The End

The address was 458 Bellona Drive NE. It had been written in black ink on an otherwise typed-and-printed letter placed at the bottom of a box, which also held a handgun, two bullets, a tape recorder for Noah on Carter’s request, and a thank you gift card for coffee. The note was presumably signed by the bald man, but the signature on it labelled him as Mr. Ink. Carter was supposed to meet him at four o’clock PM on Friday that week. He had a shift that day at the dollar store. He skipped it.

            Instead, he spent the morning leaving his message for Noah. There was braille on the play and pause buttons, and he’d just leave it on top of Noah’s books for him to find. Carter had locked himself in his parents’ room, thrown himself in the corner of a closet, and started recording. There was an apology even though Carter couldn’t say what he was apologizing for. Maybe he was sorry that he wasn’t somebody else. When he left the house that afternoon and shut the door, he did it so Noah couldn’t hear it.

            It turned out that 458 Bellona Drive NE was a factory building at the end of the city’s industrial district. He parked and made his way in through the back entrance. The letter had given him directions to a room hidden away there.

            He knocked on the door thinking it would be answered. Instead, it sounded like people were talking in there. After a ten-minute wait, the door was opened and out came a thin, tall girl with pale, sunken eyes. She glanced down at Carter for a moment too fleeting for him to look up. Then, she scurried past and disappeared behind the corner. From behind her came Mr. Ink, dressed in the same blue and green suit, but with a black bowler hat balanced on his head.

            “You made it!” he said. “I�"hm… remind me of your name again? I remember your last name.”

            “Carter.”

            “Ah, yes. I have a horrible memory. Please excuse me. Oh, god�"come in please. I’m all over the place today.”

            Mr. Ink stood to the side while Carter stepped in. The door closed behind him. They were in this big open room that didn’t look like it was part of the factory. It was a vast shooting range with peeling black walls and a cement floor. The room had a weird smell of metal everywhere which made Carter feel like his nose was bleeding. At the end was a bunch of targets drawn on wood and one eerily detailed mannequin with its arms by its side, staring slightly up. That was the one they stood at.

            “Alright,” said Mr. Ink. “We’ll deploy you at the location and you do the rest. Getting in should be as easy as walking through the door and asking to see Ms. Karolyn Smyth. Getting out�"only way to do that is to shoot yourself in the head. That’s why you have two bullets. Now�"”

            He handed Carter a gun like the one that was mailed to him, except this one was loaded. Then he grabbed Carter’s shoulder and pulled him backwards until they were standing behind a dotted line on the ground a few feet away from the mannequin.

            “Here’s the distance you’ll probably have out there. You’re holding it too low. You want the crook of your thumb right… there�"for leverage.”

            Carter adjusted his grip.

            “You’ll need your other hand right… there, to cushion yourself. You don’t want to try shooting one-handed your first time. Okay, so this is the front sight and this is the rear sight. You’re going to align it so the tops of them line up. Now spread your feet. Now you just press the trigger and there you go.”

            Carter aimed. The sights were set on the mannequin’s chest. It was a new one without any bullet marks on it. He held his arms as steady as they would stay. And he fired. The gun shook his body from his wrists to his chest and the bullet flew to the left of the mannequin into the wall behind it.

            “That was good technique,” Mr. Ink said. “Step a little closer and try again. Make sure you’re just using your dominant eye.”

            Carter took a step forward. But Mr. Ink said closer still. By the time he was satisfied and Carter had aimed the gun, the tip of it was inches from the mannequin’s chest.

            “Just to get a feel for it.”

            Carter didn’t know what the person he was supposed to kill looked like. He thought that’d make it easier. But for a moment, her face looked like the mannequin’s�"broad, white, and with pale, painted-on eyes. He tried looking into its face while aiming right between its ribs. The shaking of his hands was causing him to dart up and down. The trigger was suddenly impossibly hard to press.

            “I don’t know if I can do this,” Carter spit out as the gun fell in front of him.

            “You can,” said Mr. Ink. “It’ll take some practice, that’s all. It’s like anything else.”

            “I mean�"I don’t think I can kill someone.”

            Mr. Ink raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

            “I don’t have it in me.”

            “I don’t believe that. I mean�"I came to your school recruiting suicidal children. The fact that you’re standing here with me is proof that you were willing to take a life.”

            Carter’s fingers around the gun trembled. It would have fallen to the floor if it wasn’t hooked on what little strength he had in his finger. He stammered and stuttered while Mr. Ink crossed his arms and waited. The room was really big. There was no echo though. Their voices barely made it a quarter of the way across before deflating. Wow.

            “It’s different,” said Carter.

            “Elaborate on that,” said Mr. Ink, genuinely curious.

            “I’m ready to kill myself because it won’t matter.”

            “You’re not going to kill Smyth because she has people who care about her? Because I know you know that you do too. Human beings are f*****g awful at correctly guessing the number of people in the world who love them. And I know you’re the type to underestimate.

“It’s not even hypotheticals either�"you don’t even know Smyth’s family and you feel sympathy for them, but you know your brother better than anyone else in the world. You’ve held him in your arms and felt his tears. You know you’re spilling those tears by agreeing to this, but here you are. You once already consciously decided you were fine with that. Still, it’s not about that. I’ve told you before, you can’t only live for others.”

“I’ve tried to make things better,” said Carter. “I’ve tried so f*****g hard, but I can’t do this anymore.”

“Then kill Smyth and be done with it.”

“She doesn’t deserve a death penalty.”

“You don’t know how many lives she’s ruined.”

“She’ll pay by facing the legal consequences of that, not another crime. Stories don’t just end with some bad deeds. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“That would include you, wouldn’t it?” Mr. Ink took a step closer to Carter and loomed over him like everyone else did. “You’re very adamant that you can’t go on any longer, but you can. You always can. Yeah�"you don’t know for sure you’ll be okay, but who f*****g does? But no matter what, we always have chances to do things differently and make it all right. There’s an infinite number of choices and one of those has to be the right one. You might think you’ve tried everything, but you haven’t scratched the surface of what you can do. Hell, you’re strong enough to do all of this, after all.

“Now killing yourself�"that’s truly where the second chances end. Things can change with your home and your jobs, but if Noah loses a brother, he’ll never, ever get you back. Whether you know it or not, you forfeited second chances the second you signed that contract. You’re standing here with me because you decided you don’t care about second chances. You did. Now face that decision, and shoot.”

Carter hadn’t been angry in a long, long time. But the itchy, boiling feeling grabbed him by the chest and ran down his hands. It grasped the gun and he gasped as it rose.

But his elbows were limp. They stayed limp. He wasn’t pointing it at anything because there was nothing to point it at. The gun in his hands stayed there, floating. He stood there in that vast black room while Mr. Ink stared at him with a raised, partially missing brow. The walk into that room was forever ago. It was too long ago to remember how he felt when he did it.

“Carter�"”

“I’m sorry,” said Carter, as he handed Mr. Ink the gun. “I can’t do this.”

Something formed on Mr. Ink’s face. Carter couldn’t tell what. It could’ve been a scowl or a smile, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t speak. Soon, the only sound in the whole room was the pattering of Carter’s footsteps as he walked out the door.

-

            Carter announced his name through the door, just like Noah always told him to do. The anxious, clattering, shuffling noises Carter made coming in made it seem unlike him though, and that scared Noah. Carter was moving in a way that he hadn’t for a very long time.

            “Carter, are you�"” Noah called out, putting his book down and putting a hand out.

            “Yeah, Noah. It’s me.”

            Noah nearly jumped in surprise when he felt Carter’s arms around him. But soon, he settled, and his hands rested flat on Carter’s back. They stayed that way for a long, long time. The sun rose and fell and its rays tickled and scratched up the roof of the house. But they were the only things in the world that didn’t move.

            “I believe in us,” said Carter. “I believe in us.”

            And they made it. Together.