Harriet reaches toward her ear and pulls away a wet, red hand.

She says something – something meant to be a vile expletive, a wild diatribe against the stupid girl in the stupid bathroom who just shot her in the stupid head – but really, her wires are all tangled up now.

All she manages is an exclamation of relative nonsense: "Carpet noodle."

Then she tumbles to the floor.

THIRTY-FIVE

Choosing Life

For Miriam, choosing life is nothing so grand as seeing the vast reservoir of potential that a continued existence would allow. Her mind's eye does not play movies of kids on swings and a dog in a yard and the warm glow coming off a golden pond.

No, as it is so often with Miriam, her decision to live is one based on spite and anger – a mouth full of vinegar that drives her once more to sabotage her own plans.

She really was going to kill herself.

It made sense. Harriet spoke true.

Her life was shit. She was fate's bitch. She was a fly munching on a turd, or mold consuming a perfectly good banana.

It was time to die, she decided.

Lying on the cold, bloody tile, Miriam felt the gun on her chest. With tiny pushes, pushes that took far too much effort, she spun the weapon so that the barrel was nestled right under her chin.

She thumbed back the hammer so that the trigger pull would be nothing at all, just a little tug, the barest whisper of movement. Just to be sure, she pushed her chin down on the barrel.

But then she saw –

Two shadows underneath the bathroom door.

Two shadows that equated to two feet. Harriet's feet.

She's listening at the door, Miriam thought.

And that pissed her off.

This was her moment. Her death. Harriet had lent it a poetic veneer, but now the twat was standing on the other side of the door, snickering like she had stuck Miriam's hand into a cup of warm water while she slept?

She raised the gun. It felt like her muscles were about to tear from their moorings along her arm bones and go sling-shotting against the broken mirror.

She didn't aim, didn't try to imagine where it was that Harriet was standing. It was all automatic. A total reflex.

She fired, bang.

Seconds later came a mumbled statement (carpet noodle), and a thump.

Miriam steps over the body. It takes her a while to get there, what with her body feeling like hammered shit. She sees herself in the mirror before she leaves the bathroom – her face looks like a gray pillowcase stuffed with softballs, and her already pale skin makes a terrible contrast with the endless streaks of drying red.

She looks like a murder scene.

But she's alive, she thinks, as she stands over Harriet's body.

The stocky woman lies with her mouth open, her blood and brains emptying onto the carpet and soaking in real good.