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Sick Jeannie
Copyright © 2005-2007 by Aster Rose - All rights reserved		 

Sick Jeannie
by Aster Rose
She took her father’s rusting revolver from the drawer, delicately brushing off years of soft dust. She wondered if the gun was lonely there, with only the whispering particles of grey to keep it company. All revved up, ready to take life, to hurt, to stop, full of purpose, waiting. Waiting for someone to click back the safety and pull the trigger, but no one ever had. Her dad had probably forgotten about it by now, spending his days watching television and smoking cheap cigars in an armchair as old as time.

But she remembered. She remembered the day she found it, as she was desperately searching for hair pin to keep her wild, frizzy hair in place for the first day of third grade. She remembered sliding open the drawer and staring at it, her mouth a gaping O and her eyes bugged out like water balloons. She had slammed the drawer shut, afraid, and ran, hair pin forgotten in her mad rush to get away from the monster. Her mother had scolded her for having messy hair as she rushed to catch the bus.
“Jeannie! Your hair looks awful. You should’ve put in some hair pins!” She didn’t bother to explain, and just sprinted towards the bright yellow door of the bus.
“You’re late, kid,” the bus driver had drawled, scratching his armpit, and ushered her into the sticky depths of the vehicle.

Scared as she was, she had come back for it later, overwhelmed by sick fascination. This time she had touched it, petting it hesitantly, like a tame crocodile. Then, when she realized that it wasn’t going to bite her, she picked it up, hugging it, intrigued by the subtle danger it posed. Finally in a daring act of eight year old courage, she kissed it, pressing her tiny lips to the cold, black metal.

When her parents left her alone, she would sneak to their bedroom and the drawer, and take out the gun. It was like a toy to her, and she played with it, letting it attend her childish tea parties and wheeling it around in her doll carriage. She knew she was being bad, but she didn’t care. The adventure of having a loaded gun in her hands made her giddy, and once or twice, she had undone the safety and put her chubby finger to the trigger, tempting fate.

The news often told horror stories about children and their parent’s guns. How little kids would find them, and thinking they were toys shoot them off at their siblings, and kill them. She silently scoffed at those kids, stupid as they were to think a gun was a toy. She knew better. She knew that the revolver was real. She knew that a simple accident with it could leave her dead. She knew that, if she so chose, she could pull the trigger, and watch someone’s guts and brains and blood stain the bland plaster of the walls. That was the fun of it.

When she was older, the danger sunk in for awhile, and she abandoned her favorite plaything for many years. The dust began to collect on it again, like snow, as she grew up, her days as a reckless daredevil seemingly over. She pushed her gun days to the back of her head, becoming preoccupied with the tedious labor of school, the latest gossip, and the cute boy next to her in Math. The years flew by, and the revolver in the drawer became a faded dream.

When she was sixteen, broken hearted, again, and unable to bear the pain, she took a knife to her wrist, and watched the thin cut cry scarlet tears. It wasn’t enough. And then, when she didn’t know what else to do, the broken, hazy memories of her lovely gun resurfaced, sparking a flame of sick hope in her mind. Tip-toeing into the room where her parents snored softly she quietly removed the revolver and carried it to her bed. Falteringly, she lifted it to her head, having already pushed back the safety with a barely audible snap. Her thumb on the trigger, ready to mend her heart the easy way, by stopping its steady beat. But she couldn’t do it. She was too much of a coward. A voice in her head demanded why she was unable to pull the trigger, the girl who used to kiss guns and wonder what it was like to let that bullet fly. She had no answer, and simply returned the revolver to its lonely drawer.

And then there was now. Mother dead, Father dying. And her, stuck. In school her parents had reprimanded he for partying with her friends more often than doing her homework. She had laughed at them, and said that she was only living life, and that everything would turn out fine. But at the end of high school, when her friends skipped off to college, she found she had no place to go. So she went back home, and lived with her parents, and as time went on took care of them. And suddenly, she found that life was passing her by. Was she living life now? Or was she just wasting it? She yearned to get free, to escape, and pluck the stars, still shining, from the midnight sky. But she was trapped. She had no money to live on, and MacDonald’s wages wouldn’t be enough to see her through. She was in a rut, unable to climb out. She was sick, sick, Jeannie, who used to be gun happy, and maybe still is, who used to think life was a game, but now realizes it’s not, and has condemned herself to wiping the spit off a sleeping old man’s lip, hanging onto his money like a parasite.

She hefted the revolver in her hands, stroking it like the cat she once had as a child. The feline had been run over by a car, a remarkably clichéd death. She remembered staring down at the furry mess on the road, unrecognizable. She carried the gun over to the musty bed, bouncing a little as she sat down. She remembered her mother, singing a song about ten little monkeys jumping on a bed, and then telling her how she could break her neck. She sat still for a moment, reveling in the silence, immersing herself in the blatant fact that no one cared. Reminiscing on her worthless life, the middle-aged woman bent down and pressed her lips furiously to the steel, laughing quietly as she realized that her first kiss had been shared with a gun. Sick, sick, sick. Tired of stalling for time, she clicked back the safety and raised the revolver to her head, finger on the trigger. She let the gun breathe its damp, dank breath in her ear for a moment, and then she pressed her fleshy thumb down on the hungry trigger. But not far enough. Her thumb relaxed, and the safety snapped back into place, as the revolver dropped to the mattress with a thud. No, not yet. There was still hope, still time. The drawer slammed shut, the gun doomed to make friends with the dust again.

Sick Jeannie, who was more than a little gun happy, walked over to the window and watched the twinkling stars.

There’s always a way she thought. There’s always a way.

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