Here Lies a Broken Soul

Prologue

I didn't have an easy childhood. They call it the 'school of hard knocks'. I call it living hell. Every day for 12 years I sat at the same beige, four-legged, wooden desks. Every day I got into fights with the same people. Every day I had the shit kicked out of me. 

I dropped out of college early. I couldn't stand it there. Mostly because I knew that the last 12 years would repeat themselves again, but this time with older people, able to use kick more shit out of me than I had shit to replace it with. 

A couple months later, I moved out of my parents house and started renting a place in the big city. Not surprisingly, life became even more dull. Every day I walked to work and back along the same street, seeing the same couple argue, the same old man sat on his balcony and the same four kids throw stones at the cars that drove by. I longed for something different, but I never did anything about it.

Then, the depression hit. I spent the nights drinking myself to death, and when that didn't work I turned to the drugs. Days passed like minutes, hours like seconds as I slowly fell down an intoxicated spiral.

That brings us to yesterday. I'd been three weeks clean, after taking the decision not to die young. I went out to get groceries. It wasn't that late, maybe half seven in the afternoon, but there was no one on the street. I pushed open the door to the shop, welcomed by the familiar jingle of the bell. The shopkeeper waved kindly, trying desperately not to fall asleep after a long shift. I grabbed what I wanted, brought it to the counter, paid and left. 

I walked out and quickly spun left to walk back to my flat. As I did so, I was greeted by loud shouts and the strange sight of two grown adults, clearly drunk, possibly friends, engaged in a street brawl. One of them, clearly the aggressor, pulled out a gun on the other, prompting the other to tackle him at the waist. In that split second, as he fell back in slow motion, like a cliff collapsing onto the beach below, his finger slipped on the trigger.

The bullet pirouetted past the other's ear, and under the glow of the golden lamplight, slammed into my side. I toppled over onto the cold ground, blood pooling on the floor around me. My eyes began to close on the world, slowly beckoning me towards eternal sleep. I would soon be relieved of this miserable life. Finally, I felt my body going numb, the pain relax, and the void encroach me. Death had come.

Then I woke up.