Flash Fiction: Bullet through the Pain

As the bullet tore through flesh and bone I prayed the hole would give my inner pain an escape route.  Pain I have been suffering from for months, years even.  Pain that took over my whole body, tearing at my heart and bringing drummers to my head.

I thought about how to take my pain away, how it would be great to be free from the pain and life a life pain free.  But I never thought this would be a way out.  I wasn’t looking for this to happen, it just happened.  I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or did it end up being the right time?

I was feeling low and decided one way to make me feel better was chocolate and ice cream, but there wasn’t any in the house which forced me to go to the local shop.  First time I had stepped outside the house in weeks.  Little did I know that this was going to change my life?

When I got to the shop it was quiet, well at quarter to midnight on a Wednesday night you would expect it to be quiet. Most people would have been tucked up in their beds not seeking comfort food!  In the shop, along with me and the shopkeeper there were two other customers - then all hell broke loose.

I had just arrived at the till to buy my Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream and a massive bar of Galaxy chocolate, when two men came through the door wearing balaclavas, brandishing guns and yelling at me to get to the ground.  I couldn’t move, I was shocked and rooted to the floor. I was stunned. 

“Get on the floor” one of the men yelled at me again while pointing the fun at me.  I tried to move but I couldn’t. I was frozen to the spot.  “Get down on the floor, or I will shoot you”.  My brain was trying to tell my body to move but my body was being stubborn and not moving.

Then all of a sudden my body moved, but not on its own accord - I had been shot and the impact of the bullet threw me to the floor.

I was in agony, the pain in my body was excruciating but the pain in my heart and soul was starting to leave.  What was happening to me?

I opened my eyes and the light was bright.  So bright I had to close them again. A few minutes later I reopened them and a man was standing before me reaching his hand out to me – I grabbed it and he pulled me up.  The pain was gone.  The inner pain and the outer pain.  I was free.  But why?

“Where am I?” I asked the man

“You are with me child”, he replied

Now I realised why my pain had disappeared.  That gunshot had killed me.  My escape route had arrived without me even looking for it.