It had been a long time since I'd seen a beach, years, decades, even. But I'd never really been a beach person, or an outdoor person for that matter. Despite all that, there were some really beautiful things about the beach, things you couldn't find anywhere else. The smell of the ocean in the air, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the feeling of the sun-warmed sand underneath your feet. It was all really great. I just wished that I was able to enjoy it.

Sitting on a towel with my legs crossed, I wondered what I was doing out here. Not on the beach, exactly, but out here in this sunny little resort town, a place of joy and happiness, a place I didn't belong.

The beach was full of people. Beautiful college-aged young women dressed in their little two-piece bathing suits. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb, in my baggy blue shorts and gray undershirt. I didn't really, though. I was invisible to all of these people, my own misery not intruding in their happy little lives.

The sun was setting and I realized I was probably going to have one whopper of a sunburn. I hadn't bothered putting on any sunscreen. What was the point? The whole possibility of getting skin cancer seemed terribly insignificant in comparison to what was waiting for me back in my hotel room. A cold shiver went up my spine despite the heat.

Marion...I thought about she must have felt back in the room, alone, in bed with the curtains drawn, bndled up in blankets and quilts.

Dying.

Marion and I had met six years before, when I'd graduated from University. Within six months we were married despite the fevered protests of our parents. I figured it wasn't a bad choice. I already had a good, steady job working as a typist for a local newspaper, and besides, we loved each other. God, she'd been beautiful back then...

Things were okay for awhile. We moved into a nice, big apartment and I was making good money. Then things started getting bad for us.

We'd been married for about a year and a half when Marion got pregnant. Both of us were overjoyed, even though we were only in our early twenties. We moved into a bigger place and got ready to be parents.

Then, when she was about seven months in, Marion lost the baby.

It was a terrible thing, but even worse was what it did to Marion. No one could convince her that it wasn't her fault. She fell into a deep depression and began to abuse all kinds of anti-depressants. She saw some of the most expensive psychiatrists around, but none of it did any good. I considered divorcing her more than once, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I began to drink heavily, so heavily I sometimes exprienced black-outs.

Then Marion got sick. At first we all thought it was nothing, a touch of the flu, maybe. But then an X-Ray revealed it to be something much worse. A tumor. Pancreatic cancer.

The treatments followed, radiation therapy, chemotherapy. They did some good, but none of them cured her. The tumor contined to grow. The doctors all said that this took time and not to give up, but deep down I knew. I knew she wouldn't get better. It was a real tragedy. A woman of twenty-seven, dying of cancer.

I took care of her. It was terrible, but I did it. I doubled my drinking, became nothing short of a full blown alcoholic, and ended up losing my job. I found work as a butcher not long after that. It didn't pay much, but it was work.

After her last round of chemo, the doctor suggested we take a vacation. To one of those little resort towns. I knew what he really meant. He meant that Marion wouldn't last much longer and that we should spend what little time we had together.

So we came here, even though I could barely afford it. Marion spent her days cooped up in the hotel room, occasionally venturing out to the balcony, completely numb to everything due to the crushing influence of morphine and oxycontin, her body, once beautiful and full of life, now ravaged and withered by cancer. Even though I was repulsed by her, a big part of me still loved her.

For our first few days in town, I never left her side, but I slept on the couch because I couldn't bear to be in bed with her. Then yesterday she'd fallen into a sleep so deep it was almost a coma. That's when I figured it would be safe to slip out for a bit.

The town really was beautiful. It'd be nice to live out here. Maybe I would, after Marion...passed on. Start a new life.

I sat there until the sun was completely gone, then I bundled up the my towel and headed back to my hotel room. I was careful to be real quiet so I wouldn't wake up Marion, but I needn't have. She was still fast asleep. For a moment I though she might have died while I was out, but when I got closer I saw that she was still breathing.

I got dressed and sat down in the chair beside the bed, watching her sleep and breathe slowly. It wouldn't be too long, you didn't have to be a genius to figure that one out. Weeks, maybe even days.

I got really depressed just sitting there and watching, so I left the hotel and took a walk down the hotel's main street. Everything was all lit up and pretty.

I ducked into one of the bars to get a drink, which probably wasn't the best idea considering the problems I had with alcohol already. Still, I needed one. Even more, I felt I deserved one.

The bar was well-lit but not too crowded. I sat alone in the corner and ordered myself a Scotch and Soda. My original plan was just to have one quick drink and then head back to the hotel, but I ended up having two more. Everyone seemed so happy.

I was on my fifth drink when a pretty redhead girl who looked to be about twenty-two or twenty-three came up to my table and asked me if I wanted to have a drink with her. I was really reluctant at first, but eventually I gave in. We got to talking. She told me her name was Sarah and that she'd recently graduated from college. She was out here as a sort of celebration. I told her about myself, fabricating a lot of details. I didn't mention that I was married, or that I was an alcoholic, or that my wife was dying from cancer in a hotel not five blocks away.

It was good, talking to Sarah. It made me feel better than I'd felt in months. I even laughed a few times. We drank and talked until well past midnight, then we stumbled back to her hotel room, where we made love, then slept.

I woke up sometimes around three in the morning, not realizing where I was until I saw Sarah in bed with me.

I felt ashamed and nauseated, as well as completely sober. I couldn't believe I'd gotten drunk and made love to a woman I barely knew while Marion was confined to our hotel room , dying. I quickly dressed and fled the hotel room without so much and leaving a note.

It was late but the streets were still crawling with drunks and students. I felt like all of them were looking at me, accusing me with their stares.

When I got back to the room, Marion was still asleep. I had a mad urge to wake her up and confess what I'd done, not that she'd be in any shape to listen. I didn't. Instead I sat down in the chair and resumed what I'd been doing that afternoon.

As I watched her I was reminded of something that had happened when I was fourteen. I'd spent the summer at my uncle's house in the country. One morning he'd given me an old .22 caliber rifle and instructed me to keep watch over his garden and shoot any grouses and rodents I saw eating his crops. So I sat on the porch overlooking the garden with the rifle laid across my knees for about two hours, bored. Then I caught sight of a rabbit in the bush beside the porch. It wasn't doing much, just chewing the grass and not bothering anyone. I don't know what came over me but I picked up the rifle and shot it. The round entered just in the side of the rabbit's neck but didn't kill it right away. I jumped up off the porch to check on it. it've heard that rabbits scream bloody murder when they get shot but this one didn't. It was just lying there, it's blood darkening the green grass underneath, still breathing slowly. It's back paws were twitching frantically. I just stood there, unable to fire another shot to put the rabbit out of it's misery. I stood there and watched until the rabbit finally died twenty minutes later.

That's what watching marion in that bed reminded me of. Her hands were even twitching a bit, just like the rabbit's paws had been.

It became quite clear to me what I needed to do right then. Without a moment's hesitation, I stood up, kissed Marion on the top of her nearly hairless head, and then removed the pillow from behind it. I firmly placed the pillow over her face. Her body, still secured underneath the covers, suddenly jerked to life as if jolted by an electric shock. Her arms, weakened by the chemotherapy, feebly tried to resist and her stick-thin legs thrashed briefly. After about a minute and a half, I removed the pillow. She was gone. Her eyes and mouth were wide open in mental shock. I closed them, which made her look much more peaceful, as if she'd simply passed on in her sleep. I lifted up her head, which was almost weightless, and put the pillow back under it.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I looked over all the pills and medications on the bedside table. After a moment's consideration, I selected a vial of Oxycontin. I went into the tiny kitchen, drew a glass of water, and took three of the pills. I waited a minute or so, took three more, then three more. I made myself stop there, not wanting to throw the pills up.

I laid down beside my dead wife in bed and felt fatiguue begin to wash over me as soon as my head hit the pillow. I wrapped my warm hand around Marion's cold one.

"I'll see you soon." I whispered.

The haze of the pills began to cloud my mind and I soon drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face.