Silly Saturday: Arrow to the Heart

Saturday, I'll post a snippet from the Arrow to the Heart Manuscript:

Did you ever notice that no matter where you are, the moon is always looking at you? You could shift to the left or to the right, but it is always looking at you. It was something that Josh Quincy had noticed for the past week. For the past seven days, he had sat on the overpass contemplating his approaching death. He had made his mind up about ending his life, but every night, the moon was watching from the sky.

            Despite not having a single person that mattered to him, or more accurately, no one that he mattered to, he could not bring himself to disappoint the moon. It was a cosmic entity that surveyed every night. It was somewhere between being a goddess and being a superhero. Thus he couldn’t bring himself to death while the moon watched.

            The last seven nights he had come to bridge, he had been hoping that there would be an overcast. This night was as close as it had gotten, with two fat clouds chasing the moon up the horizon, and hopefully when they blinded the moon, he would have his chance to go headfirst into the next life. It wasn’t that he was afraid, but that the moon had been a symbol of his hopes and dreams. It reminded him that everything was possible. Or that everything had once been possible.

Granted the moon wouldn’t look back at his life with a teary expression, he still found it hard to do something so dark near light he cherished so much. It had never done anything harsh to him, which meant it wasn’t right to die by moonlight. The moon and the stars flashing in the sky, reminded Josh that his life wasn’t going to flash before his eyes.

No matter how he looked at it, he was 100% certain that the drop to the pavement wasn’t enough to retell his life. How could such a short fall dissect any aspect of his life? That was certainly a myth, probably perpetuated by the notion that people regretted their bad decisions. It made sense that people would make up myths about dying, like the light at the end of the tunnel and a newfound retrospective.

They both made clear that even when you felt alone, you have some sort of guidance, perhaps the notion of looking back hindered some people, but not Josh. He would die just as he lived, not believing in fairy tales and myths. Too many warm fuzzy feelings came from fairy tales and myths, and that wasn’t how life panned out every time.

He didn’t particular enjoy much of his life, and the good moments were not going to be enough to reset his decision. Though the more he thought about it, he figured that he deserved a recap, just like any crappy sitcom. He would just try to limit himself to thinking of only the good memories. It would be a forceful version of his life flashing before his eyes. After all, he felt like he deserved to have existed and that he had once had meaning like a show that had outlived its original concept. Those memories were just buried in the attic of his mind.

He pressed his fingers to his temples and concentrated on the pink light wavering through his eyelids. The fondest memory that he could recall was of his bike. While he was watching Saturday morning cartoons on his tenth birthday, his mother pushed a perfect purple bike in front of the television.

His memories the qualified as fondness centered on the couch that sat in the living room. It was only eight feet away from a fat TV that was near the size of the couch itself. His mind focused hard on the couch, trying with difficulty to tether his mind to it. It was a white couch made of some textured blue fabric. On the back cushions there were embroidered flowers that were raised with sequins at every tenth stitch. There were 59 sequins in all, Josh had counted them several times in his youth.