Seventeen Seconds.
20.4 frantic heartbeats ripping through my chest. 4 heaving breaths, shuddering their way to my lungs and around my body. Twenty-something rapid blinks to keep the tears at bay.
Seventeen Seconds.
One…
The sun is long gone, and the moon is the sole provider of light for us now. It’s full as ever and a milky white contrasting with the dark blue - almost black - background of the sky. Rain beats down around me, soaking me through to the skin but I don’t notice it, it’s as though I have an impenetrable shield around me. A couple of grey clouds swirl around the moon, choking it, dimming the light, unyielding and cruel. The grass rises up around my bare feet, tickling between my toes and brushing against my ankles. I try to breathe, but the breaths are damp and earthy and hitch in my throat, lingering there, blocking my airways.
Two…
My palms are sweaty, my heartbeat erratic and the wolf is closing in as I’m staring into his eyes, but it’s different than any time before. Before, his eyes were tender, happy — a kaleidoscope of colours. Now, they’re emotionless, the flat grey eyes of a robot or a passerby; there’s nothing within them to insinuate even that he’d seen me before.
Three…
He stands - feet shoulder width apart, shoulders locked into place, arm fully outstretched towards me - watching me with a controlled look in his eyes. I will myself not to stare directly into the barrel of the gun, instead I stare at him, willing him silently not to do this, looking for a sign that he’s still the boy I once knew, hoping against hope that he can still read my emotions as clearly and accurately as if he were reading my mind. Tears are welled up in my eyes and my earlier blinking is doing nothing to conceal them, nor keep them within the boundaries - they’re spilling over onto my cheeks in a steady stream of salt water. Somehow, though, I’m managing not to be distraught, or scared. Of all things, I’m shocked by this encounter. I shouldn’t have been. I always knew that everything would change when his loyalties shifted. I would expect to be fearful and in denial, but no. A large part of me has accepted that I’m going to die today. Here. At the hands of the single person I once trusted - bizarrely, still trust - more than anyone else in the world. I know he’s going to pull that trigger. I will fall - I’m not made of titanium, after all. I probably won’t get up and he definitely knows it. But he’ll do it anyway. I know what’s going to happen. I can see it playing out before my eyes. I suppose I just don’t want to believe it.
It’s so difficult to accept that the one person you’d take a bullet for is the one standing behind the trigger.
Four…
The sky cracks in half with a flash of lightning, it’s as though my heart cracks with it. I wrap my arms tight around myself as if to keep my body whole, keep myself breathing just a few more seconds. My heart is falling apart piece by piece and somehow, it’s not because I’m dying here. It’s because it’s him who will kill me. It’s him that will carry the weight of this on his shoulders for the rest of his life. If I could take the gun off of him and do it myself, I would. I can’t, though. I can’t do anything, I’m frozen to the spot, just staring at him.
Five…
I realise that I love him.
Six…
I realise what love does to you.
It tears you apart limb by limb and destroys you. It’s finite happiness before infinite pain. His hands are shaking in a way that insinuates that he’s trying to conceal it from me. It’s a small show of weakness and in anyone else I’d be tempted to exploit it. It’s not anyone else. It’s him.

Seven…
The boy I started school with. The boy who witnessed my first ‘big’ tooth; my first goal; my first day at secondary school; my first heartbreak. The boy who threatened to kill anyone who broke my heart before trampling on it himself.
The boy who is standing here right now, with a gun aimed at my heart.
Eight…
I should try to stop him. I should try to talk him out of it, but no words would convince either of us. We both know that if he doesn’t kill me, they’ll kill him. At least my death will be quick. His would be dragged out, long and complicated, 1000 different tortures laid into one body. I couldn’t do that to him.
I couldn’t do that to either of us.
Nine…
He is my Hamartia, my fatal flaw.
Ten…
I am Sydney Carton — dying so that the better version of myself can live and find happiness. I had always thought I’d be Lucie Manette, but I should have known better. I would never let someone else die for my happiness. Now, though, everything is wrong. We’re all playing the wrong characters and nothing is white or black anymore. He has always been Charles Darnay. It was me that was portraying the wrong character.
Eleven…
I allow my mind to wander back to the days of innocence. The times as children when he’d threaten to ‘beat me up’ because he was bigger than me. He never did. It was always a joke, an empty threat. I wish I could say the same about now.
Twelve…
Thunder still crackles in the sky but the rain is stilling slightly, a momentary relief. I’m frozen through and a shiver wracks through my spine. A shooting would be a merciful killing at this point, far preferable to death by hypothermia.
Thirteen…
It’s not the time to notice the beauty around me, but I do. I notice the twist of the ivy around the structure of the gate at the bottom of my garden. I see the swing-set where I spent my childhood, the swing-set where my siblings still play. I notice the happiness in our faces on the family portrait hanging proud in our living room, behind his head, visible through the French doors with the sitting room light on. I see the family photos lining the mantelpiece beneath the portrait, I see him visible in so many of them. My best friend. My boyfriend. My murderer.
Fourteen…
I think of how my family will feel tomorrow morning when they wake up, or tonight if they hear the gunshots. I’m not worried about my siblings, they sleep like the dead. My parents have the light-sleeping habits of a couple who have four children - as they do - and need to be alert should any danger arise.
Fifteen…
It’s over. There are so many thoughts swirling through my head, but that one is the most dominant.
Because it is over. This game. This relationship. My life. It’s all gone.
I see it in his eyes. I have less than a second before that trigger is pulled. And strangely, I’m okay with it. I’m okay with dying so another can live. It’s a good death, a noble death, I hope. And whilst I know I’ll never be remembered in this way, I appreciate the fact all the same.
Sixteen…
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest, than I have ever known.
Seventeen Seconds…
20.4 heartbeats. 6 heaving breaths.
That’s all I had left. Now it is gone, spent, I think as as I collapse onto the ground. It’s over, as the blood pours out of my wounds. I look up at the sky, that I’ll never see again, and hear the retreating steps of the person who had once been my world. The person who pressed the trigger to embed this bullet in my chest.
It is now that my story ends; it is now that the last page has turned. The book is closed and there are no more instalments as I once expected. My chest is burning and my story is over and yet, strangely, I wouldn’t dream of changing a thing.