A Beginning in Four Minutes

It was 5:59pm when I almost died, 6:01pm when I fell in love, and 6:03pm when I killed a man.

But I digress…

I know it was 5:59pm because the clock on the wall was the first thing I could focus on from the ground after I was coldcocked hard in the back of my head.

“Is he the one, April?” I hear a gunshot and screams, as I watch the second hand tick away on the old clock.

“Or what about this one?” BANG! More screaming. More ticks of the clock.

“Or this bastard?” BANG! Deafening silence now. I watch the second hand get close to slip into a new minute.

“Or...maybe, this bastard lying on the ground?” I could feel the gun pointing at my head even though I couldn’t see it. I braced for the BANG! that was meant for me. I was going to die at 5:59pm, seconds away from 6. My life did flash across my eyes.

The BANG! never came. I lived to see 6pm, and I took the sweetest breath I ever took. My muscles still fought how I wanted to move, so I waited.

There was silence, save for the raging breathing of a madman, the whisper breath of my own, the soft cry of a woman, I assumed to be April, and the ticking of the clock. I focused on that clock, until it struck 6:01pm.

I was going to live or die in the next moments of my life and if I were to die, I wanted to do so on as much of my terms as possible. I rolled over to face my nemesis. My eyes caught April first.

Pretty April. Nice April. A girl you would never think would set a man to rage is such a way. It seemed counter to her pleasant personality. She was a lady that always seemed off the market, so I never thought much about her besides the warmth her smile left on me each day in passing to our cubicles.

Locking eyes with her now, something changed, shifted. Here was a woman, looking at me, wanting nothing more than to somehow save my life. The value that she placed on my life stirred something deep and almost forgotten.

I saw the pain in her soft tears, and suddenly wanted to take away that pain. I thought about the need to wipe away her tears, and for the second time this day, a life flashed across my eyes, a potential future life.

I live a life with April, from this God-awful moment to a tentative first date, to a first kiss, to a first entanglement of flesh, to our marriage, to our first born and then second. Through all of the laughs and the tears, all of the love-makings and fights, all of the shared triumphs and tragedies. Until a final scene, a final smile from her, old and grey and still too damned beautiful, holding her withered hand. Feeling my own smile and closing my eyes. Either falling asleep or dying blissfully, knowing I shared a full, rich life with the love of my love.

I snapped back to the here and now. I stand and look at the clock once more, seconds away from 6:02pm. I fell in love with a woman, a love that reached to the depths of the marrow of my bones. With whatever life I had remaining to me in this world, I needed to make sure she lived, even if I did not. Tick…

“Is it you bastard?” The gun moved back to my face, away from April’s. “If not, you better get back on the ground.”

“No,” was my simple reply.

The madman shook, the gun still pointed at my face, “Don’t you understand? I can’t let her go? I can’t let anyone else have her? Do you want to die? Are you the one trying to take her from me?”

“Actually, I do understand,” I looked at April for just a moment. I pored as much love into that look as I could. Something for her to keep from me once I died, if I died. “I understand why you feel you cannot let a woman like, April go. I do. I also don’t want to die, but that is not my choice, it is yours. And I am not trying to take her from you, she is not something to take, but rather someone to join mutually in mutual love,” I glanced at April one last time, then I looked at the madman again. He looked toward April then me. “You agree, don’t you? What you hate is not that she left you, but that you lost whatever love you had. You lost it, not her, or whomever you believe she is with.”

He crumpled a bit. He weakly turned the gun back onto April, then on me, then on himself.

Bang!

I tried to reach for him before he pulled the trigger, instead I watched his body collapse to the ground, as April fell into my outstretched arms. I held her tightly, letting her bawl through the aftermath of the carnage, I held her tightly against the pounding of my heart.

The clock read 6:03pm, the time that I would forever remember, for it was the time my words somehow killed a man.

In four minutes, my life forever changed. I had no idea if I would ever share the life with April that flashed before me, but in that impossible moment, I allowed myself to believe.

~~~

Afterward: This story was based on my entry to a challenge asking for the first line of a story. I decided to expand on that first line here.