INT. A DARK BEDROOM – DAY
SFX: HHhhhh
Like the sound of someone sighing a long difficult breath they’ve been holding in for years and years past what they’ve been bearing. A pale hand reaches into a drawer and touches cold metal, a certainty to the motion, second nature. They’ve done this before.
Fantasised.
They’ve turned the revolver in their hands. Traced the markings, committing them to memory. Musing about memory. It’s a fickle thing. Memory. It won’t exist for them, in just a few moments.
They slowly inhale the stale air of the bedroom, eyes slowly looking around at its sparseness.
This was never their life. None of this belongs to them, so far away it might as well be behind a pane of glass.
HAWLEY presses the cool metal barrel to their lips and curses the pain behind their eyes, bringing tears running down their face. They want this. They need this.
Their hand trembles as they click the safety off, feel the jolt of the metal between their teeth, metal against bone. They’ve gotten this far before, too, but never managed to commit. The flight response too sharp, the unwillingness to hit that escape trigger.
Do they even deserve this? The morose thought overwhelms them and their hand almost pulls the gun from their lips, but they grasp their wrist with their left hand.
Only a few hours before HATTIE comes home and once that happens, it’s all over for them.
HAWLEY’s breath is sharp around the gun, a panic response to a commitment they know is final.
But they wanted this. They want this. For years they’ve known this. Fading into nonexistence, a ghost.
Their breath calms, sharp shaking breaths, tense shoulders relaxing, coming slow, steady, realisation, comprehension.
They deserve this.
Rid the world of it’s blight.
On that next exhale, slow, steady, they imagine the door opening in a slow drifting motion.
SFX: BANG.
This is how the story ends.
NEXT SCENE || NEXT LITTLE BABY BLUE SCENE