Remy

A Story by Skoyle

I walked into my work's office and sat at my desk. The calender told me it was Monday, everyone's favorite day. A picture of a woman smiled at me, and I returned the gesture. My computer was off, so I reached down to the tower and with a push of a button, it whirred to life. A small square was dark on the monitor. I looked at it and found that there was a post-it note stuck on my computer screen that read, 'Check your drawer.' Without a second thought, I reached for my desk's bottom drawer and pulled it open. I discovered a handgun. It was a revolver.

Give a man a gun and he might shoot it off; give a killer a gun, someone is going to die,I thought to myself.

I picked up the gun and felt it's weight. Heavy, but it's grip molded to my hand, as if it were made for me and everything felt right. I opened the cylinder to see if there were any bullets loaded, only to find seven chambers, all of them empty.

I guess I'm not a killer, the gun says so. No. I say so.

Even though I knew the gun was empty, just for fun, I cocked it, rolled a few feet away from my desk and aimed at my computer. I pulled the trigger and instantly my computer was destroyed. The gun fell to the floor as I couldn't understand what just happened. It was empty. I knew the gun was empty. I look around and see that no one else was at my work. A Monday in June, and everyone was gone. Another glance at my calender told me that it was December. I picked up the gun and, just to be sure it was really empty, opened the cylinder and see that it had been filled, but there are only three chambers now. I couldn't stand it. I had to go home and try to sort out my very short day.

I ran out into the street. The first thing I noticed was that there weren't any cars and there was that feeling of being completely alone. That didn't concern me as much as what I did see: paintings. Everywhere, thousands of paintings were lying in the street. They were rather tantalizing. Some of them were copies, though I would have never been able to guess the originals from the duplicates. I kept running, trying to get back to my house.

About half way home I realized that I had driven to work.

I stopped to catch my breath and I caught the gaze of a man being interviewed in a painting. It seemed like he was on a talk show, as you could see the lights and cameras focused on him in the picture. Any other painting I would have looked away, but the guy sitting on the couch was looking at me and was more detailed than anything else. He looked like me. I was never interviewed.

No one's around and that's clearly me. I'm taking it, I thought as I stole the painting away from the pavement. The pavement didn't put up a fight.

I decided that I could take a bus later to retrieve my car. That was, if the buses started to run again. I started to run again and I saw a pharmacy across the street. I remembered that I had ran out of sleeping pills the night before and that I couldn't sleep without them.

I crossed the street and walked into my apartment. I hung the painting above my bed and opened the top drawer of my dresser. I took my sleeping pills out only to find that they were still gone. I took two anyways, because I needed them to sleep.

Even after taking the pills, sleep was hard to grasp. My mind wandered, and before I knew it, the topic of my thoughts was Remy. She was my fiance. We would have been married, but she had an idea. She came to my apartment one night and told me that she wanted to run away together. Where she wanted to go, though, wasn't anywhere you ran to. You sort of ended up there. Or you didn't, no one really knows. I told her I didn't want to go, I had so much to do here. She kissed me, passionately and whispered, “I'll be leaving tomorrow. If you want to join me, I will send you your ticket so that you may.” And then she was gone.

I woke up in my hotel suite that I had purchased last minute the night before. My new book was about to be released and a talk show wanted to interview me and discuss it. I had agreed because I enjoyed the show and any publicity is good. It was to be my first interview, but everything felt alright.

After a quick shower, I dressed in my suit that I considered to be fit for television and I called a cab. It didn't take long at all for it to arrive and then I was off to the TV studio.

I was met at the door by the host of the show. We introduced ourselves formally and made small talk. The host was a nice guy in-person, despite some celebrities being two-faced. He explained that he wouldn't throw any confusing questions at me, just the normal, everyday ones. We had seven minutes until the show started, so the host said he would talk with me later. We both laughed and he left to prepare for his show.

I was led by a man with a headset into a room backstage with a couch and a television playing the show that was about to start. The man told me to help myself to the snack tray if I got hungry. I wasn't, but who can pass up cashews? Before I could even walk over to the nuts, a woman walked in carrying a package. She said it was for me. I looked at her confused, but signed for it anyways. Nuts weren't on my mind any longer.

I took a seat at the couch and set the box on the floor. It didn't have a return address. I wasn't expecting anything, but I opened it anyway. Inside the package, I found a present, wrapped neatly; it even had a bow. I took it out and set it on my lap and found a small card tied to the bow with a cord.

'I hope to see you there ~ ♥R.A.C.'

My face dropped and I felt my skin lose all of it's color. I thought she had forgotten about me.

At that moment, the man with the headset came in and told me it was time for me to be interviewed. That cleared my head quickly, too quickly, and I rushed out the door with him.

I was introduced as the author of my new book, 'Hapless,' and I walked onto the set. I sat down and the interview began.

“So, you're an author,” the host began.

“Yes,” I replied. “That would explain the book.” A couple audience members chuckled quietly. Most of them stayed quiet.

“What's it like to write a book? I've never done it myself,” he asked.

“Well it's kind of like giving man a gun-”

“Hah! It might work, and it might not?” The host said, certain that he was finishing my statement.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well in your book, you said that 'If you give a man a gun, he may shoot it off,' so I was just thinking you were going to say that making a man write a book is the same.”

“I never wrote that.”

“It's in your book.”

“Oh,” I tried to collect my thoughts. “I must have forgotten.” I smiled, hoping he would think I was tired and my memory wasn't very good.

“I thought you'd remember,” he laughed. “It is your line.” The audience laughed.

“Normally I would, but I guess it slipped my mind.”

“So what would you say writing a book is like?”

“I'd say it's like painting a picture with words,” I said, hoping I sounded somewhat philosophical. “You don't really have a canvas to work with, instead you have something intangible; you have your mind. The problem is that you have to convey what's in your head onto paper and hope it somehow transfers later from the page into your readers' mind.”

The audience laughed. The host laughed. I laughed. Everything seemed fine.

And then the host asked, to my surprise and probably everyone's, “How are you dealing with your fiance's passing?”

“No comment.”

I thanked him for the interview and walked back to the room where my present waited me. I opened the box and found a Remington revolver, loaded with a single bullet.