The deep charcoal colored sky pulled heavily on Jane’s heart as she exchanged glances between the window and a large floor standing clock that quietly ticked away the seconds of her life.

                That same clock that plagued her as a child with its seemingly endless tic-tock, now ticked away the time left before she lost the only man she ever loved. It was in her grand-parent’s home many years ago it tormented her. Even now it had its hold in that same place, but this time it rolled its uneven arms around consistently and teasingly as she awaited, the coming chime, death.

                Robert was a quiet loving man, a man that gave her strength, reason to live, reason to go on.  Then the accident happened.  One moment of lost judgment behind the wheel of a car that was carrying her to a surprise he had in store. Only later did she realize it was to a spot where he would have proposed.  They were on their way to a large oak with branches that stretched out gathering those same young lovers, for their first kiss, not long before.

                Her life’s burden from that moment was the loss of feeling below the waist. ‘Better than being in a coma with partial brain damage,’ she overheard someone say when she lay in a bed beside his, not six months earlier in a hospital. She could feel the flush of her whole body with the anger of it, hearing it again in her mind as if she were there again. She passed through the thought many times, that she would have willingly traded places with him. She knew after all, that her parents would have held onto her as long as it would take for her to come back to them, back to her Robert. And she knew he was there, the same man, holding on, fighting deep inside to come back to her. She could feel it when she said goodbye earlier that day, before his parents arrived to do what she felt was murder. She retreated to the only place where she knew she could be alone to deal with the imminent end.

When she heard the news, that his parents were thinking of, ‘letting him go,’ as they put it.  She thought that she would never allow it.  She later realized there was nothing she could do. It started out as an all out fight, and ended with her begging them to reconsider, after all this was their son, her fiancé.  Or at least he would have been. They had the final decision. They drew up the paper work, and were to pull the life support today at noon.

She listened to the ticking of the clock that seemed to anxiously pick up speed to end what was left to live for. To end the love of a kind wonderful man.  The ticking was suddenly more and more pronounced as if it were teasing her again, except now the little girl was gone, now she was a woman.  But she was also now more apprehensive than she has ever been. She watched the long arm move around counting away the seconds, she stopped and looked outside again realizing the sound she was hearing was suddenly her own hearts beat.  She looked back at the clock made of a harsh dark wood, towering over her, foreshadowing her. 

I must not watch it, she thought. She began to feel faint and her very soul had felt as if it dropped below and out of her body.

She paused and took a long, deep breath. She knew the end was only, but a minute away now.  She told herself that she was going to be strong. She had to be strong for him. She reminded herself that they would be together again, in a better place. That their love was eternal, as he said right before the impact of the tree that day.

She began to listen again, to the ticking from the clock as it closed on her life, tightening her breath.

Then it happened…but the last thing she heard wasn’t the tick of the clock pulling all those gears into place to produce to its chime of death that she dreaded…it was a click with the smooth scent of gunpowder filling her mind before the veils of death were pulled over her like the charcoal grey clouds that covered the landscape out her window.

Her grandparents weren’t there to hear the report from the barrel, or the ring from the phone, only seconds after it. 

“This is Mr. and Mrs. Alizar. Please leave a message at the tone, thanks.”  

There was a brief second before the tone and then a frantic mother’s voice broke through the speaker.  Half crying and half laughing she spoke, “Jane this is Robert’s mother!  Hes awake! Hes okay! We were wrong, I’m so sorry, we were wrong!  It was only a few seconds before…we were wrong honey…he’s asking for you.

  The End