against her head, above the ear and to the right.
Ten minutes was just too long. Ten minutes held too much rising action, too much building tension, too much regret and anger and hopelessness. The sun was going to explode, they told her. In ten minutes the most glorious sunrise in mankind's history would breach the horizon and absorb the night sky in an all-inclusive embrace. And then absorb the cities. And then the houses. And then the people.
You have ten minutes to live.
Ten minutes to rebuild smoldering bridges, to reignite passion, to say goodbye.
And make it quick. Time is running out.
To hell with time! Charlotte couldn't deal with time! For God's sake, why couldn't the bastard sun just get it over with?
Suspense!
One way or another, she was going to die. Either in an apocalyptic explosion or by her own hand. A bullet – a calming, soothing chunk of metal that would shred through her cerebellum and make an exit wound within 0.07 seconds, dragging a trail of blood behind it like a comet's tail.
It didn't matter to her.
She smiled at the shadows.
She closed her eyes.
And she pulled the trigger.
Ryan
Ten minutes.
And a lot of beer.
Ryan wanted to get so smashed that he had alcohol bleeding from his pores like some sort of inebriated Christ. He wanted to saturate his stomach, his brain, his lungs with it. He wanted to die in it.
Engine exhaust and fermented wheat were cocktail mixed by tension.
On the rocks?
Sitting in his truck, idling in the middle of the street, Ryan drank deeply from the bottle of vodka, letting it dribble liberally down his chin, onto his shirt, and into his lap. Choking, laughing, he punched the air with his fist and screamed happiness.
He wondered what would happen if he lit a match at that moment and tossed it on his lap
Spontaneous combustion!
Drunk, flaming, laughing, roaring.
Heavy metal music tore through his speakers and jackknifed across Ryan's eardrums. Ryan tried to sing along. But his mouth wouldn't work right anymore and his words turned to slush as they fell out of his mouth and into the bottle of vodka. Sizzling.
You got ten minutes to burn.
Literally or figuratively, Captain?
Both.
Let's make this a helluva night!
Ryan gunned the engine – which rasped loudly back at him – and thought about the sun for a moment. A big, boiling ball of excess heat and power and fire. It was going to kill him in ten minutes, the authorities had told the world. But he wasn't going to hold a grudge. Forgive and forget, right? Anyway, the damage couldn't be worse than a bad sunburn.
Flaming!
The road ahead was empty and lit timidly by long-necked streetlights that seemed to cluster together and whisper like housewives. Ryan's engine roared again – pumping with testosterone and good one hundred proof alcohol – and he smiled at the street. Stretching on forever. Slumped buildings as an audience. Tires. Gas. One hundred miles an hour on a residential road and not a cop in sight.
Laughing!
With his foot jammed firmly against the gas pedal, Ryan shifted out of park and into gear. The truck shuddered and ruptured the street with burning rubber and wheels like knife sharpeners. Ryan rocked in his seat and yelled into the empty night – at the streetlights – honking his horn as his speedometer danced on a red-notched ballroom floor. Extra bottles of open vodka on the seat beside him tumbled over and bled into the carpet. Ryan inhaled deeply and screamed again as his fender tore through a mailbox – scattering letters like snow. He swerved to his right.
Into the park.
His truck crashed through benches, flinging wood and iron onto the neatly kept lawn, and snapped the necks of saplings.
His tires carved coagulating gashes into the grass.
Seventy miles an hour!
No sirens. No frantic paintings of red and blue against his rear view mirror.
Faster!
Ryan merged out of the park and onto the streets again. His eyes blurred with the fumes and the vodka and the tears of pure, raw ecstasy. The sun was coming! The sun was coming to town!
Screw the sun.
Bring on the heat.
Ryan squinted down the road – eighty-five – and saw a storefront grinning at him two hundred feet away. A right turn and a left turn, but no through-way. He smiled and whooped, jumping in his seat – ninety-five. He could make this turn in his sleep. Avoiding the storefront was going to be child's play.
He was invincible.
Roaring!
One hundred miles an hour.
Ryan tried to turn his steering wheel – wrenching it left. And he did.
But not fast enough.
The truck flipped on it's side – wheels giving out from underneath it – sending a shower of sparks grinding against the metal and asphalt like Fourth of July sparklers, Ryan's truck slammed into the building at the end of the street. Crumpling against it like paper.
Ryan laughed as he ripped through the windshield at a hundred miles an hour.
Swearing at the sun.
