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If you give me a minute, I might pull this trigger.

A quick flash. A loud bang. Brain matter splattered, covered in the stain of awful memories.

The gun is always heavy in my hands. Cold metal and stoic silence. I haven’t fired it in the five years it’s been mine. I’ve had no reason.

Not yet.

I wondered when a hobby had become an obsession. Wondered when the passing thought of ending my life had become a dream, rushing in vibrant, rainbow colors, churning waters through my head.

Every day was clockwork, an alarm blaring...tick tock RING...my eyes opening like a child’s doll, mechanical and snapping apart to another day. Inside I was nothing but stuffing. Outside, I was a plastic smile and frilly clothes.

Seven on the dot. Another minute and my schedule would be thrown off. I shuffled from beneath my blankets, dropped my legs over the bed, toes pressing against a cold floor I wasn’t ready to cross.

I had ten minutes to pretend. Ten to imagine. Ten to make a decision I haven’t made yet. Ten to dream of finality.

Another alarm went off. Ten minutes gone. I tucked the gun back in my bedside table for another time. It wasn’t going anywhere. I could wait.

This is the beginning of my story, or the end, depending on how you look at it. Twenty-four hour tales that I allowed myself because they were small bites I could chew. I couldn’t handle the thought of weeks or months or years, so I broke it down, gnawed the edges, made smaller blocks of time that I knew I could handle.

Ten minutes to fantasize. Twenty for a shower. Fifteen to get dressed and do my hair. Thirty to cook and eat breakfast. Ten to clean up. Organize, organize, organize so I knew what to expect.

Five to check my bank balance. Seven to stare in a mirror. Thirteen to make my bed. Thirty to pace my room. Ten to pull it all together again.

And then it was time to leave my small apartment, climb in my car and start the next two hour block.

Mine was a life best lived in manageable increments. All the while, my therapist believed I was simply punctual and polite. Right on time, he always exclaimed, as if any other words would break me when I walked in, as if the truth would shatter me apart.

Right on time.

Monday through Friday.

Day after day.

Month after month.

Year after year.

He’d counseled me since a few weeks before it happened. A young man, then, now old. Like me. Our wrinkles matched in many ways, told the same stories, the lines a map of the countless hours we’d spent putting my life back together. I was still broken, even now. It made me think my counselor didn’t deserve the money he made.

“What are you thinking about?”

Intestines sliding out, slow and stringy. A chest with a large hole. A head lying on the floor with half its face missing.

“Nothing much.”

There went that plastic smile again, the corners clicking up. Snap snap. Right in place. Glass doll eyes glimmering like they were alive.

I wasn’t always like this. Not really.

Peter stared at me from across his office. Not Dr. Daniels as he should be called. Peter because we should feel more friendly. He didn’t believe in the unfortunate professional distance many psychologists demanded. It was too cold, he once told me. Too separate and hazy.

He kept his space like he kept his clients, warm and cozy, soft muted colors that fooled the brain into thinking the world was safe with padded corners and child locks. It was a lie.

All of it.

“Are you stuck in your head today, Ensley? We’ve talked about this. You’re revisiting the past, aren’t you? What have we said about that?”

We. Peter always said we, as if I’d taken part in his therapy planning.

I rattled off the words we said. A mechanical doll, as usual, my key twisted enough for me to spring to life and talk.

“Worry of the past brings depression. Worry of the future brings anxiety. Only worry about the now.”

He nodded his head. A proud doctor behind wire-framed glasses and a clicking pen.

“Exactly. Your family isn’t in the now. And neither is Noah.” He paused, allowed me to wrap nimble fingers around the truth. I had to be careful not to crush it. “Where is Noah now?”

“In prison.”

My best friend. The love of my life. Had I ever given him a chance? Another nod. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-nine.” My teeth jammed together on the answer. Thirty-nine was my mother’s age, not mine. I should have only been seventeen.

“How long has it been since that night?”

“Twenty-two years.”

And I hadn’t lived a single day of them. I was already dead. Nobody knew this. Not even Peter. It was a secret buried in an empty glass bottle, deep underground, in the garden of discontent.

It’s where all our secrets are planted.

Peter crossed a leg over the other, his prim, professional pants gathering at the knee. He looked like a doctor, and I wondered if we were born to look like the profession we would take. What does a person look like if they were never meant for a job?

“Have you been socializing? Putting yourself out there? How are the exercises coming along?”

My eyes tipped up to the wall clock. Seventeen minutes and I could breathe.

“I keep the same schedule. Every day something different, just like you said.”

Another nod. Another pen click. “Good, good,” while he scribbled down his notes.

Fifteen minutes.

Ten.

Five.

Peter kept talking while I counted down the time. Finally, I heard the words I needed, a reprieve from that two hour block.

“That’s all we can do today, Ensley. But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Same time,” I smiled, snapping the corners of my mouth into place.

The building could have been on fire for how fast I ran from it, a rushed panic in my long legged steps, a woman who had somewhere to be, even though, really, I didn’t.

Today is Monday. Library day. Four hours spent running my fingers beneath lines of text I didn’t see and staring out windows of rain beaded glass.

A stack of books sat unread in my passenger seat. I would turn them in to check out more. Those would sit unread as well because I’d never schedule a time I can read them.

Monday is library day, though.

I pulled out of the parking lot to go there.

My weeks were full thanks to Peter’s suggestion. All starting with Monday and a building that smelled like time worn pages and ancient ink.

It led to Tuesday when I’d spend four hours at the mall watching people do things I could never do. Well put together women fondling shirt sleeves, remarking to each other on the feel of the fabric. Floppy haired men in skinny jeans ebbing and flowing from the Apple store and its shiny technology. Sticky faced kids laughing from sugar highs after leaving the sweets shop. I watched them all live their lives without fear.

Wednesday was chore day with laundry and groceries. Nothing special.

Thursday, I went to a gym, but only to watch the yoga class and the kiddie swimmers with their flailing arms and kicking legs.

On Friday, I volunteered at an animal shelter, my hands constantly licked by furry faces. It was the only day I really smiled. Saturdays and Sundays I don’t remember all that well. They’re blocks of time gone black.

The library reminded me of my hometown. A quaint building that is unassuming and historic. Three stories of all the books you can read, a large wraparound porch with tables. Trees stand tall at its side like they’re proud to be near so much knowledge, the trunks thick and branches sturdy, not even the greatest wind can shake them.

Often I sat in the parking lot wasting my minutes wondering how I could be like those trees. And if I sat too long, the memories would catch up. A strip of grass. A chain link fence. A window that had low light behind curtains always welcoming me in.

A face. God, that face. With big blue eyes and lips too beautiful for a boy. Always smiling, those lips. Always kind. Until they weren’t.

I shuddered at the thought of it. I was terrified every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year. Running. Always running. But no matter how fast I pumped my legs, no matter how hard my pulse beat in my veins, I could never outrun the truth of what happened on the night I lost everything.

My family.

My best friend.

Myself.

We all lay dead and silent in that house, the garden dead beside it. It would have flowers if I hadn’t stopped shedding tears, it would have an entire lifetime of secrets.

But it doesn’t.

Noah sits in a prison cell while I count down the minutes. Never ending. A continuous motion of scrolling numbers, back and forth like a metronome. Ticktockticktockticktock....

I forced myself to leave the car, wind grasping at my hair, tearing at the strands with violent fingers. I walked around the side, pulled open the passenger door and grabbed the stack of books.

Above me a bird trilled a mid morning song, its life but a speck of time. I took too long to look up at it, red with streaks of brown feathers. A cardinal, I thought, just as my body was slammed against the car.

Books scattered to the ground, the pages flapping like frantic wings. I watched a spine crack open on the dirty ground, split apart like skin. I heard the thud of a knife against flesh. The crunch of bone. A gunshot blast. My mother screaming. I heard my younger sister begging for her life not to end. Another crying. My little brother dead.

I saw Noah standing in the middle of it, teeth gnashing, eyes wild, blood splattered across his hands, and when I turned to see what hit me just now, I saw his face again.

He was a ghost. He had to be.

“You’re in prison,” I whispered. Begging like my baby sister, Devin, must have done.

Blue eyes stared down at me, memories flickering behind them, one by one. Scattering like spiders from a nest. Hundreds if not thousands on spindly, scratchy legs.

I opened my mouth to scream but he covered it with one cruel hand.

Five minutes.

That’s all it took.

The cardinal trilled again.

And I was gone.