"I Am"

...another excerpt of my writing from a while back. This was about my best friend Gabe. He was shot and killed a few years after we graduated high school, reminding us all that you can never be too young. His birthday is on May 9th and I miss him terribly...

The youthful owner of a single pair of pale brown eyes stared out-of-focus through the car window at a familiar approaching outline.

Two sweaty, reddened, inexperienced palms cupped the stock of a tarnished metal monster. The grip of the lever shook unsteady and wavering. Only one nail-bitten finger moved smooth, deftly caressing the deathly predecessor while the finality of the simple innocent sound of a ‘click’ broke the calm of the still night; a night that only seconds ago was free of anything impending that you see in a horror movie.

No ominous music bellowed to a crescendo to warn you. The comforting scent of buttered popcorn and a cool refreshing oversized bucket of Coca-Cola clearly was absent from this picture. No nervous giggles or loud offerings of opinion from a boisterous theater-going crowd shattered the peaceful night, but the sense of tranquil terror remained.

Piercing and with total disregard, a projectile was forcefully expelled from the velvety steel canal. It cut sharply through the fleshy line where the owner of the handsome brown eyes had taken so much pride in perfecting his military buzz cut; precisely where the dark brown hairline met the side of his fair, unblemished, furrowed brow. The metal slug perforated a small, clean cylindrical opening and began its short one-way journey; ricocheting in a zigzag formation, scrambling his thoughts and words faster then he could blink; mixing mental matter quicker than he could think, before angry tears could scatter down his cheeks, and much faster than those passive pale brown eyes could shake that incredulous questioning stare out of them.

I opened my mouth to speak or scream in that instant eternity, but my reaction turned out to be neither choice. Instead, my tongue filled my mouth and slammed against the backside of my clenched teeth with anticipatory guttural grunts and I suddenly became aware of my slightly parted lips that were cracked with dryness from my quickened shallow breaths.

I heard the spent metal casing fall and tinkle delicately onto the car’s side view mirror like a single fat raindrop on a tin roof. His medium-sized frame shook with one final violent heave, then leaned and wavered unevenly, coming to a final slump against the door panel. The seatbelt strained tight against his deflated chest and kept this passenger safely in place even as the all-together unfamiliar powdery scent of hot metallic smoke filled the front compartment.

Motionless, I remained in the driver’s seat clenching the stationary steering wheel of the four-wheeled tomb. A narrow, warm crimson river immediately flowed down his temple, eyebrow, cheek, neck, shoulder and chest, coming to form a puddle in the L-shaped crook of his arm at the point where his forearm and thick bicep met while those vacant pale brown eyes that had once held future and promise, now gazed in no particular direction at all.

What was only a moment ago two sets of lungs exhaling warmness into the crisp night air slowly and excruciatingly faded until only one remained.