Not With a Bang but a Whimper

Author's Note: This piece was inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men.

The door was rattling.  Girls were crying. People may have been dying.

  The window smashed.  All this happened timelessly.  I was closest to the door.  I would be first. 

He walked in on the disaster of our classroom.  Items were scattered about, thrown out of the way in the panic.  Crossing the room, he crunched on a pen.  Its spring popped out and landed near my feet.  We looked up at him, he looked down at us.  Twenty-six to one, yet the odds were against us.  He  glanced at the trembling Mrs. Ecnelis and crossed over to her. 

“Joe, you didn’t tell me you had a gun.”

“Oh…you’re right.  I should have told you.  WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT YOU WERE SEEING ANOTHER MAN!”

“We weren’t having an affair.  We just ran into each other at the bank and he took me out for coffee.  Then he kissed me.”

“Well then why were you always texting each other?  Huh?”

“Joe, just stop it.  You’ve taken this too far.  I-“

“Enough talk!”  He brought the gun up to her face and fired it.  Girls screamed.

“WHO’S NEXT?!”

He grabbed me and slammed me against the wall.  “Any last words?”

So this is how my world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Bang.  The gun went off.  A whimper escaped my lips before they became cold.

Girls cried.  I died.