Too Late

The windshield wipers made a mechanical whirl and squeaked with each swipe at the rain droplets. I sat in complete silence, except for nature’s chaotic cacophony of rain and wind that assaulted the car. None of this mattered to me. The rain always splatted onto the window, then wiped away, only to be replaced by more just as my depression would always surface after periods of happiness or even just content times with life. I always tried to keep it at bay. But why? What’s the point? Why must I live my life as a walking time bomb? Or carefully tread through the minefield of life?

My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white as chalk. I glanced down in the passenger seat at a picture of my family and friends. We were all smiling, arms around each other’s shoulders, and my sister was making the typical two-fingered “bunny ears” behind my head. We were all just enjoying a hike in the mountains. My smile put on an expression of happiness, but my eyes told something different. I could feel tears attempting to break through, but I fought it. Why cry when that would change absolutely nothing? I looked up into the rearview mirror and saw a driver staring back with bloodshot eyes, a shaggy beard and clumped, disheveled dark hair. A result of hygienic neglect. I deserved every bit of suffering. And why? I honestly couldn’t say. My mind tries to fabricate these delusional, paranoid ideas of people and everything that surrounds me, but I can’t help believing them.

The car suddenly jerked and glided along the wet road for a short time. My heart raced at the unexpected change in my otherwise steady driving. Then I realized that maybe things would be better if I had just hydroplaned into a ditch, the hood ramming into a tree and bending like a soda can. I heard a small nagging voice in the back of my mind, though, telling me: this is all in your head and it will pass. You’re being irrational.

Am I?

Sometimes I didn’t know if I was being unreasonable. Wouldn’t life be better for everyone else to not have to deal with some shit stain like me?

My thoughts shifted to the object I had hidden from sight. I slid my right arm back and settled my fingers over the latch on the center console. The object inside was the eraser to my mistake. That mistake being the fact that I live. I lifted my arm away from the center and shifted my focus back to the road. I almost experienced ecstasy from the thought of suicide.

I flicked on my right blinker and merged onto the exit ramp from the interstate. I drove for about twenty minutes along the main roads in the direction of Gildan’s Park—a place I spent much of my time pondering, though this time it may end with a permanent solution.

I heard the backseat’s leather creak. I shot my eyes to the rearview mirror, only to see the empty seats. I returned my sight to the road.

It was just me.

Then something rustled from behind like movement of a stiff, wrinkled shirt. A stench that was sweet but unbearable flowed from the back. It smelled as if an animal just died in my car. Then a hand struck out to the center console, yanked it open, and snatched my .44 magnum out of its hiding place. It all happened too quickly for me to react. The gun’s hammer clicked back.

A male voice, strangely familiar, demanded from behind, “Don’t move a fucking muscle.” Cold metal pressed against the back of my head.

I continued to drive, though my heart was about to thump out of my chest. “How the hell did you—“

The intruder nudged the barrel deeper into my skin. “Doesn’t matter. Just get us to Gildan’s Park.”

I didn’t understand how he had any knowledge of where I was driving to or how he even knew my gun was tucked away in the center console, but I wasn’t going to question him. He didn’t seem stable enough to question. I kept my eyes on the road. I was too afraid to check the rearview mirror for the identity of this intruder. Maybe he’d shoot me, which was what I planned for myself anyway. Now that I was in a situation with some madman threatening me, I was unsure about dying. The barrel of the gun receded from the back of my head, but I knew the man still had it pointed at me.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” I questioned.

“Shut up and keep driving.”

My eyes looked out towards the road, but my mind was scrambling to find out why this was happening. It seems that life, though, thought just as I did. I didn’t deserve to live.

“I am here to make you see. You’ve always been too scared to face the ultimatum, but I’m here to enlighten you about those around you who pretend to give a shit,.” the stranger said. His voice sounded hoarse. I imagined that that’s how a war vet from an action movie would sound: someone who had seen a lot and knew too much. This man clearly knew too much about me.

“I don’t understand.”

“And you don’t have to. I will make you understand.”

I passed a suburban neighborhood. A couple of kids, maybe brothers, ran out the front door and into the rain. They laughed and chased each other. One splashed into the grass, all the while smiling and slinging water at the other child as they both showered themselves in nature’s teardrops. Envy seeped into my heart as I watched them fade behind thick curtains of rain. When was the last time I experienced any joy? I’ve been an empty shell for years and always knew that I was a walking dead man. Death would be brought by my own hand. Now, though, it seemed likely to be brought by another unless I could get out of this. I was already wondering how much I truly valued my life.

The Gildan’s Park sign surfaced from the rain’s haze as I pulled up towards the entrance. I drove through a narrow road into a tunnel of shade cast by trees that loomed above. The park was devoid of activity except for thick drops of rain and tremors of tree leaves as the wind grew stronger. I followed the trail until I came upon a side path to the left. A wooden sign was posted beside it that labeled the area as “Picnic Grounds.” The rocks beneath my tires crunched as the wheels turned towards the pathway. Thicker drops of water pinged against the car as I guided it beneath a ceiling of thickly interwoven leaves. After a few seconds, I parked the vehicle along the side of a circular open area, the ground composed of dirt pockmarked with mud puddles and dotted with wooden picnic tables throughout.

“Turn the car off,” the intruder told me.

The rumbling engine and whirring windshield wipers died with a turn of my ignition, and the only sound that remained was a battering of rain upon my window and whistling winds. I began to move my eyes towards the mirror to see this stranger, but when he pushed the barrel of the gun against my skull, I fixed my sight back out towards the darkened tables and endless trees.

“You don’t need to see me. Not yet.”

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. “I would like to know who—“

“Why do you think you should live?” the hoarse voice asked me.

“Why does it matter to you?” I snapped.

“Just answer the damn question or I will blow your brains out right here and now.”

I looked down at the picture that lay in the seat, which almost brought tears up again. “I…” I positioned my eyes to the front window. “People who know me will see I’ve gone missing, and you’ll be answering for murder.”

The barrel twitched against my skull as the man gave a humorless laugh. “No. No, I don’t think so. Have you heard from any of your friends or family today?”

“I told someone that I would be coming over here.”

The intruder slammed the gun’s grip into my head. I yelled out and clenched my eyelids shut, gnashing my teeth. “Don’t fucking lie to me!” he screamed.

I grunted from the pulsing pain in my head and strained to speak. “No, I haven’t heard from any of them.”

“And you know why?”

I didn’t respond.

“Because they don’t give a shit. Your friends don’t give a shit. Not even you give a shit about yourself. You know it doesn’t matter if you live or die. No one will care.” He stabbed the barrel into the back of my head again and intensified the pain.

“Well, how do you know this? What makes you think no one will care?” I didn’t understand how this guy remotely knew anything about me or my family, yet everything he was saying, I felt. To hear my inner self-hate come from a crazed man, while being on the wrong end of my own gun, made him sound completely irrational. Just as I had always been.

“You walk around in ignorance. Denial. You think that people do care, even when you feel like they don’t. You still, deep down, feel some sort of false hope for the love of others. Everything you do is shit and you think you can keep walking through life and putting all of this on others you meet? Why should anyone care for someone like you?”

“Because I care for them.”

The man spat out hoarse laughter that was as vexatious as a fork scraping across the surface of a glass plate. His breath spewed out from behind me and smelled like decaying flesh. “If you think that then you are dumber than you look, if that’s even possible.”

The wind picked up outside. The trees shivered violently in the wind and sporadic flashes of lightning brightened the area. It seemed like pictures taken for media coverage on my hostage situation, except only nature was looking on objectively through the storm. Thunder rumbled gradually from a low boom to a higher pitched crack.

The intruder tapped the barrel of the revolver twice against the side of my head. “Take a look at yourself.”

My eyes rose to the rearview mirror, but the man pressed the gun against my head and interrupted that.

“No, not the mirror. Turn around.”

I didn’t understand what he meant. He told me to look at myself. There’s no way to rationalize with someone this crazy though, so I obeyed. I turned my body to the right and leaned my head around the seat. My heart stopped for a split second, my mouth agape.

It was me.

A million questions ran through my head, and all were too jumbled to process with answers. All I could do was stare. The man in the back seat wore the same wrinkled button up shirt as me, except the front was maroon with caked on blood. A crown of upheaved flesh protruded from his head. One of those pieces of skin hung over from the center to the right side of his scalp, revealing the red pulp of his inner flesh. Of my inner flesh. Dried blood trailed from within his mouth, over his cracked lips and down his chin. Adding to the horror were bits of brain and skull that specked his dark clumped hair and nestled in tangled strands of his beard.

My ghoulish form continued to point the revolver at me. I realized I was being held hostage by my irrationally suicidal self. Seeing it actually manifested in the backseat of my car was terrifying and woke me up to reality. I didn’t want my life to end. I can’t have those who love me see the result of a brutal end brought by my own hand.

“It’s too late,” my decayed form growled.

One hand locked my head into the headrest as the other jammed the gun into the roof of my mouth. My eyes went wide and my other form only glared back without a trace of remorse.

I realized too late how much I valued my life.

I heard a loud bang.

Darkness.