The "Man"

• Laura Brennan, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2011

He swaggered towards me.

He had blonde hair, silky and alluring. His skin was ever so pale; it was almost transparent. He resembled Ben, but I couldn't let myself think about him right now.

My finger tentatively grazed the trigger of the gun. Huge droplets of cold rain were hurled by the millions from a dense, swirling black cloud that unfurled across the sky. The wind was roaring in an angry frenzy, filling my ears so that I would have to yell to be heard.

“You’ll never do it,” he sneered, projecting his voice so that it sliced the wind like a knife. His face contorted into a sick grin. His eyes bore into me with chilling evilness. I gripped the gun tighter, fighting to keep still in the howling wind. I must do this.

Water poured down my face and my body, my clothes glued themselves relentlessly to my back.

“You know you can’t do this, you’re too weak,” he hissed in disgust. My heart was in my mouth. It hammered my body with the power of a thousand drums, my entire body burned with every strike. I could almost feel a hole being torn through my chest. It was getting worse. I had to act soon.

“You don’t know what it takes to pull the trigger of a gun,” his sick smile disappeared, now a look of concentrated hatred flooding from his drenched face straight into my heart and into my veins. His features were grossly contorted into those of a true demon. I have to do this, or it will never end. I tried to look him in the eye but I withered under his glare.

“You’re pathetic,” he spat.

I held up the gun and pulled the trigger.

My body crumpled to the floor, and the man faded into nothingness.

Lightening flashed intensely above me, and in the split second before my death, my eyes widened in horror and apprehension. I realised the “man” was no more than a shard of my fragmented mind.