• I keep hoping this isn’t right, this isn’t real, this is just some big sick joke someone’s trying to give me a heart attack over, because maybe I deserve it for a lot of things, but not this. I can’t handle this.

    Of course it’s him. A little less bloody than the the last time I put a bullet in his face, but not looking so good all the same. Unmistakable.

    I could almost stick a fist into the place my fragmenting slug got him first. And all the little places it went after. A quarter off his jaw. The now empty socket that used to hold a second grass-green eye, so lively and bright. A few teeth, maybe a wedge from that brain of his.

    He shouldn’t be alive, let alone standing here in my apartment, grinning - or trying to - and talking through that hole in his jaw.

    “You remember me,” he says. His tongue flicks through the hole, then back in again. I’m fascinated. “Don’t you.”

    I nod, slowly. Still staring at the face I gave him. Slowly dying of shock.

    “Then you know why I’m here.”

    He must have died. Died, rotted, then crawled out of a grave somewhere to pay me back.

    He reaches into his coat. I know what he’s going for. I wait for my instincts to take over, to spring into action, but nothing happens. I don’t try to move. The shock fades fast and I’m just so very tired.

    I’m sorry, I think. I wish you’d died, and you weren’t the one here today.

    My legs cave. I slump into an armchair. Didn’t I know this was coming? You don’t live like I do and just drift away in your sleep. And of course it would be him. The only face I hated to blow to shreds, that I remembered a day later, a year. My twisted little angel, busting down my door, come back to deal righteous vengeance.

    I made you, I think, I made you and you’re here to end me. It makes a sick sort of sense, doesn’t it.

    I know this moment should mean something. The last standoff, the final revenge. It’s his whole world, but it just doesn’t reach me.

    Oh well, decides my brain. Whatever. It was this or my own gun in maybe a week, maybe a day. Endings end things. That’s it. Nothing scary, no pain. It was swell, honey, but nothing lasts. And I’ve had more than my share of this world.

    I rub my forehead and I really try to care, but maybe I knew this was going to happen for a long time. Maybe I was waiting for it since the first time I cut someone down.

    Tick-tock goes the clock above the kitchen sink.

    He’s agitated. He’s been waiting for this too, but so differently. He needs to say his big speech, make everything better like he wanted. He’ll do this and it'll finally be over. He’ll turn that piece on himself without anything holding him back. And I’ll see him in hell.

    So he paces, he rants. And my eyes flutter shut, and the dark edges nearer. I drift. Long day, time to turn in. Don’t wake me up in the morning.