The man (his real name is unimportant; call him John.) could do nothing more but gaze around in misery around that damned flat where his life had unraveled. His life had left him there. His children had argued and moved out there. Oh, that forsaken flat. Fitting that here was where he might end his life. When only his dog remained, and he spoke to it and the pictures of his family…well, he knew it was time to go.

He was a good man, he knew it. He was just faulted. Weren’t they all? Faulted. But they must have been enough to get rid of his family. He went to his dog, the little dachshund taking a leak all over the carpet, little Trevor, Trevor, that steadfast companion who never left. This was by virtue that Trevor was locked inside all the time.

And then there were the pictures on his dresser with him and his wife and him and his kids and all five of them together. Their eldest, their manically depressed son, their angelic daughter he later discovered was on drugs, their youngest attention-deprived son who did whatever he could to get it, no matter how destructive he had to be.

He loved them still.

When he saw that his eldest had scars crisscrossing his wrists, he had gone off into his room and talked to Trevor.

When he found that his daughter was stealing the Sharpies, holding the tip up to her nose and inhaling deeply, he had gone off into his room and talked to Trevor.

When his youngest, desperate for someone to notice him, broke the windshield on the car, he had gone off into his room and talked to Trevor.

Trevor had fallen asleep the first two times, as he was doing now. The last time he had bitten him in what a human would call sheer irritation. He had continued to talk to Trevor as he fished for a Band-Aid.

He pulled the combination for the gun out of his memory, out of a place that he hadn’t visited in many years. A place where his eldest still smiled and his daughter didn’t have little black dots under her nose and his youngest son had been just a baby and was getting all the attention in the world because he was one and his wife had not been having sex with three of his neighbors. The combination was in truth, very simple. It was a simple lock. 49-14-2 were the numbers; 49 was his baseball number when he was young; 14 had been his house number when he was young; 2 because he was his parents’ second son, their middle child.

The memories of his life as a child came back in a storm, a flurry of recollections, his life flashing before his eyes. He hadn’t even pulled the trigger of his loaded gun yet. But they came anyway, little pieces of life.

Him playing a shepherd in the preschool pageant and

Him learning his time tables and

Him going on that cross-country trip with his parents and brothers and

Him winning a Spelling Bee letting the cheers wash over him and

Him playing keep-away with his friends in the pool and

Him saying goodbye as he left for college and

Him speaking the eulogy at his mother’s funeral and

Him kissing his wife at their wedding and

Him watching their eldest be born and

There he was with the gun in his hand again, his hands trembling. But he had strength enough to go to his computer and type out a cryptic suicide note:

“I have seen the others, and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting…Go now, you are forgiven.”

They were lyrics to a song that he didn’t even know the name of anymore. The rhythm was still in his head, the words pounding in his head.

The General.

That was it. Wordlessly, he went to Trevor, muttered a goodbye, and opened the door. Trevor ran through eagerly, desperate to escape. He went to each picture and said a goodbye to them too.

As he raised the gun up, he heard himself saying something muffled by the loud BANG of the gun.

“Be kind; aim for the heart.”