Roulette
I watched him through the glass. I could see how unhappy he was. How utterly depressed he was. I could see his hopelessness. I know that look, I thought. How it felt when your body seems to be doing things at the direction of some deeper, more primitive desperation.
I could see how he ignored the higher executive lobes of his mind. I watched as he fingered the revolver. I watched him open the gun and put in a single bullet. To my horror, I saw him snap it back shut and give the canister a spin.
I watched him. I looked right at him through the glass. I often watched him this way. But he was no more aware of me as he was of his rational self who screamed for him not to do this. His volition, however, was deaf and blind to those screams or to whom might be watching. It was time to step in. It was time to act.
I watched as I saw him look right back at me. He smiled. He didn't care that I was there, trying to stop him. He didn't care who I was. I reached out but could not touch him.
We were eye-to-eye when he lifted the gun to his temple, smiling at me as he did. Was he smiling to himself? It was like he was.
Yes, he was.
I watched helplessly as he squeezed the trigger. We both laughed when all we heard was an empty, harmless click--me in exasperation, him in irony. (Were those the same?)
I watched as he put the gun back down again, slowly. He would live to play again another day.
Bullets are destroyers. Destroyers of futures. Destroyers of lives. Destroyers of trust and love and ambitions. One shouldn't be careless with bullets. Had the gun fired, had the aim been askew, it could have passed through his head with enough force to shatter the mirror I had been looking into.
That would have meant years of bad luck.