Phantasm
Written by: Sar
I dreamt that someone gave me a choice. Either shoot yourself in the heart or shoot yourself in the chest cavity. I knew a shot to the heart would be instant death. I wasn’t quite sure what was meant by chest cavity but I figured it was a better choice than my heart. I took the gun– already loaded and cocked– and held it to my chest. The point of the gun dug into my bone. I wiggled it around to find the hollow spot where the top of my rib cages met. This was where the bullet would go.
My hands didn’t tremble. I was calm and breathing normally. It was nighttime and I was in front of a motel. Each door had a pair of Christmas ornaments hanging below the room number. Two bodyguards stood on each side of me. How were they going to protect me from my own suicide? There were no last words, no final goodbyes, no announced regrets or confessions or lingering pleas. I just carelessly pulled the trigger. It was almost graceful, as if it had been practiced.
I didn’t flinch. It was neither a blank bullet or a vanishing one. The real bullet was lodged into my chest just as I had chosen. Blood feathered from the center of the wound toward the surrounding edges, where the fabric of my shirt had frayed. There was a subtle pain; no more discomfort than the first time I cut my finger when I was a little girl. It was the kind of cut that created a heartbeat in the tip of my finger. The throbbing drowned out the pain– I sat there staring at the cut, wondering how the heartbeat got there and if that is why the blood pumped out through the slit of opened skin.
I wondered that same thing as I looked down at my chest. My chest was like a flat desert and my bullet wound was a crater leftover from a meteor hit. I could almost see through my chest all the way to my back. Then I noticed my heart, still beating and pumping out blood to the open space. I wondered how my heartbeat could be there, much like the finger heartbeat.
After my astonishment had ceased, I looked at the bodyguards. “Well, we should probably go to the hospital.” Suddenly I was sagacious and confident– but that is an outside perspective coming from the consciousness that sets in after sleep. In my dream I had taken on this role as if I had owned it for years. I felt strong and authoratative– I had an authority over myself and my decisions. I had concurrently shed my own blood and saved myself somehow.
Before my dream ended, I looked back down at my chest and stared into the hollow space behind my bones. I looked back at the motel ornaments and wondered if they looked the same inside.
