I thought that I was ready, that I would not hesitate at all. For the past hour since I had been given the news…and handed that wretched piece of paper, I stroked the stainless steel of the barrel, like a mother would her child’s hair.

The thought had been going through my mind, over and over again: what did I have to lose? God was nothing to me. I had no family, no lover, no relatives, and now the thing I had given all these pleasures up for was also lost to me: money.

Maybe I was merely a coward in not just getting it over quickly. I could hear my dead father now, whose shadow had always haunted me, “Richie, Richie, Richie…you don’t even have the balls to pull the trigger”.

I clinched my teeth. How dare they! After all I had invested

[This message has been edited by Storygiver (edited February 07, 2006).]

Note from Kathleen: 13 lines of manuscript text (12-point courier font with 1-inch margins on 8.5x11-inch paper) please