Seconds

She caresses the scars on her right wrist slowly. The right wrist is where she cut herself so many times, because for everyone else, she is never right. Every moment, each and every single day, she goes from being sad to being angry to being hated by other people.

Life is worthless, she says. She has lost her hope a long time ago and she cannot stand living anymore. It is too hard, it is too demanding. Walking down the hallway with other people staring at her as if she is a deadly plague, an imminent disease. She wishes that she were a phantom, a ghost, something unseen.

Alone. Alone and misunderstood.

She pulls a gun out of her drawer, stolen from her dad. It is fine metal machinery, made to kill. Shiny and in this moment, it feels heavy. It weighs down on her hand like a hundred kilotons of plutonium. A dreadful moment but she is calm. The mouth of the gun is pointing towards her left side of the cranium. I choose this, she says.

A second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, a sound is heard, six seconds, seven seconds, a thud is heard, eight seconds, nine seconds, ten seconds, end.