Pistol

He sat weeping quietly, the anxious .45 waiting for just the right twitch or execution.  I sat there begging him, pleading with him to just put the pistol down.  Held between his teeth, the metal rattled on, like a snake threatening you not to come closer.  ‘What am I supposed to do?’ I thought, as I was trying everything I could to get the gun out of his mouth at least.  Finally, it dawned on me to say something that wouldn’t calm him, but something that would shock him into forgetting about the bullet with his name on it.  “If you pull that trigger, I’ll take the next.”  The look in his eyes made my heart cry out, but he moved the gun with his hands; he tended to use his hands when he spoke, so he forgot about his ‘destiny’.

He stormed over with fear and anger in his eyes yelling “You can’t do that!  I won’t let you!”  I just replied as calmly as I could, “And how would you stop me?”

“I’m not going to let you kill yourself unless I go with you.”
“Fine.” And he put the gun to my forehead . . .

After what seemed like eternity, he lowered the pistol from my head.  “I couldn’t do that to you, and you know that.”  He walked back over to the bed and collapsed on it, letting out a deep sigh as he did.
“We can get through this, it’s not that ba-”
“Not that bad?  How could it be any worse?”
“One of us could be dead…”

He looked to the window like he always did when trying to ignore something I said.  Gazing up at me, he seemed to be searching for an answer to our problem…  “What if we-” but we both knew that couldn’t happen now, it was too late for that.  Remembering the gun, he caressed the black coating, glancing back towards me.

I took a small step forward, but he noticed and the arm with the gun twitched towards his head again.  There comes a moment in everyone’s life where they must make a decision that could save someone’s life. . .

I took another step, and he warned me to stay back; as if he would hurt me…  Another step, the gun raised to his waist… One more and it was almost at shoulder height.  I ran and tackled him to the bed, though I had to leap to knock him back.  In the shock he let a shot fire…

All I remember was kissing him and the ambulance sirens…  and him sleeping by my bedside, to be there when I woke up; no pistol this time. . .