Melany Took
I gently fingered the moth-eaten leather of my thrift shop couch. I’d always liked the texture of old leather. With my right hand, I fingered the trigger of my Dad’s revolver. I always thought of it as Dad’s, even though it had been mine for a great many years. I wasn’t yet pointing the barrel at my head, but I was certainly considering doing so. It had been a long day.
Annoyed at my own lack of indecision, I put the gun on the arm of the couch and reached for my phone instead, looking for someone to talk to. It was rare that I of all people would seek human contact for comfort, but every once in a while, a girl just needs a friend.
My list of contacts was short, consisting entirely of coworkers, fast food places near my rundown little apartment and near the college where I worked, and a few random associates who came in handy once in a while, such as Jim Morgan, Private Eye. In all my list, there was but one friend. I clicked the down arrow on my phone’s keypad until it highlighted the name Nillium Neems, and I pressed dial. As expected, I got her parent’s answering machine. Nil herself didn’t even own a phone.
Leaving a brief message, knowing that Nil’s parents might just delete it if she wasn’t there, since they didn’t exactly think very highly of me, I hung up and waited. Ten minutes passed without my friend calling me back. Sighing wearily, but not having expected much else, since she was probably out getting attacked by monsters somewhere, I went back through my contacts list. Not one friend.
Having no one else to talk to, I dialed the Domino’s Pizza place near my house.
“This is Nick, welcome to Domino’s. How may I help you tonight?”
I recognized the voice, having ordered pizza often enough on a lonely Friday night to be familiar with a few of the employees. I placed Nick after a moment’s thought as the blond guy who usually delivered, and looked like a better class of Beach Boy. He would have to do.
“How... how are you?” I tried, such friendly words unfamiliar to my usually harsh tongue.
“Just fine,” he replied cheerfully, evidently mistaking me for merely a polite customer. “What would you like to order tonight?”
“I... I have no one else to talk to, Nick. No one at all, not one friend.”
Silence greeted me on the other end of the line.
“I’m home alone, after working a job I don’t much care for, around people I despise, and a loaded gun is sitting on the couch next to me. I’m thinking of using it.”
Somehow, the silence deepened.
“Uh, is this a prank call?” he asked, though there wasn’t much conviction in his voice. I think he knew by the tone of my own that I was serious.
“I’m sorry, Nick. Look, I’m not very good at this, at being social and having conversations. But my life sucks, and I’m thinking of killing myself for the second time this week. And I just... just have no one to talk to. I’m lost.”
“Um...”
“Please, Nick. Please just talk to me. Tell me... tell me what you like to do. What do you do outside of work?”
“I... I like fishing. Look, miss, um, there are help lines you can call for this sort of thing- “
“Please!” I cut him off, alarmed at the desperation I heard in my voice, the need for human contact. “Just, just talk to me.”
I heard noise in the background on his end, clarifying into someone asking him what was going on as they evidently drew closer. Nick covered it up as best he could.
“Oh, no, no, just a difficult customer. I’ve got it handled. I’m, err, heading out there right now to make a delivery.”
A pause, more talking I couldn’t quite hear.
“No, really, don’t worry about it. I’ve got it handled. Yes, yes I know, Sir, yes I understand the company policy. Yes sir, I will.”
Another moment of silence, then Nick on the phone again.
“Um, my manager kind of chewed me out. Look, I really don’t want to lose my job. Can’t you... can’t you just talk with someone else about all this?”
“No. I have no one else, Nick. Please understand that.”
I could hear the depth of his sigh over the phone.
“Alright. Look, I’m just going to drop by and deliver a pizza, talk with you for a few minutes so you don’t kill yourself, then get back to work, okay? That’s the best I can do.”
I nodded, though realized a moment after I did that he couldn’t see my nod over the phone.
“Okay. I appreciate it, Nick. Thank you. Not many people are willing to stick their neck out for me these days.”
“Yeah... just, don’t expect this to happen again, okay?”
“Alright.”
I waited for him to hang up the phone. To my surprise, he didn’t.
“Err, so as long as I’m bringing a pizza, do you have any preference?”
I thought about it for a while.
“Spinach and Feta?”
“Alright. I’ll, err, see you shortly.”
He still didn’t hang up, waiting for me to do it. I found myself slightly breathless, like a princess who has just met her prince charming and is afraid of losing him.
“I...” for once I had no words, my infamously sharp tongue dulled. “I’m very... thank you, Nick.”
I felt my words all too inadequate, poor and clumsy. After a few seconds longer he hung up, and I worried that I had let some great opportunity pass me by.
I spent the next ten minutes pacing my little apartment, pacing, cursing myself, looking at my Dad’s revolver as if trying to figure out how it had got there, and then taking a seat on the couch, trying to calm myself. Seconds later I was back on my feet, unable to sit still, headed for the window to look and see if Nick was coming.
No Nick.
Cursing myself, on the verge of tears now, not sure what I was feeling or what I was supposed to be feeling, I had just wandered back to the couch when I heard a car pull up outside. Snatching the revolver from where it lay, trying to decide where to hide it so I didn’t look like too much of a nut job, I heard the doorbell ring.
Frantic, really starting to lose my mind, delusioned to the point where I thought if I didn’t get the door for him he would disappear forever, I practically leapt across my apartment, completely forgetting about the gun that was still gripped tightly in my hand.
“Nick!” I said perhaps a little breathlessly, opening the door wide.
He was a handsome-looking man, more so than I remembered from the times that he’d delivered here before. Young, kind of like one of the hunky guys on Twilight, but less buff and more lithe.
His emerald gem eyes darkened a little with recognition.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he began, looking at me kind of funny. “Haven’t I delivered to you before?”
Already, without quite thinking about it, I was raising the revolver to point at him.
“Yeah, you’re that Took Girl, the one who threatened- “ but his words trailed off as he noticed the gun now pointing at his chest.
“Get inside and close the door,” I said quietly, taking a few steps back to give him room to follow after me.
His face paled a bit.
“Look, Miss Took, I- “
“Just do it,” I said a bit more harshly than I would have liked to.
Reluctantly, he walked into my apartment and closed the door behind him. He was holding my pizza in one hand, clearly debating what to do with it. I gestured towards the couch with my gun.
“Take a seat and put the pizza on the coffee table. I’ll get some plates.”
He did as I told him, though looking clearly unhappy about it. I wandered into my little kitchen, keeping a close eye on him and moving fast. He had maybe a few seconds where he could have tried something as I was getting the plates, but to his credit, he just stayed on the couch. I passed him a plate and plopped down beside him, summoning the biggest grin I could to my face.
“Now, let’s eat!”
He just stared at me.
“Um, am I hostage right now?”
I shrugged.
“Everything I told you on the phone was true. It was just when you recognized me that I was left with no choice but to threaten you. I’m really sorry about that.”
Nick eyed the gun warily, which was still pointed loosely in his direction.
“But you were holding the gun before you even opened the door.”
I looked at my revolver too, a bit sheepishly, almost a little embarrassed.
“I was thinking of shooting myself earlier before I called. I just never found a good opportunity to put it safely away somewhere.”
His eyes went up to meet mine.
“I really am sorry about all this,” I explained further, afraid I was starting to babble and ruin the moment. “I truly just want a quiet evening with a friend to talk stuff over. I just don’t have any friends, so you’ll have to do.”
I then extended my left-hand towards him.
“I’m Melany Took. Not sure if you remember my name or not from the previous times you’ve been here.”
He didn’t shake.
“If I don’t get back soon, my boss will start to wonder where I’ve gone.”
A little to my own alarm, I smiled at him, feeling that if I could see my own smile I might be as unnerved as he looked. It occurred to me that I might have been just a little mentally unstable.
“I’ve thought of that!” I said a little too brightly, pulling out my cellphone while keeping the gun trained on his chest. I redialed the number for Domino’s.
“Hi, this is Melany Took. Yes, a man named Nick took my order a while ago, and I was thinking it should have been here by now. What? Oh. Oh no, no that’s alright. You don’t have to send someone else. No, that’s really alright. I’ll order a pizza tomorrow. Yes, I’m quite sure. Thank you very much.”
I hung up and flashed my teeth at Nick.
“Problem solved. They think you walked out on the job or got mugged or something. Now nobody will come looking for you, and we’ll have all the time in the world for a pleasant dinner.”
Nick’s face paled by a few hues. I pretended not to notice, and dished him up two slices of pizza on a paper plate.
“So, how’s life?” I asked him, as if we were two old friends just catching up after not seeing each other for a week.
He looked down at his pizza, then back at me, then around my little apartment. Then he sighed, apparently having come to some sort of decision.
“You really don’t have any friends?”
I shrugged.
“I’m not very good at making them. The only real friend I’ve made is a complete social outcast who may or may not be schizophrenic. So, yeah, I have no friends.”
“And you really were thinking of committing suicide?”
I nodded.
“I think of it quite often. A few years back I slit my left wrist, but I guess I screwed up. I passed out from blood loss, but when I came to, it had stopped bleeding. No one ever even knew that I came that close to death, which honestly left me a bit disappointed. I guess the romantic in me was imagining an ambulance full of heroic EMT’s, desperately trying to save my life, heartbroken that one so young as I had come to this.”
I shook my head as if to dislodge an unpleasant memory.
“As it was, I just stitched my arm up, made dinner, and spent the evening watching TV.”
Nick eyed me with a deep empathy, his eyes full of warmth and on the verge of tears. Finally I was getting somewhere, which raised my spirits a little.
“Have... have you tried to...”
“Commit suicide any other times?” I suggested, finishing his sentence.
He nodded mutely.
“Yes. That was the first, shortly after I found myself as a fourteen year old girl, left all alone to fend for myself. The next was two years later, when I was sixteen. Despite my circumstances, and my Father’s untimely death, I kept myself in high school all the way through till graduation. It was prom night when I tried the second time.”
I paused to snag a slice of pizza and take a bite, not bothering with a plate but eating straight from the box.
“I’d worked up the courage to ask a boy out to prom. I’d never really done that before. Never really been on a date or anything for that matter either. Well, I’m not exactly ugly or anything, people have told me I’m pretty, even more so now than I was then, but as you might have guessed, my self-esteem isn’t so hot.”
“I sort of guessed that,” he responded a bit glumly.
“Anyways, when I got asked out, it rather caught me off-guard and I found myself a bit flattered. Very flattered as a matter of fact. I drove myself insane preparing for prom night, trying on dress after dress, getting my makeup and nails done, then re-done because I didn’t think they were the perfect that I was aiming for, and at last I was ready.”
Nick looked me up and down, in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasing.
“For what it’s worth, you are quite beautiful, Melany.”
That made me pause. I’m pretty sure I even blushed a little, but had no idea how to respond, so I ignored it as if he’d never said anything and continued my story.
“Anyways, so he wanted me to meet him out front from our school about a half hour before the prom, on these ridiculously ornate steps that led up to the entrance. So I got there, waited, waited, began to think that maybe he’d stood me up, and had just about given up hope when he showed up. With about six other friends, including some blonde little slut latched onto his right arm.
They circled me and started pointing and laughing, laughing at how ‘The Took Girl’ had got all dolled up, thinking that anyone would be stupid enough to ask her to the prom. They did not reduce me to tears, however. After I got over the shock of what my ‘date’ had done, I sort of flipped out.”
Nick’s eyes moved down towards my gun, and I grinned and shook my head.
“Though I had the revolver by then, I hadn’t yet gotten into the habit of carrying it everywhere I went. No, I started by clawing him in the face with my nails, realized that was a bit girly and expected of me, so then formed my hand into a fist, grabbed him with my left, and started pounding his face in. It was rather satisfying I must say.”
Nick’s face was suitably alarmed.
“That’s a bit... um- “
“Extreme? Probably. But it felt good. Then I turned on his friends and went after them to, charging them and attacking before they even knew what to think. They sort of scattered after that, leaving me alone with a broken and bloody date. I thought about killing him, but by then people were starting to notice there was a scene of some sort happening. So I fled back home, washed up, ate some Oreos for dinner, and watched old reruns of Full House.”
Nick dared to stand up from the couch, having finally had enough.
“Look, Melany, I feel for you, alright? It sounds to me like you’ve been through hell, more than any one person should ever have to cope with. But I can’t do this, do you understand? You’ve probably already cost me my job. I’m not a psychiatrist, I’m just a pizza boy. I’m not even your friend, okay?”
Well that was exactly the wrong thing to say. As it was, I had just been thinking of letting him go, after setting up another dinner date with him of course, but for him to kill the burgeoning fantasy that a dark poet like myself had built in her mind, where he became the only one who understood me, maybe even an object of romance (he was sort of cute), was just too much for me to handle. I frowned, stood up to face him, picking up the revolver in the same movement, and shot him through the chest.
He gave me a suitably shocked look of disbelief. I gave him a sad sort of little smile in reply.
“Sorry, Nick. I really am. And for what it’s worth, I do hope you live.”
He gurgled something. I would like to think words of understanding and not curses, but it was too unintelligible for me to tell. Then he collapsed. I gave him a moment to see if he would move or twitch or something, was slightly disappointed when he didn’t budge at all, then daintily stepped over him to grab my phone and call 911.
“Hi, a rather nice man got shot. I have no idea how badly. Could you send someone out here right away?”
I stated my address, ignored the operator’s questions, and then dropped my phone to the ground. It wasn’t like I would be needing it ever again. Then I grabbed my car keys from the little hook on the wall where they hung, took one last look behind me at Nick, and hurried out the door.
My hands didn’t even tremble as I unlocked my car and got in, nor when I inserted the key into the ignition. I felt more peace than anything else, a calm that I had finally made a decision. Driving almost slowly, it still didn’t take me long to reach the bridge.
It was a nice bridge, kind of like a small and homey version of something grander like the Golden Gate, but still impressive all the same. Once used to hasten the flow of traffic, it was now little used, having been superseded by more recent roadways. Which suited my purposes just fine, because I didn’t exactly want a huge crowd of spectators.
Having picked out the perfect spot several months before, along with several other suitable locations for an ‘ending’ I got out of the car and made my way up the onramp. I shivered a little in the cold, for a moment wishing I had brought a jacket, but then realized it wouldn’t matter in a few moments. I had already brought the one thing I truly needed.
Walking along the edge, not really wanting to get hit by traffic because wouldn’t that be kind of lame, I hiked to about the halfway point, where the bridge was highest over the churning water below me. Then I stopped, opened my mouth wide, and stuck the barrel of the revolver against the roof of my mouth.
The steel felt cold against my tongue. The breeze as well was cool, and stronger up here than when I’d first stepped out of my car, caressing my hair until it blew a strand into my eyes. I tucked it back behind my ear and looked over the side of the bridge into the water beneath.
I’d hoped to see my own reflection mirrored back at me, to see myself one last time, perhaps an echo of my thoughts in my other’s eyes. But the water was choppy and too far down anyways. I saw nothing.
I thought about shedding a tear, something dramatic to show the sadness that my life had become. The sound of it dropping into the waves below would have certainly been poetic. Or so I’d like to think anyways.
But I didn’t. I think I’d cried all the tears I ever could have years ago, and now had none left for the sea. Honestly my last moments were kind of a letdown, my black eyes just staring straight forwards into the cloud-obscured sunset.
Realizing there was no point in wasting any more time, feeling disappointed in myself, I shut my eyes and pulled the trigger.
