Time seems to stop.  I hear footsteps.  A voice.  Awakened from my dreamlike state, time returns to its proper state.  The pain that just a second had metamorphosed into false fulfillment returns.

"Is everything okay, Zeph?"  Kiera.  Worried about her boyfriend.  Typical for a desperate twenty-something trying to get her life off the ground.

"Zeph?  Maggie?" More questions left unanswered.  She's reached the apartment by now, I can hear her.  Through some surreal bond, I am able to almost feel her panic.  My panic.  Seconds pass.  She finds me here.  She looks down, a silent scream etched in her face as she sees Zeph and Maggie, dead.  She glances up, sees me and the gun.  And runs.  A siren.  Must be the neighbors.  Worried.  I hear Kiera's screams and alarmed footsteps, shouting profanities that express her disbelief.

Time seems to slow again.  I move to Maggie's side and crouch by her corpse.  I look down at the gun, and I see a trio of droplets spreading in different directions on the silver casing.  I'm crying.  I kill the love of my life and I can't feel the tears.  Maggie couldn't feel my tears either.  Maybe that's why she ended it.  More screams outside.   I take one last, long look at Maggie.  I kiss her lifeless lips.  Dead for no more than a few minutes, but the warmth I once loved has already faded.  I toss the gun aside, and it bounces up against Zeph's ankle.  I tenderly reach out and shut her eyelids.  

I renege on my earlier stare, glancing back at Maggie's body as I make my way across the room.  Several of my tears scattered on her face, mixed with her blood slide down her face into the floors.  The salty, sanguine combination penetrates the thin layer of dust on the floor. 

I begin to slide open the window and look down.  Police cars are arriving.  An ambulance.  A crowd. Screams and sirens.  The window jams, but I push it harder and it slides open completely.  Holding onto the treasure chest in one hand and the window frame in the other, I climb up onto the sill.  Singlehandedly, I empty the box onto the sidewalks below, hoping the memories inside will cushion my fall from the empyrean life I once shared with Maggie into the twisted abyss of the future.  I jump, hoping to finally end my pain.