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First and Last Scene by Amanda Gowin

“I loved her, you know that.”

But the wind was a vacuum, dragging the sincerity away with the leaves in a whisper across his feet and over the hill. Tumbling, rolling, tiny bodies caught in a fateful gust.

“Without love people wouldn’t get into messes like these. I’m not the master of my own fate. I’m like… I’m like… what are those…” He gave up finding the word and jammed his cigarette into the corner of his mouth. One eye squinted, arms out, he broke into a spidery marionette dance that lasted approximately ten seconds. His laugh was half-cough and half-cry as he leaned, hands on knees. “I love you, you stupid bitch!”

Yelling into a hole in the ground. Shoddily done but deep enough, the rain from two nights before made for easy digging. An aquamarine  tarp held a neat pile of the previous contents.

The new contents looked like Raggedy Ann after a car accident, only real doll/fake girlfriend size. Easier to think of the gaping mouth that way, as constructed of soft silicone as opposed to flesh, the red mouth ringed in fake lipstick as opposed to aspirated blood.

What we blame on love.

“If anyone was to blame it was her. It was you.” Kicking at the ground, he found the lost cigarette end. Inspecting it, finding it satisfactory, poking it back into the corner of his mouth. The wind snatched at his lies again, pulled tears from the corners of his eyes.

“She was so beautiful. You know. You know, right at the end she glowed. Right at the end she glowed beautiful just like the first day I saw her. She came down the steps at the library and it was hot, and she had a sort of… a sort of glisten on her, like the sunshine was inside her instead of hitting her. I knew that day. You know? I knew that day. I had to have her or die trying. Do you remember that?”

The question seemed directed at me, I took in a breath against the wind. “I remember. Just assumed you meant you when you said die, though.” I lit my cigarette in the solace of my cupped hand, for a second blocking the oddly bent fingers and how carefully her toenails were painted. Had she done that herself, or gone to one of those mini-mall places with all the pretty Asian girls? Was the last person to touch her, before this, someone who held her heel carefully, smiling and applying the coral polish that seared into my mind even as I resisted looking?

“I loved her!” He yelled again, and the trees joined the leaves in the rush to discredit him. Swaying, tilting their heads in condescending disbelief.

“Shut up. It’s the woods, not Siberia. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” My arm ached as I drew in smoke over and over, ached from each and every clod removed. The sky was grey. Of course.

“You don’t believe me,” he begged.

“It doesn’t matter,” I hissed back, each word enclosed in a bubble of smoke. “I’m here.”

“It matters. It does matter. It matters because it’s true.” Shifting foot to foot, digging in his pockets, twisting his arms. “What if I went with her, would you believe me then? If you buried me right on top of her, would you believe me then?” His voice echoed, I glanced around.

“If you’d combed her hair, I’d believe. Or wrapped her in a fucking blanket—or found her other shoe, for Christ’s sake!” I flicked the cigarette into the hole before thinking and my stomach flipped, audibly, with a slap at my ears. The red-tipped tube tumbled down and settled near her cheek. I stared into one blue eye, laced with hemorrhaged capillaries, and turned away, buckling, clutching at my own stomach to persuade it to still. Gusts like hands in my face, my hair. Trees watching. Trees and clouds.

Giggling, the moron was giggling. I righted myself and turned.

The handgun looked like a movie gun, large and shiny, awkward in his hand. Ridiculously dramatic. My heart jumped once, but his romantic mind would never allow me to invade this story.

“You’re seriously thinking of making me fill this hole in by myself.”

“I can hear you laughing even when it isn’t out loud.” Quietly, with a touch of derision. Finding it a satisfactory closing line, he stepped to the edge of the hole, nearly losing his balance before straightening. Cock posture. Mouth set.

His eyes on mine, I tried to feel something as the barrel clicked against his teeth, as the shot rang out, as he collapsed head first, clumsily, into the hole on top of her.

But all I felt was “End Scene.”

Clapping, because there was no one left to, I laughed.

“Bravo!”

The wind urged me toward the hole, sucking in brown leaves and pine needles.

Fir trees dipped their heads in disappointment, leaves hissed in disapproval, and I bowed to gather up a shovel.

–

Amanda Gowin lives in the Appalachian Foothills with her husband and son. Her stories have an unintentional bluegrass sensibility: love and death, love and death. She is uncomfortable calling herself a writer or photographer or zombie lover, no matter how much brain space she devotes to these pursuits. She has always written and always will.

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