With fools like me.

 

 

She hangs over my shoulder like a dead fish, and is twice as heavy.

I try shaking her awake but the drug her captors gave her keeps her unconscious even when we could move more quickly if she could walk.

I got eight bullets left in my automatic and a locked door between us and them.

Their breath as hot through the door cracks as a bubbling volcano’s.

They know if we escape, they will fry. So they intend to keep us contained in the old warehouse.

They won’t kill us.

Not right away.

We each have something they want out of us.

She knows where the old man keeps his money.

I know who hired me and why.

I figure eight bullets aren’t enough to kill them all and still have two left for us if I can’t.

So I figure we need to use the window, three stories up or not.

They pound on the locked door as I fiddle with the window latch.

They fire into the lock mechanism the way people do in the movies, accomplishing nothing except to waste more bullets.

The window swings out wide. I climb up onto the sill with my burden.

I see an open trash container across the street we might reach if the woman is awake, and we both have wings.

I think maybe about making a deal, trading her and her secret for my life.

But I know I can’t live with myself if I do.

So I jump.

Maybe I’m hoping for a miracle.

Maybe I’m thinking the cobblestone street won’t kill me, and I’ll still have time and energy enough to use the pistol to do what the fall couldn’t.

Maybe I even pray a little and hit the top of a passing truck half way down, the shock jolting me and my shoulder, but breaking nothing.

Maybe I even think as the truck drives on with us two as unintended passengers that I might find a church later after I’ve dumped the woman in the right people’s hands.

But I won’t.

I’ll find a bar and get drunk and wonder why God bothers with fools like me.

 


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