Good heavens, how wonderful to bump into you!  It had been an eternity since I saw you last.  Three, four years ago, I believe.  Back then you still had hair, and your teeth weren’t as crooked, or yellow.  Back then the lines under your eyes indicated the restless activity of youth, whereas this time they seemed reminiscent of an aged mother who reared one child too many.  What had you done with yourself, man?

Nevertheless I was glad you recalled who I was, and what I meant to you.  All those fleeting moments we shared, those misadventures, those fond memories that I could never seem to eradicate flooded my brain en masse, leaving me to drown in them.  Your absence from my life proved cathartic, but on seeing you again I lost the ability to restrain my outrage – the very thought of you vexed me.  “How dare you,” my whisper rising to a crescendo, “how dare you show your face to me without a hint of dismay at what you had ruined!” Of course I was too craven to even approximate a discernible enunciation of those words.

While I was lost in thought you decided it was time you carried on.  Some previous engagement that you urgently had to go to (as though I didn’t matter enough).  I implored you to remain with me for we hadn’t seen each other for such a long time.  But you refused with that piercingly scornful look that you always cast on me when you thought my actions stupid.  You then turned away to head to your next destination.

I could not permit you to go, however.  My head was already inundated with scenarios, and apologies, and plans, and emotions, and it was as though I was ready to engulf you in one swoop like an anthropophagous amoeboid-person.  Yet you continued walking.

I decided it was time to take drastic action.  I could not let you depart on such ill terms and forsake me in this sea of distress, drowning, gasping for breath.  Out of my left pocket appeared a gun which, as though enchanted, compelled the fingers of my hand to grasp it tightly.  It all happened rapidly, mechanically, then BANG!  Without apprehension the bullet exited the barrel and penetrated your skull, most of its pieces shattering into minute fragments alongside a splatter of blood.  I didn’t think a cranium could explode, but yours did.  Bizarre.

Then you called my name again.  Awaking from my reverie I realised I was still on that bridge over that river near that train station.  There was no gun and no shattered skull; only you, me, and that power you have over me that I hate.  “Change of plans,” you said with a sly nod.  And down those crowded streets I followed you into a dismal café, where I wallowed in my cowardice while enjoying a soy latte.

Image by Jocko B on Flickr. Courtest of Creative Commons