~ Part Two ~
Ben Williamson closed the door, carefully placed his coat in the closet, next to the bright blue ladies winter coat and sat down to his microwave dinner. The condo was immacutely cleaned, thanks to Maria who came Tuesdays and Thursdays. This wasn't home to Ben, not anymore.
Day after day, week after week, month after month, Ben done the exact same thing. He'd gotten himself into a rut, stuck in the same basic routine. He refused to do anything out of the ordinary ever since his mother died six years before, since his best friend died four years before, since his fiance died six months ago. The doctors said it was a mixture alcohol posioning and drug overdose but Ben believed that maybe Mammy's body just broke down, years after her mind did.
Ben had faced loss. Severe loss. First his mother, then his best friend, Emile in a car accident, then his fiance, Annette committed suicide, all in the past six years. He had something good with Annette, something real. They were set to marry two months before she killed herself, before she had tied a rope around her neck and hung herself by the rafters of her attic, leaving behind a note that pushed all blame on herself, until the last line. She had typed it out and put his name in a black Sharpied heart, then typed out the four words she knew would hurt the most.
"You were a mistake."
He finished dinner, threw out the platter and spritzed Clorox onto the table, before wiping it down hard. Work was easy, it always had been, a simple accounting job, but lately Ben had been distracted and restless, rethinking and reliving his life.
“You were a mistake”
He had taken to sitting down in his mother's old blue Laz-E-Boy, rips and little burned holes covering almost every inch of the dilapidated chair. Ben got a gun, a nice G19 Glock a couple years back, after Annette feared robbers, because of a string of robberies in the apartment complex next door.
“You were a mistake”
He fiddled with it now, throwing it from hand to hand, pondering his life. What was the point of it anyway? He had no family, no friends, no wife, nothing. Even at work, he was quiet and antisocial. Who would miss him if he were to move to Alaska or something? Would anyone come to his funeral if he were to die?
“You were a mistake”
Ben threw the gun to the floor and stood, shaking his head and wringing his fingers. He nervously paced the bright white carpet for a bit, running his shaking fingers through his hair, before going to his bedroom, laying on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. It still smelled of her. For months after, he had hysterically pressed her clothes to his face, letting the scent of sugar and vanilla drift into nose, letting it trigger memories from years ago, when they met in high school. Maria wasn't the first maid he had; Selena, the last one had gone into his bedroom and washed all the clothing taking away the last essence of the girl he loved so much.
He was silent for a while, the evening turning to night as the sun dissapeared for good. What was he now? Twenty-seven? At this point, shouldn't he have a wife, maybe one or two kids running around? Where was his silver lining, his memoir about surviving an alcohol ruled life? That's what he did, of course. Survived, right?
The walls were bright red, repainted annually by Ben himself. The floor here wasn't carpeted, but glazed wood, the patterns playing tricks on Ben's mind, reminding him of the roaches that sat dead in the bathtub in that apartment back in Brooklyn.
Finally, he went out, to the cabinet in the far left corner of the kitchen, his fingers shaking as he grabbed the bottle of Hennessy, the pack of Marbolos, the barely used diamond ring and his ratty Superman toy. He didn't have a problem, he assured himself as this once-in-a-blue-moon thing, turned into a nightly ritual.
He lit the cigarette and took a long drag, reclining back into Mammy's chair before chugging down vodka, until his eyes began to tear and his stomach began to burn. He picked up the remote and turned on the little, black TV onto the news. After listening about children starving and mothers stabbing and men raping, Ben zoned out, letting the news anchor's voice of death become white noise. He felt himself relaxing, was almost at the point where he stopped thinking, when he saw the gun still laying on the floor.
“You were a mistake”
A flood of anger rushed through him and he threw the bottle against the wall, enjoying the sound of it breaking, the shattered glass laying on the floor, vodka sliding down the blood red walls. Why him? Why did all this happen to him? Dead mother. Dead best friend. Dead fiance. Dead. Dead. Dead. That's all he had in his life. Death.
He stood, wavering slightly at the dizziness, before grabbing the gun with the same want a child would grab a toy that he wasn't allowed to have. He opened and closed the chamber a couple times before aiming it at the TV and pulling the trigger. A loud bang resonated,then shattering glass and Ben flinched back, dropping the loaded gun onto the floor.
Voices skipped around his head, screaming and flitting around like moths to light. Ben noticed someone laughing, a cackling, hysterical sounding thing; the sound of someone slowly going insane. It took a while until he realized it was him. The cigarette was on the floor and Ben bent over and picked it up, pressing the burning edge to his arm, wanting, needing to feel something real. It didn't hurt.
He threw the cigarette to the ground, stamping on it with his socked foot, in the same manner his mother had over almost twenty years before. The gun, now hanging loosely in his hand, now had a point. He shoved it in his mouth, tears dancing down his face, from the vodka or from the pathetic life he lived, he wasn't sure.
“You were a mistake”
“You were a mistake”
“You were a mistake”
“You were a mistake”
He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger, finally becoming a mistake no more.
~*~
It needs help. A lot of help. Mostly grammar and structure and whether it makes sense and shtuff. Yeah.
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