"Kill yourself." Or it may have been "kill yourself?" Who can argue the value of an English degree when one change in punctuation can carry the fate of a life? I sit up in bed and squint through the darkness at the closed top-drawer of my night stand. Using the x-ray vision I imagined I had when I was eight, I ignore the picture frame laying face down inside the drawer and focus on the loaded .44 laying next to it. It was the same gun I was killing myself with every night...I roll away from the weapon of self-destruction and lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling. For now a question mark would remain at the end of my demand.

The night isn't as hot as it has been lately, but it's muggy as hell. The humidity and my sweat work as an adhesive. My sheets stick to my legs and boxers, my boxers stick to my balls, and my balls in turn also stick to my legs. This vicous cycle of moist discomfort won't let me go back to sleep, won't let me forget the image of me blowing myself away yet another night. I use the mild sedative of masturbation to try to go to sleep, but I sweat to much and the situation just gets stickier...

So I lie facing the ceiling yet again. I fight the urge, but I shouldn't even exert the energy, especially in this kind of weather. I know I'm going to lose. I roll over to the nightstand in one quick, fluid motion, not giving my conscience time to catch up with my body. I fling open the second drawer and pull out my other weapon. I splash a generous helping of Stoli in the empty water glass on top of my night stand, spilling some on the dark wood before closing the vodka bottle loosely and flinging it back in the second drawer. I bring the glass to my lips quickly and follow a small tentative sip with a long, hard gulp of vodka. I wipe my bottom lip as the liquid slowly warms my insides from the throat down.

I stare down into the darkness for an indeterminable time, waiting, listening. There was a time when I could've heard a cricket trip over a blade of grass in my neighbor's yard. Now I have to sit in a dark silence in the dead of night just to hear my parents' old Grandfather clock tick in the next room. I take one more long, slow sip of the vodka before I put the glass down in the small puddle of spilled liquor on the nightstand. I roll onto my back in bed, and begin to stare at the ceiling. My eyes are heavier now. I don't have the energy to clean up the spill. The vodka will seep through the wood, might even make it inside the top drawer. Vodka might even drip on the .44. I close my eyes.

I don't really mind going back inside my brain, don't mind staring down my own gun again. At least I'll know what killed me. But I'll never know if it was the gun or the vodka that killed her. I'll never really know...