Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 246

Could you really pull the trigger on him?
You really wanted to be happy.
You really, really wanted to be happy.
Your hand rose like a marionette on strings, and dreamlike, you squeezed the trigger as if your life depended
on it.
The force of the resulting gunshot throws you back. Your spine snaps against a wooden door, and you
slump over. Mr. Lucas screamed, but this time, it’s in harmony with the ensuing chaos pounding your head.
You’re screaming with him this time, out of rage or disgust for yourself, you don’t know. But all you know
is that you want the moment to end.
What’s wrong with you?
Nothing. The psychotic mind has no correct function.
The people told me that there was a reason why the best fruit was always forbidden. But no. Today, I
wanted to feast .
You’re lonely. You’re lonely and you’ve always been lonely and you’ll always be lonely because you can’t
talk except for stuttered, mangled words that you can barely get out over the screaming in your ears. They
look at you with flames of disdain in their eyes; their eyes watching and searing and taunting and ripping
through you until all you feel like is screaming. But then, if you scream, they’ll scream louder and they’ll all
scream at once and everything would be an unintelligible string of curses that would never shut up, and…
and-!
And you’ll drown . While the people who hear you scream are burning down.
You find yourself outside on an impossibly cold winter night, wearing nothing but a linen coat, barefoot in
the drifting snow; your eyes, bleak and hollow, staring at a picturesque bronze statue in the middle of the
town square.
You bite your lower lip, your teeth digging in so hard that red is soon spilling over, dribbling over your pale
lips and down your chin, practically freezing in place from the cold. Your fingertips soon turn purple; and
your face icy white, but you wouldn’t care anyways. You’re so used to the pain that pain itself becomes an
abstract concept.
You don’t know why, but you fall to your knees, touching your already frostbitten fingers to the snow. The
night wind buffets you, ghost fingers wafting all sorts of patterns through your hair, until it becomes a part of
you, and the age-old question comes to you.
What have you become?
What have you become?
A murderer is what you have become.