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Posted on January 20, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

She had decided it was time. Funny thing about decisions, anyone can make one but there’s no telling how a person will actually find the courage to honour that decision. Almost every decision ever made that actually resulted in action probably depended upon extenuating circumstances. It’s the reason why all New Year’s resolutions are broken before the year has had a moment to catch its breath.

So she sat there with her panties around her ankles and wondered how she was ever going to actually convert her decision into action. Though she was not thinking about it in such precise terms, a sneaking suspicion worming its way forward from the back of her mind suggested that most decisions were really little more than fantasies.

I cannot take this anymore, she’s crushing my soul and I have to get out…

I need to quit, this job is sucking what little soul I have left…

They don’t understand. How can they? He’s not had a hard-on since the night they made me and she’s so up the ass of her fucking book club she doesn’t even see me as a real person…I have to end it now…

But the snotty kid does not kill himself, instead going on to conform in every way he can until his own kids can complete the threat-of-suicide circle eighteen years later.

The executive becomes too busy counting his bonuses and comparing the size of his wheels, deals and lover’s squeals against those earned by everyone else in the rat race.

The only one who actually follows through on a decision is the guy who ends his relationship with the girl who was never happier than when she was cooking or dressing up for him. Her joy, positivity and accommodating nature in bed were stifling him. Her enthusiasm for doggie-style, puppies and experimental cinema was driving him so crazy, he left; wandered off into the arms of an uptight bitch with control issues, a daddy fetish and the inability to stay faithful for more than a week at a time. He lied to his friends and told them that the sex had never been more incredible even though, in truth, the only way his dick would be anywhere near her mouth was if it was attached to someone she was cheating on him with.

She suspected all of these things about strangers living lives in neighbouring flats or all across the city. Given enough time she might have even entertained the notion that this is how it was all around the world. Instead she sat there, staring at her own underwear, which was threatening at any moment to slip a few inches further and actually touch the floor, while trying to figure out how she was going to convert her decision into action.

With a shudder, the memory of the first time engulfed her. She could see his smiling face, fronting watchful eyes. She could see the nervous way he tapped the side of the table. She wouldn’t have identified it as nerves back then but she realised now it was exactly what that was. His fiddling with his nose and the darting of his eyes as he checked out the talent around the club; the way she had kept her eyes on him for as long as she could until she had to bend forward and look at the powder on the dark glass before her. Maybe it was the club lights but she could have sworn that the powder looked a lot yellower than it did in the movies. When she took the hit it was like the sting of wasabi ricocheting through her brain.

That was then. Then was ten months ago.

She still couldn’t believe how she had gone from a drug adventurer to a habitual consumer who owed ninety grand and had no way of coming up with even ten percent of that sum. During their last telephone conversation he had whispered that they might be able to broker a staggered payment deal (which would naturally cost her a little more) if she could come up with ten percent of what she owed. After all the favours had been called in she was two thousand and thirty-three short of the nine thousand six hundred and ninety-eight pieces of currency she needed to make good on his very generous offer.

So sitting there, in the bathroom of the club with her panties around her ankles and an expressionless mask where her face used to be, she decided that she was going to quit. The habit, this city and running. All she had to do was pull the trigger…

Only question: Is 96980 a number high enough to motivate a person towards murder?

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