The Debate

    “I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to keep talking. I suppose we could sit here, listing details back and forth about why it is we feel one way or another, but where would we be at the end of all that? Right back here. Right back where we started.”
    He took a sip of water from the tall glass, and flicked the ashes of his cigarette.
    “I suppose you’re right. But tell me this, if we don’t discuss it; if we sit here just mulling it over in our heads while we decide to just give in for the sake of short argument, doesn’t that make us reprehensible? Aren’t we guilty if we take that road?”
    She had deep doubt and rivers of hindsight cresting behind her eyes.
    “Now here’s the trouble. We’ve been here for hours, or at least what seems like hours, throwing stones in glass houses. We’ve torn this down and removed every shadow of doubt and unsure notion and emerged at the other side in the same state. So whether you want to carry on in this calamity any further or not, I don’t see how we’ll be able to make anymore headway.”
    “John,” she said, and reached out to touch his hand. He pulled it back and started again.
    “I know you don’t want to hear this, but the truth is I’m tired. Maybe that’s not the best thing to say, maybe it even makes me a bad person, but it’s the truth. The fact is, I simply don’t have any room to move anymore. I’ve been holed up in this place for too long and my breath is starting to run thin. The air is getting stale and thick, and I can’t keep my nose above this cloud much longer, Sally. I just don’t think this will work.”
    “I’m not going to fight. If you’ve made a decision, you’ll stick to it. I know that. I just think…”
    “Think! That’s all we’ve done is think! Sitting here filling this ashtray while the whole thing goes on all around us! The lights will be shutoff in a matter of hours, we’ll be lost in a sea of frightened lunatics before sunrise, and you want keep theorizing and analyzing when you know perfectly well there’s nothing to be done about it! This is it Sally, this is where the big talk comes out, the kind you save for only the most dire of circumstances, and baby, this is that time. We don’t have any more outs, there are no more options to pine over, no favors to call in. This is the terminator line. So what’s it going to be?”
    She ran her hand across the cold steel of the revolver, fingering the divots on the chamber. There were two shells left inside.
    “But if it is the end, if this is that moment where all we left is our words, then I want you to hear mine too.”
    She stood up, holding her rising courage with her hands against the kitchen table.
    “I’m not giving up. I’m not going to rationalize letting go of the little humanity that might be left after tonight. We are not a species that sits down and sits by, we’re one of action, damn it, one that pulls itself up and continues to fight, even when there might not be any hope or reason to do so. And I for one won’t lay down and die so easy. Not now, not when everything’s at stake.”    
    He snubbed out his cigarette.
    “You say we’re one to never give up? That the human race is one stubborn son of a b***h, and that you’re going to keep fighting? Well did it occur to you that that kind of thinking, that sort of forward momentum propelled us up, up, up, and so far away from where we started that maybe we’ve lost sight of things? That maybe, after so many generations, so many countless lives that have been led across this little blue ball, that maybe we deserve to be knocked off our pedestal? That maybe this is it, this is the pinnacle where we can only descend from? Human beings, at least for the last few hundred years, have been nothing but a plague on this planet. We’ve raped and murdered the earth just as much as we’ve raped and murdered each other. And don’t throw petty words in my face like love and compassion in my face, those are all gone too. Compassion is reserved for times where it can be afforded, but when push comes to shove, when you get right down to you-or-me life-or-death situations, well helping a fellow man is pointless as giving gold to a gambler. There’s nothing left here that we deserve to have, not after what we’ve done.”
    “If only you could clear your head John, see what I’m trying to say. That in the end it doesn’t matter how you go out, it doesn’t matter if it’s at the face of it all or weeks later when it’s slow and painful. It’s what you do when you know what’s coming. It’s how you decide to behave and really treat others, regardless of what comes back. Yes John, you and I will be dead soon, whether we head for the hills and try our luck in the cold or if we stay here and end up dead on the floor, it doesn’t matter. That ending is coming regardless. The question is, how do you want to conduct yourself knowing that ending is on its way? How do you want to feel during those last glimpses? Regret? Shame? Or peace, and contentment? I want to know that I tried, that I spent every last waking breath to push myself as far and as hard as I could go before I roll over and die.”
    He lit another smoke, his last one. Maybe the last one. He sat back down at the table, and they both calmed down a little.
    “ Alright, I hear your words. I know how you feel, really I do. But it’s not how I feel, and it’s not something I can budge on. But I also can’t in good conscience let you walk out the door and face the things I know are coming. You’re not strong enough Sally. There, I said it. You’re a small girl with weak arms and little knowledge of how to survive, there’s no way you could make it. Not with the waves of people realizing their whole way of life has collapsed. Not when they realize there’s no such thing as law. No such thing as morality. No such thing as rights. They’ll tear you to pieces Sally, and I won’t let that happen.”
    He picked up the gun.
    “I won’t let you die in such a way, I won’t let them destroy you.”
    He raised it slowly, and in a instant she was on him, grabbing the barrel and pointing it away, and clawing his face with her weak arms. She pushed from her center, slowing inching the gun back against his chest as he took a single step back. He raised his free hand and struck her in the mouth, sending her careening back against the table and launching the glass and ashtray into the air and then shattering onto the tiled floor. There were no more words, no more that mattered, not anymore. He breathed in thick, dirty air and steadied his hand, but as he leveled the sight with her head framed with corn-silk, she kicked hard and kicked high, and hit full force in the groin. There was flashing, blinding pain that moved up into him as he dropped to his knees, the gun sliding from his grip and landing solid on the ground, cracking the cream tile beneath it. She rose up from her crumpled pile, her bottom lip split and bleeding and pursed. She picked up the gun and pushed him onto his back with her foot. Her eyes were rapid, burning down into him. He did not fight. He simply looked up to meet her gaze through the heavy waves of pain and felt a small pang of regret. She pulled the trigger. Twice. Three times, four, letting the sound of the hollow click count the seconds in the room. Slowly, after she realized she was still holding the gun, she dropped it and turned to the door. She opened it at looked out at the hallway with piles of garbage along each side. There was one solitary ceiling light still on, and the far stairwell was cast in shadow. She wiped the blood from her lip and fled into the dark.

Reviews

[Sammie]

Awesome read Tim as always.

[Pen Draggin']

Wicked awesome, Timmy! You're such a brilliant b*****d.

Only one thing, "And don’t throw petty words in my face like love and compassion in my face, those are all gone too." It doesn't sound like you meant to repeat yourself.

[Analgesia]

Tension. Release. You get it. There's some excellent dialogue here, framed well with a kind of postapocolyptic-Hollywood-action-movie vibe. We don't know what exactly is going on in the background, in the characters imidiate vicinity or otherwise, and we don't need to know. The perepheral disturbances that let us know that there is even an outside world at all are really intriguing, simple overtones that trick the reader into digging deeper into something that may have no explaination at all. The kind of paralell drawn there: the way we may dig deeper into life, have our little debates that sometimes have no answers, and do so as well with stories, takes this to another level, whether you intended it or not. Thanks for writing something worth reading, I hope I was of some assistance.

[DavidRyanM]

I dig it, man. I've heard you talk a while about how you wanted to do something like this and you pull it off. I dig that the end is completely description and no words. I thought that was a brilliant idea.