Contributor: Rob D Young

I have to hold back my tears and my twisted malicious smile as I plant the gun deep into his chest. He’s screaming, but I’m so in my own world that I don’t understand. I know he’s swearing. Swearing more than you’d think possible in that three second window of time.

And then I pull the trigger. I feel this deep vibration, brace my muscles against the kick, but I’m still not sure if the gun went off. Thank God, I think. Maybe you didn’t kill him. I guess I didn’t expect there to be such a silencer effect. Like shooting into a pillow.

As his body thuds against the carpet, time comes to a full stop. My world has shrunk down to the size of this instant. I need to figure out what’s happened. What brought us here. And why—why, my finger shaking against the trigger—I feel that this was the only way I could possibly save him.

—–

Broken Glass dives into the mind and past of a murderer as he dissects the reasons for his actions. Filled with gothic tones, gritty struggles, and violence, the story’s undertones remain lighthearted—indulging in humor, romance, and philosophy as the narrator seeks to answer his question: What brought us here?

The story is an examination of redemption, asking: How do humans cope when they’re broken? How do we seek redemption? What does it mean to be redeemed? Can we ever save each other? And can we ever even save ourselves?

I have to hold back my tears and my twisted malicious smile as I plant the gun deep into his chest. He’s screaming, but I’m so in my own world that I don’t understand. I know he’s swearing. Swearing more than you’d think possible in that three second window of time.

I don’t deserve this, I think. I don’t even know why I think it. Maybe I’m thinking for him.

And then I pull the trigger. I’m trying to remember the details of everything that led up to this. My world has shrunk down to the size of this instant.

Something about this moment seems familiar. Have I done this before?

I feel this deep vibration, brace my shoulder muscles against the kick, but I’m still not sure if the gun went off. Thank God, I think. Maybe you didn’t kill him. I guess I didn’t expect there to be such a silencer effect. Like shooting into a pillow.

Only pillows don’t ooze blood into the over-absorbent carpets. Pillows don’t leave fragments of their organs spread in modern art tapestries against the couch and the back wall. Pillows can’t twitch for five seconds after being shot, cold blue eyes wide open and glazed. I’m trying to decide whether to shoot him again. To put him out of his misery.

Wait. Was that why I did this in the first place?

Anyway, it’s too late. He’s gone.

The entry hole is much smaller than I thought it would be. The exit hole is about five times bigger than I’d expected. Shit, I was wrong about a lot of things.

I stumble back a few steps and find myself against the wall. I lean into it for a moment, then slump to the ground, my feet resting an inch away from the slowly spreading pool of blood. Man, this carpet is better than Sparkle.

Then it strikes me. The perfect advertisement. I can see myself in a commercial for Sparkle, right where I am now. “Don’t want to walk out red handed?”

Red handed. That’s a good one. I take out a smoke.

Zoom in on a hand gripping the Sparkle-brand paper towel.

It’s cloves. Purely medicinal, I tell myself. And for propaganda.

Zoom in on the dark red spatter.

I was raised to think that bad boys smoked.

Pan to the blood seeping through the fibers of the carpet.

Now I’m a bad boy. I should smoke.

Show the Sparkle having wiped everything up, leaving no stain, no hassle.

You shouldn’t have done this.

You said that already. But we both knew this was going to happen.

You still shouldn’t have done this.

Flash the tag-line: “No mess is too big.”

I’m having trouble smoking. My breathing is uneven. I realize I’m crying. It’s hard to smoke when you’re crying.

You shouldn’t have done this.

Be quiet.

I look down at my hand, the one that’s holding my clove cigarette. It’s shaking. White as milk.

I didn’t wear gloves. That’s funny. I laugh. I didn’t wear gloves.

You’re going to get caught.

I know. Shut up.

I take a deep drag, pulling the hot smoke fully back into my lungs, then let it out in bursts of laughter. When the smoke is gone, I laugh more. I laugh so long and so hard that everything begins to disappear. Manic laughter. Completely insane laughter. And the way my body shakes, it breaks more of the hot liquid away from my eyes, spilling it down my cheeks.

Just shut up.

So, this is it. Not exactly what I expected. The guilt will probably hit me later. I still haven’t realized what I’ve done.

I look over at the body. The eyes. I still have to stare into those damned blue eyes.

I burn the cigarette into the carpet as I look across the scene. The leakage isn’t active, really, but there’s still a flow. Probably just the wound cleaning out on its own. Gravity or equalizing pressure or something like that. It’s hard to believe there could be much more blood in him, anyway.

And suddenly, I’m thinking of shattered stained glass.

No, I haven’t realized what I’ve done yet.

I take a few moments to look around again. I almost want to laugh. I do laugh. This is so ridiculous. My God, this is ridiculous.

I stand slowly, pushing up off the Sparkle carpet, feeling faint. I stabilize myself, holding still for a second, and then I turn toward the door, flicking the light-switch off with two un-gloved fingers. I look back over my shoulder.

“Good night, Jake. Sleep well. Sleep a long, long time.”

SOME ROMANCE:

One night raced grocery carts in a parking lot. After a while it turned into a destruction derby. We both wound up bruised, and her finger had gotten cut, gashed open by the twisted metal of our deformed carts. She looked down at her finger for a little while, then smiled. I was trying to look after her, but she held out her uninjured hand to stop me—her right arm and fingers stretched out in a straight line toward my chest.

“It’s just a shadow,” she said. “But it forces me to face it. I’m real. Isn’t that wonderful, Socrates? I’m real.” She sighed, looking at her bleeding finger in the dim illumination of the distant streetlights. The gash was at the top of her left ring finger and went in a jagged line from finger’s edge to fingernail. As she looked at it, the blood trickled down between her middle and ring finger, then beaded in the valley between them before it fell along the front of her palm.

She wrapped her finger in a piece of cloth that she got from who-knows-where. “Come on, Socrates. Let’s go find someplace nice.”

We went down to a park. The moon was a crescent, but you could see the outline of the whole thing, just a thin silver lining that finished the circle. We laid down out in the damp grass, staring at the sky. She held up her left hand. The blood had leaked through, staining the white cloth. “Do you know the first thing a scientist does when they find something new?” She seemed calm as she admired her injury. “When they make a new discovery? When they find a new material, something truly rare and beautiful?”

I shook my head.

“They break it.” She was shifting her finger, catching different illuminations in the moonlight. “And not even just break it. They destroy it completely. It’s to test how strong it is.” She put her hand back down, slowly, a look of contentment on her face.

“Really?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s like life, I think.” She smiled, then looked down, an emotion like worry flashing across her face. “And suddenly I’m thinking of shattered stained glass.”

“What?”

“Another story. Maybe I’ll tell that to you sometime, too.” We looked at each other, our faces pillowed by cold, wet grass. She reached over and stroked my face with her injured hand, a faint smile on her lips. There was a gentle sweetness to her voice as she added, “And then again … maybe I won’t.”

& SOME HUMOR:

And really, how hard could copying be?

Harder than you’d think. People really have a knack for coming up with complicated orders. Not only are they as intricate as any copying job could be, but customers can never make up their minds. No matter how much you want to scream at these idiots, all you can do is just smile and nod. Even then, the smallest mistake will get some people riled to no end. Up to this point I hadn’t realized that middle-aged business men still knew how to swear.

I regretted not working in the food industry. It was useless and obvious when you spat in someone’s copies.