By Joshua Crets

He always enjoyed coming here. He was once a busy executive. A man with seemingly too much money and too much responsibility for one person to handle. This was the place he used as his escape from the world and it's problems. He loved this place, John Simmone really loved this place. It was one of the few places he tried to get to as much as possible, although he showed up maybe only three or four times a year.

This place was his beach house. It was a cozy little cottage that sat on the bottom edge of Florida. It was built on a large boulder. An incredibly large boulder, by any standard, almost a small mountain. It overlooked the sand and the beach. The sand was the incredible white you would expect on an ocean's beach. It was beautifully maintained and looked better than most beaches, for it was maintained by an expert grounds keeper and the only people whoever were on it was the grounds keeper, John, and whatever family he fancied to have visit.

The ocean was a real marvel. It never had all the people other parts of the coast had to pollute the waters. It was sparkling blue in which you could see the reflection of the sun. At night, it was even more beautiful. The moon would paint itself on the ocean surface like a great, majestic mural, surrounded by all the stars, its own background of beauty.

The best aspect of this place, you may already have ascertained, was that no one but a few people ever came here and now it would be an even less amount of people since John had to let the grounds keeper go. He didn't have enough money to pay for that man's services anymore. This would be the perfect place to end things.

He had grabbed a gun from his own penthouse apartment back in New York before he left. Before he was evicted at least. He didn't know what type of gun it was, except that he could hold it in one hand, thus it must be a handgun.

He was going to kill himself. He was going to speed up the already speedy process fate seemed to be bringing towards him. His life had hit that zone known by sadly too many as 'rock bottom'. His job, his wonderful job he loved so much, the occupation as a big film executive who worked out of New York. That was truly the dream, but it crashed. He lost everything, his home in New York, one of his cars, (and if he lived much longer, the other one too.) his brothers, sisters and fathers trust. And his wife. She left him too.

His job had left him after a string of bad decisions on film pitches and that the decisions seemed to involve a lot of money changing hands, which meant bribes and although he says he didn't do it (but there will never be enough proof either way it seems) they had to use someone as the proverbial scapegoat and he fit the order pretty well. How else could anyone make much money in America unless their were some dirty dealings involved?

His siblings and father left him for how he acted before and after the death of his mother. They had never really gotten along, and he told her after a heated argument, that she "should go to heck and rot there, you old hag of a witch." After he said this, she had a heart attack and died in the hospital. He did not visit her or go to her funeral. His father and siblings decided that they don't need him if he thinks he's to good for their dearly departed wife and mother. He was disowned by his father and taken out of the will.

His wife had left him two months before now.

He sat on his back deck of his deck, gun in hand, trying to decide where he was going to finish things at. He had a choice between either underneath his mouth aimed up to fire into his brains, or aimed from the side of his temple, also aimed straight for the brain. Either way his brains would end up as a little collage on the floor, although with the first choice it'd end up with some of it on the ceiling. Even though the fist choice of having it on both ground and floor seemed quite glamorous, he went with the second instead. That seemed much more foolproof. He didn't want to mess up and die slowly. He'd been tortured too much by his current situations, that dying slowly on the floor was not something he wanted.

He stuck the gun to his temple and put his finger on the trigger. A one-way ticket to the great abyss, buckle your seatbelt folks, this is going to be quick, he thought. His finger slowly began to apply more pressure to the trigger, soon everything would be over, soon he'd be in heaven, or hell, or maybe even somewhere else. He wasn't specifically a very religious person, so he wasn't quite sure where he'd head off to. His finger was pushing more and more and more until a voice called to him.

"Don't do it, John!" a woman around John's own age said. "Don't kill off your life like a character in one of those movies you used to make."

Still holding the gun to his head he said, "Samantha?" and began to cry.

"Yes honey, it's me. Samantha. Don't do this please." She said to him. She was a beautiful woman and she stood there in a white dress. She had a flower in her hair, he remembers it because it's the same one he put there on their first date. She was also his wife.

Tears were now charging down his face, like a stampede of animals down a mountain and he saw no way of stopping their descent. "But you left me," he said. "You left me when I lost everything. Did I not try to love you, did I not try to care for you? Or could you just not bear the fact that you were married to a failure? That nine years of marriage was too much and that you didn't want to go to ten?"

"I loved you, John and you were never a failure. You know I didn't leave of my own choice. You have a choice now, you can either come with me or you cannot. Although the right choice doesn't always mean being with the one you love. I'll go away now and wait for your decision."

She then left the room, although John heard no door shut, he knew she was gone. He still had the gun to his head but in his head were conflicting thoughts. Maybe I should end it now, or maybe I shouldn't. She doesn't want me to end it. Do I really want to end it? Do I think I should blow my brains out, or do still have a chance to have my broken life go the opposite way.

Those thoughts went to his head till he finally reached a decision. He put the gun down on the floor. He was still crying, but through his sobs could be heard a whisper. "I want to keep on feeling life. I want to keep on feeling life," and then, he just screamed at the top of his level of loudness. "I WANT TO KEEP LIVING! I WANT LIFE!"

*******

5 years later.



He sits in a diner with his friend, who he has become close with in the four years he's known him. He and this friend, Karl, became movie script writing partners after his battle with suicide and have become quite successful. He works out of that old beach house on Florida and works with Karl. They've already become some of the best film writers in the business and for that, they are very proud of themselves.

He trusts his friend so much now and even tells him of the conflict he had with suicide. He told him everything. How he came to the house to kill himself. How his life had been a wreck at the point and the events causing it and how his wife helped talk him out of it.

"But I thought you once told me your wife was dead before that time?" Karl asked.

"Oh you're right. She had been dead at that time, actually two months before that incident," John said, and then looked up out the window of the diner and smiled.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...