Triumph of the Common Man

When the time came, he sat there. He gazed at the little white and blue bottle that would end it all. It would bring him home. Something he could fathom, could see in his minds eye.

This little blue bottle, he thought. Does it truly hold all that and more for me? He stared, and minutes flew by, and he stared still. Over and over he turned the little bottle. He read the warning, the labels of how much it held, how much it weighed. He read them over and over in his mind. His eyes blurred, and it seemed to spark something in him he only vaguely knew had been there before. It stung his eyes. God, he thought, so tiny a bottle for salvation. It won't be real, it won't be enough. I'll wake up in 12 hours and feel groggy. He set the little blue and white bottle down on the counter. Its sound was full and it rattled slightly with its contents.

20 pills he thought. It won't be enough. He took solace in that thought. I will be as close to heaven as I can get by myself. He looked back at the bottle. He glared at it and stared it down in his mind. He could feel his hand twitch with a nervous energy, and his mind rattled and tickled him with emotions.

He could feel the hatred, the sorrow, the love. He could feel in him the regret, anger, and turmoil that made up his patch-worked soul. It was all inside him. He could reach inside himself and touch all the pain that made up his life in that moment.

He closed his eyes. The blackness felt so comforting. He hated it. It gave him so many promises, so many lies. He knew they were lies. He didn't know why they were lies but they were. He could hear them in his head, whispered silkily, delicately. They were placed there with so much care. It made him weep inside.

And again that twitch came to his hand. A tiny imperceptible movement of his wrist, his thumb and forearm. And he glared with all his might and anger at that little blue bottle. He felt sick. He wanted that bottle so much. He wanted those contents to reside in his stomach and to wash away his mind. He wanted to be the comforting blackness that he hated so much. He wanted to live.

Words seemed to tumble from his lips but he knew he wasn't saying anything at all. Words and still more seemed to come out. They made no sense at first. They all ran together seamlessly. They were words of rebuke, ridicule. They told him he was insane and foolish. They told themselves no they weren't. And they yelled back maybe we are.

He felt tired. His dilemma seemed to drain him second by second. With each minute his frustration grew and so did the arguments running through his head. Where was it all going? It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. What was his life but the tattered collection of memories and melodies he'd collected? Where did it stop?

He answered automatically in his mind. It stops here. I can end it all. With one stroke I am nearer to god than ever. No! he screamed, violently and with a rage that would have set fire to candles. No, and the words now came in sobs. They felt as empty as his heart. They felt like lead pipes banging away at his soul. They were stomping his chest in and he knew it.

He sat there, sobbing, crying out his pain to the empty space. He sat there, and he glared at the little blue and white bottle that answered so many questions. He glared at that bottle, and time almost seemed to stop. The buzz of the single fly in the room, and the dull roar of the passing plane seemed all there was in the world.

He worked his jaw in time with the new motion his body had taken up. A slow rocking back and forth. A movement as old as man. The maternal soothing motion. Slow back and forth. Like a million rocking chair have done through a hundred years. He stayed there rocking back and forth, his jaw waggling with it side to side. Working in a way that seemed unnatural. It seemed to him that sound should be coming out, but he felt himself held back. He could feel that anything he said now would ruin the moment. The perfect moment he had worked in himself to build for the last 10 years. He had suffered for this moment and it was finally here. So he stared at that little blue bottle.

He could feel the doubt, courage, and cowardice. The hate, anger, and rage. He felt it surge in him. It ate away at him.

There he was then. He washed away in all this. He could feel the perfection he'd created. It was a concert. A lovely melody. Piano, alone in a concert hall he'd never seen. It was magic. The keys rolled and waved. They were his body rocking in time. It was beauty. It was everything he would miss, and it was playing all at the same time. Too much to take in he thought. He was happy though. It played for him. Alone in that concert hall, it played for him.

next