Wrongful Death
a short story
Jeremy C Kester
2nd Edition
Copyright 2009 Jeremy C Kester
Edited for 2nd Edition in 2012
Cover photograph Copyright 2009 Carla Martini and Jeremy C Kester
Cover Design by Jeremy C Kester
All Rights Reserved
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For more from Jeremy C Kester, visit www.jeremyckester.com
This ebook is available for free distribution.
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WRONGFUL DEATH
I was blinded by an immense brightness. Wherever I was, I could hear nothing. I felt as though it was completely immersed in cool water. There were no traces of pain, but the last few moments were still on my mind.
The barrel of a pistol was cold as I pressed it against my mouth. I had to struggle to get it into my mouth. My jaw fought against the pressure. I worried that I would damage my teeth as I forced it through. Funny how I could worry about such things with what I was about to do.
Tears were running down my face and my hands quaked nervously. I could feel the saliva drip from my mouth. My lips stung from the chill of the barrel.
A voice inside of me was screaming for me to stop. But I wanted things to get better, and they weren’t. I knew the steps that I was taking. I could not stop myself from continuing. I wanted to leave this all behind. The path I followed that led me to this point had now become a mystery. I raced to discover the reasons why before the bullet would destroy my mind. Questions riddled through my mind right up to the final seconds.
For the moment, I chose to ignore my own trepidations. To this now, there was only the drive to death. My feet were shuffling towards my fate. I had gone this far. I was going to see this through.
And I didn’t want to continue my life anymore.
My fingers tightened their grip upon the handle. The trigger was tight, but I could still pull it.
In instances that I could not capture, it all disappeared. What I thought for a moment felt like searing pain all vanished instantly. Then for a few moments, I was in a void of consciousness. I thought nothing. It was like I was floating in a calm pool of peacefulness.
Nothing of my former self, nothing of myself at all entered into thoughts or consciousness. If I had succeeded, it mattered to me no more.
It simultaneously felt like an eternity and a mere instant. I remained suspended in this strange existence.
It felt odd. Before my very consciousness, I felt physical objects begin to form around me. I still could see nothing but complete and pure light.
My eyes started to come into focus. It was still bright, but I began to make out figures and structures past the luminescence. The more I could make out, the more I was able to see that I was in an amphitheatre, or a coliseum. It was a magnificent sight.
The ground was of soft dirt. I stood in the middle of maybe ten pillars. Each pillar stood a gleaming marble tone. They seemed to encircle me, perfectly arranged atop the soil in a circle. Beyond the pillars was the primary wall of the great structure. The wall wrapped around me decorated by what appeared to be sculptures like in ancient times, of the old gods of all the ancient civilizations. Past the wall were an infinite number of rows of seats. These seats filled all that I could see. Each seat behind the next raised slightly above the one ahead of it.
As I was carefully observing the magnitude of the structure I found myself in, a plethora of life appeared before me. Men, women, children, and animals, all species I knew of and an infinite more I did not, simply appeared in the endless infinity of chairs. One of those attending caught my interest. The lone man sat before me in the great throne. It was lavishly decorated in gold and platinum. Jewels encrusted grooved carvings. I could see a great amount of intricate detail was held throughout the throne.
But no matter how enthralling the sight of the thrown was, the man that sat upon it is what caught my eye. Was I dreaming, or was it me?
Moments before I thought I was at my house. I was holding a pistol in my mouth, crying. I did not really know what I was crying for anymore. It seems as though I have even forgotten how I felt at all. Was I just dreaming? Am I still dreaming?
I looked at myself in the thrown. There I stood before myself. The person on the throne glared in disgust and anger. I could not really look at him though. I had unease about it. It felt very strange staring at myself as though I were standing in front of a mirror, yet I was not.
“I have sinned against myself and against the laws of the universe,” my mirror said. “I have taken my own life, not allowing either nature or God to decide the course that I will take in my death. I have violated myself, I have lied to myself, I have murdered myself.”
I shuddered. The man on the throne was me. My mouth gaped open in utter disbelief. Glancing down I had to make sure that I was still physically present. If only I had a proper mirror to see my own face to assure me that I was still me.
Suddenly, I found myself hearing all the voices of all the entities in the universe, animate and inanimate, all together in perfect unison, even my own thoughts and voice accompanied. The sound was deafening and beyond description. The sound was odd, and I understood it despite not being able to comprehend it. “I am God,” the great voice spoke. “I am all that is, the beginning, the end. I am the great creator, and the destroyer. I am the Tao, and the Te. I am that which Buddha found. I am that which you call father of Christ. I am everything, and yet nothing. I am Yahweh, Ala, Brahman, Shiva, Vishnu, Zeus, Jupiter, and all whom follow. I am eternal. You have taken your own life. You have broken the laws of man and nature. You are charged in the wrongful death of yourself. How do you plead?”
I was in awe. I did not know how to answer if I could even believe what I heard. Here I was in front of God? And I find that I am even perhaps a part of God? I was lacking anything of a sufficient response. How could I even begin to fathom all of this? I was extraordinarily confused.
I looked around at all of the faces trying to bring myself some sense of reality, something to feel safe. Some I recognized, others were a mystery to me. They all stared at me as before, quiet, steady, awaiting my response. I circled a few times. I felt dizzy. Nothing I saw brought me comfort.
“I plead guilty,” I said, both myself and the other of me. I was in shock. My hands immediately jumped to my mouth to find that I was indeed speaking as well. I did not wish myself to say it. I spun around to face the imposter again.
“NO!” I yelled. The imposter stared at me with much spite.
“Choose your plea,” the great voice commanded as I stared at my imposter.
“I cannot choose,” I answered.
“I choose guilty!” the imposter exclaimed.
“NO!” I answered again. “I am not guilty!”
“Then who is?” the imposter asked, directing towards me.
“I don’t know!” I yelled, mostly in anger.
“You claim that I am not guilty of my own actions,” the imposter commented. “Then how is it that the pistol came to my mouth and the trigger was pulled? These incidents did not come by through mere coincidence. Nature could not itself bring this occurrence forward.”
“I don’t know!” I responded in great confusion. How did I get here? I was still trying to fathom all of this that was going on. I felt that it was all entirely too surreal. It not only looked like a dream, but it seriously felt like one.
“Why don’t I know?” the imposter asked me quite annoyed. Trying to wrap my mind around seeing myself speaking both as me and another individual was almost more confusing than I could have ever imagined.
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br /> “I don’t know,” I replied again. “I wanted it all to end. I was tired of it.”
“I was tired of what? My life was going well. What drove me to take my own life?”
I started tearing up. My vision was becoming slightly blurry. Just to stop having to see the image of myself vanish was all that I wanted for the moment. “I didn’t want any of it anymore. I wanted it all to go away.”
“I wanted it though.”
“But you are not me!”
“Yes I am,” the other me replied. “I am the part of you that you ignored. I am the part of you that was content, the part of you that was relaxed, the part of you that you feared. I am the part that got you where you were. I am you. You are I.”
Off to the side, I saw another illusion of myself sitting on the ground gripping a pistol. I saw myself place it into my mouth and pull the trigger. I was transfixed as I saw my own head blow apart from the back, blood and flesh dripping to the ground as my body collapsed. The spray of particles of blood seemed to hang timelessly in the air behind. Then the vision disappeared.
I quickly shot my sight back to myself and the rest of the attending parties. They were slowly bringing their heads back towards me from the vision of my suicide.
I started to talk again, or at least it was the other me that was on the thrown did that the talking: “I tried to