Page 123 of Trigger Happy Ending

“Well, you can join her, you pathetic cunt.”

The gun pressed to my temple clicks. The fucker cocked it, ready to blow my brains out.

It’s only fitting my shitty life ends in a shitty way.

My mind drifts to Soren. I wish I’d told him. How I feel about him, but I thought I’d have time, you know? And sitting here, tied to a chair, bleeding out, and with a gun to my head, I can see things with such clarity now. The dull ache that buried its way in my chest ever since I met him? I know what it is now. And I'm so glad to have felt it once in my life. And in my final moments, I find myself feeling grateful. Grateful to have met him and known a brief moment of happiness, a fleeting glimpse into what life might have been like in another lifetime.

And I would choose him again. Over and over, today, tomorrow, and into the next lifetime or after life. I would choose him.

I hope he finds his peace. He deserves that.

I squeeze my eyes shut, pushing my temple harder into the barrel. I’m ready to die. “I’ll see you in hell, asshole.”

A loud crashing sound forces my eyes open. A smaller guy (prospect, maybe?) rushes in. He’s panicked, jittery, red in the face, eyes wide in alarm. He’s shit scared.

“Boss? We have a problem.” He wipes his hands down the front of his cut and looks back towards the door, like he’s waiting for an axe murderer to come marching in.

“I’m a bit fucking busy.” He stamps the pistol into my temple.

“S-someone’s here,” he stutters. “I-I think it might be him. The other one.”

I watch through swollen eyelids; the two standing in the corner pull out their phones. Their eyes round in concern.

“Fuck,” one says, eyes fixated on the screen. “It’s him.”

My heart begins to thump erratically with a feeling I’ve wished for my whole life and recently tasted: hope.

The room erupts in violence before I can allow myself to bask in the possibility of a savior. The pressure disappears from my skull as a shot rings out. My executioner has removed the pistol from my temple. Is he down?

I blink, trying to get a glimpse as to where the shot rang out, when I see the young prospect hold his chest and fall to the floor. A shot to the heart. Dead. What a waste of life. As the saying goes, though, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

It’s utter chaos in this small room as the two in the corner rush to the figure clad in black standing in the doorway. Fists are flying as I realize who it is.

It’s the grim fucking reaper, dripping in death.

Soren, with eyes like hellfire. A gun in one hand, a knife in the other.

He’s not a man. He’s death incarnate. My unholy savior.

Panic overtakes bravado with the rest of the wannabe gangsters. Because at the end of the day, they aren’t trained killers. They are drug addicts with a bad attitude and a motorbike license. They don’t stand a fucking chance against a merciless Soren.

I can’t see much, my eyes are too swollen, but I know he’s shot at least two—the prospect and another one straight through the head. I’m certain because jelly-like brain matter lands on my leg which is utterly disgusting.

And the others? I’m fairly sure he is slicing and dicing them into pieces, judging by the sound of blades rushing through the air, and the gurgling screams of the men he’s murdering. All it takes is forty seconds for Soren to reduce five men to piles of rotting flesh on the floor.

Forty. Fucking. Seconds.

The last man standing (who has been crouching behind me while the bloodbath unfolded—what a pussy) rises slowly, gun now pressed firmly against my head (again).

“Let her go,” Soren demands in a voice I’ve never heard before. My god, it’s dark. So unforgiving and murderous.

The executioner snarls. “Not a fuckin’ chance.”

“One more time,” Soren repeats. “Let her go.”

“All this for a bitch.”

It happens in a microsecond.