One last night more

A Story by MCNemesis

A man haunted by his past prepares for his final desperate escape from life.

Jackson struggled against the mighty chains, but to no avail. Slowly, inexorably, the metal restraints continued to retreat back into the glowing red pit from whence they sprang " dragging their ensnared victim with them.

His feet now over the edge and singed from the pit of fire and brimstone below, Jackson clawed at the ground around him with renewed vigor and cried out to the gloom for someone " anyone, to assist him!

Now frantic in his cries for help and eyes wild with panic, he feels himself being pulled over the edge and down to his assured oblivion.

Jackson spasms and sits up in bed.

His sheets damp with perspiration, he gasps for air and tries to slow his heart rate.

“Just... a dream. Just... a dream”, he repeats over and over. Still visibly shaken and trembling slightly, he stumbles from his bed chamber into the small kitchen.

Hours pass. One, then two and finally three cups of herbal tea later, he finds himself sitting at his computer anxious to find a potent distraction.

As the tool of learning or destruction flickers to life, Jackson's eyes settle on the desktop wallpaper he had selected many months earlier.

A beautiful woman holds their two children in her arms. Her eyes are full of love " a sight that he hadn't seen in person for a very long time. Images of those same eyes, now full of pain and disappointment come flooding back as an unwelcome torrent of memories and emotion.

Like a cruel taskmaster, his mind rejects the impulse to look away. An unseen force locks him in place and demands that his personal Hell continue. The screen begins to blur as Jackson's eyes fill with liquid regret.

His guilt now all powerful, the broken man collapses in a heap of despair; the sound of the tea cup smashing on the floor of the tiny studio apartment, barely registering. The tiny, unkempt dwelling had begun to serve as a perfect metaphor for his new reality; the comforts and loving interactions of his previous life now all turned to ash because of the things and the people he had chosen to embrace.

The fires of his dream come to the forefront of his mind again as he gazes at the small gas stove. A horrible fascination grips him as he eyes the gas knob adorning the front of the burner. Perhaps... perhaps the hissing of the invisible fuel would take his mind off of things. Perhaps if he enjoyed the hissing for long enough, he could finally sleep.

With grim resolve, Jackson slowly rose from his seated position and stretched forward " his fingers barely grazing the knob. Something seemed to danced all around him whenever he made contact with the object of his new obsession.

Again, he allowed his fingers to run over and around the knob. A cold embrace wrapped itself around him from the inside out. Over and over, he flirted with the instrument that could end all his suffering. A cruel smile began to creep across his face as his fingers finally gripped the knob hard, ready to begin his final night on earth.

A passing car briefly flashed its headlights into the kitchen as it turned a corner - the resulting reflection in the polished surface of the breadbox caught Jackson's eye.

As he squinted a little, the dim reflection revealed a man on the brink. A look of crazed desperation in his eye, the poor fool was about to embrace the final path of the coward. There was something familiar about the man in the breadbox, and yet, something completely foreign as well.

Something else sparked inside him. It was only a tiny spark, barely present " but it was there. Jackson waited for the moment to pass; but it was there, and it wouldn't go away.

This was annoying. Most annoying perhaps because the spark was keeping his wrist from twisting. If he couldn't twist his wrist, he couldn't twist the knob.

How long he stood there in the kitchen, his hand on the stove, frozen in place, he did not know. A minute, an hour, several hours... it didn't matter.

He suddenly became aware of another warmth from without. The glow of the morning sun had begun streaming through his window. It was a clear day. Not a cloud in the sky.

Jackson had never seen anything so beautiful. It seemed to ignite the tiny spark within him; so much so that it began to spread. The cold embrace of the night before was gone as quickly as it had come.

His hand relaxed, his cramped fingers removing themselves from the gas nob. Jackson smiled.

His gaze fell again to the illuminated screen of his computer. The smiles on the screen spoke to him. Their beautiful eyes looked into his and he felt as though he would burst. The next thing his eyes fell upon was the old cordless phone in the opposite corner of the room.

Jackson paused, and then smiled again.