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By: Carlos Castillo
JANUARY 2025 ISSUE
Short Fiction
Editor: Christian Pan
On New Year’s Eve, 2017, I reversed my old Ford out of my mother’s garage and drove it to a street six blocks away. The car had seen some miles. Its interior was grey and smelled of brake fluid and stale sweat. I had bought it used, and had been driving it hard for a few years. Had it rained that day, I would have been forced to park and then trudge through two hundred meters of mud in the dark. But it didn’t rain, and I parked under a young mahogany tree along the street without any trouble. I turned off the headlights and cut the engine.
The street was empty. I knew it would be empty. I had chosen that street because the potholes and the mud kept the traffic and all of the pedestrians away. Everything was beautiful and dark and powerful the way the night always is in Manila. Further up the road, where the only light spilled from a single streetlight, a black cat hurried into the shadows.
The rumbling of fireworks was growing steadily louder across the city. Curtains of grey smoke were drifting through the adobe and corrugated aluminum slums. Filipinos had long embraced the traditional Chinese belief that loud noises drive away evil spirits. Drinking was also part of the annual tradition. Everybody drank relentlessly on New Year’s Eve, and whiskey and beer had been flowing freely in the streets throughout the day. Now, the entire city growled like a rabid dog straining against its leash. The noise of the revelry was tremendous: a snarling, popping crescendo, pierced now and then by the rattle of automatic gunfire. High above the city, the sky erupted into a pyrotechnic climax: blooms of blue and green, mesmerizing yellows and pulsating reds, each firework hissing heavenward to form a fairytale constellation that eventually floated gently down into the loom.
I opened the glove compartment and took out the revolver, still wrapped in an oil cloth. I unfolded the material on my lap and looked down at the deadly metal, then felt the weight of the ugly-looking snub-nosed .38 in my right hand. After lowering the pistol to rest snugly between my knees under the steering wheel, I looked up and down the street for any signs of movement. There was no one around.
I lifted the revolver up to the light, holding it under the chalky pink glow under the windshield. I dropped the cylinder, checked the ammo, and snapped the cylinder back into place. Then I put the muzzle into my mouth.
The act felt strange and hollow, like an empty threat. The heavy, impersonal bulk of steel pressed against the roof of my mouth, and the front sight dug sharp and solid against the back of my teeth. But for some reason, I did not feel like I was in danger. There was only a feeling of anxiousness for it to be over.
There’s going to be a mess, I told myself. The blast would rip my face apart. My eyeballs would pop from their sockets as the bullet bursts into my cranium, powdering the parietal and frontal bone in a fierce, crimson detonation.
Oh, my brains. My brains. They would be all over the dashboard – all the sordid coils and circuitry of my being would be exposed. I’d be leaving behind a ghastly corpse, but at least I would be dead. I would be free. There was no comfort in the thought of dying, but there was relief, and I didn’t mind the difference so much.
I have never been a brave man, but the loaded revolver in my mouth felt like courage. I began to squeeze the trigger, tentatively at first, then deliberately, without sadness, guilt, or self-pity. I squeezed slowly, my jaws clenching, my whole body tensing with anticipation. My mouth began to fill with a spidery rot. The hammer pulled back as I put more pressure on the trigger. I felt the searing heat move inside the frame. Then there was the trigger break, and then I felt the hammer go, free at last, into the primer.
There was a snap. I heard it.
I waited for a moment with the revolver still in my mouth.
Nothing. No bang.
I was still alive.
Suddenly, on their own, my legs began to kick as if they were trying to escape from under me. The revolver fell to my lap; and as soon as it did, my entire body went into a terror spasm. My legs attempted to straighten out under the steering wheel. My jaws locked. My knees and thighs turned into stone. I began to urinate in my pants, copiously, and seemingly without end. I could hear a rhythmic knocking sound on the floor of the car. I looked down and saw my feet kicking against the footwell.
I was alive. Every corner, every color, every smell, and shape – all the lights and edges of the world -- leapt into my eyes with uncanny clarity and vividness. But for the life of me, I could not stop wetting my pants.
What just happened? I looked down at the revolver on my lap. I tried to reach for it but could not. I knew it was loaded. I was sure of it. My legs were kicking so hard the revolver fell to the floor of the car.
Then it dawned on me. Misfire. A failure to fire due to a defective primer is rare. If you use good quality ammo, you might hit one every three hundred thousand rounds. I happened to hit one. That was the only possible explanation. I could have just as easily won the lottery.
My lucky day.
Did I really want that bang? Did I truly want to die? If I did, why was I so relieved to be alive? The snap sounded like salvation. It sounded like a second chance. I managed to roll the window down. I thrust my head into the New Year’s glittering mouth. “Welcome twenty-eighteen!” I bawled out to the night sky. “Thank you, twenty-eighteen!”
I sucked in a lungful of air and gasped at its seeming purity. Every molecule in my body laughed and cried at the same time. But I couldn’t stop pissing.
INT. RECTANGULAR ROOM - DAY
The scene is a hospital ward. The ward has white cinderblock walls and a high ceiling. There is a large hall beyond the ward. Bright white daylight streams in from the entrance at the end of the hall. In the reception area, a FEMALE NURSE and a MALE ORDERLY are talking.
NURSE:
He hasn’t spoken a word since he arrived.
ORDERLY:
Who brought him in?
The nurse flips through papers on a clipboard.
NURSE:
Let's see... He was with his mother and his ex-wife. He tried to kill himself.
ORDERLY:
How? Don’t tell me. Pills, right?
NURSE:
No. He used a gun.
The orderly shakes his head.
ORDERLY:
Why do you suppose they do it?
VOICE-OVER
These days, when I tell people what happened to me, I try not to speak about sadness. Sadness is a feeling. Everybody feels sad from time to time, but not everybody puts a gun to their mouth. In the end, I liked where I found myself. I enjoyed the quiet. I enjoyed being left alone. I liked how simple things were. There was a nursing station and a medication dispensary. Down the hall, there was an isolation room for misbehaving patients. On the other side of the ward was a reception desk. Behind the desk was a hallway that led to the private rooms. Mine was the third room on the right. There was a hard, narrow bed in the room and a rectangular window with iron bars. The window looked out over the vegetable garden in the yard. I wore a hospital robe. I swallowed the pills they gave me, and ate the food they served at mealtimes, and I slept. Behind the west wall of the ward, beyond the murmurs of patients in their nightmares, there were cups of coffee, paper clips, filing cabinets, computers, and a communal area for the staff. Sometimes, I heard a TV in there. The nurses and orderlies liked action films. Sometimes, the orderlies would bet on basketball games. I heard them whooping, laughing, and talking deep into the night. That was the sound of life moving on. I played board games with the other patients in the recreational area in the mornings. One sun-drenched Tuesday, a lovely female doctor came and sat me down at a table. She had shoulder length hair and a beautiful smile. She gave me a sheet of paper and crayons. She said I should draw something that made me happy. I drew a tree.
Carlos Castillo
For more information:
House of Grief
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