The Dark Night of Life
By Tara N. Walker
9/23/00
Mara sat, curled in her favorite overstuffed chair in her small apartment, contemplating the Colt-44 pistol lying on her lap. The phone on the small table next to her chair lay dormant. Everything about the room seemed dead. Except for the cool breeze.
She sat without moving, the breeze coming through the window stirring her short brown curls picturesquely around her small face. Her large green eyes looking down at her lap were covered with a canopy of thick black lashes and were set off quite prettily by her dull brown hair. She wore a white sleeveless shirt and her bare feet were drawn up on the flowered cushion beneath her emerald green skirt.
She lifted her eyes and let them roam around the room, thick with colorful carpets, framed pictures, mirrors and furniture. But none of it seemed like her own. Her life was coming to an end. She, herself, would end her own life this day. Her eyes went to the gilt mirror on the wall. There was nothing left in life for her. There was no hope, no peace, no end to her torment. Her whole life had gone wrong, there was nothing that she could live for.
She studied her face in the mirror across the room. Her large eyes, her small nose, her full lips, her brown curls. What had her looks ever done for her?
Her eyes went to the ceiling. What had God ever done for her?
She looked back down at the Colt and a tear slid down her cheek. From the beginning her life had been misery. Her father had left her mother two weeks before she had been born, so she had never even knew who her own father was until her mother had told her when there was a story in the paper that he had been arrested for murdering his girlfriend. Shortly after that her mother had remarried. But the man whom she married was abusive and a heavy drinker. When Mara had been 16 her mother had died of cancer, and she had been left in the care of her abusive step-father. She lived with him for two years with the hope that life would be better when she graduated and moved out on her own, but when that happened, life had not improved. She only had a little money and had been six months before she a job as a secretary, and that was long after her money had run out and she had been sleeping on the streets.
Another tear rolled down her cheek, as she remembered Tom. Two weeks ago Tom had broken up with her. Tom had not just been her boyfriend, he had been her fiancé. Two hours ago, she had received a phone call from her boss. She had been fired. She had nothing left in life to live for. Nothing. No one cared about her.
She reached into the drawer on the table next to her, moving for the first time, and pulled out the bible her mother had given to her and laid it beside the gun on her lap. She rested one hand on the book and the other on the gun. Her mother had been a devout Christian and had tried to teach her only child the ways of God, but her daughter paid her no heed - until she died. Mara had gone to the scriptures for answers, but she didn't know where to look, and she soon gave it up.
She picked up the gun and ran her small hands over it. It was a fine Colt, black and glistening, and it would be so easy to use it. She again reached into the drawer and drew out some bullets and quickly loaded the gun. She raised it with her left hand and put it to her temple, she would have to endure her misery no longer.
She closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. CLICK. Nothing happened. She opened her eyes and checked the chamber. The bullets were mysteriously gone. Her eyes fell on the Bible on her lap. Still holding the gun, she opened it and let her eyes fall where they would. Here eyes feel upon this verse and she read: "Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."
She stared at the words, and suddenly she was filled with determination. Determination to live. Determination to make it through all of her misery. A thought occurred to her, Maybe Mama was right about all this God stuff. She looked at the empty chamber again. He first blessing.
The End