The cold was the first thing that felt real.
Not the muffled drone of the sitcom bleeding through his bedroom wall, or the stale air that tasted of dust and apathy. It was the cold, a hard, definitive circle of steel pressed against the roof of his mouth, a perfect zero promising an end to all the other numbers. Christoph tilted his head back, the barrel scraping against his teeth with a faint, gritty sound. He closed his eyes, focusing on the oily taste of gunmetal on his tongue. His finger found the trigger, resting there, a question mark at the end of a long, pointless sentence.
What's the hold-up? a voice in his head asked, bored. The finale is right here. Just roll the credits.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sound wasn't the one he was expecting. It was heavy, insistent, thudding against his bedroom door. A woman's voice, frayed with a familiar annoyance, cut through the wood. "Christoph? What are you doing in there?"
His mother. Of course.
He pulled the barrel from his mouth with a soft, wet pop, the metal leaving a cold ghost behind. "Drugs," he called out, his voice a monotone.
A long-suffering sigh from the other side. "Stop messing around, Chris. I can't find your father's handgun."
Christoph stared at the weapon in his hand, a dull, heavy lump of black steel that suddenly looked profoundly stupid. "Seriously? Why would you keep it where Finn could get to it? He was playing in your room when I got home."
"Do you really think we hate you and your siblings that much? We wouldn't keep a loaded gun lying around for a ten-year-old to find," she retorted, her tone sharp with defensiveness. "It was empty. I took the bullets out myself last year."
He looked down at the gun again. Oh.
With a profound sense of anticlimax, he got up and unlocked the door. His mother stood there, hands on her hips, her expression a practiced mix of exhaustion and worry that he'd seen a thousand times. He handed the gun to her, butt-first. "I took it so he wouldn't," he mumbled, the lie tasting like ash.
She took it without ceremony, though her eyes lingered on his face for a second too long. "Sure. Here." She thrust a crumpled piece of paper and a few bills into his hand. "Grocery list. Go to the store."
"Just send Finn."
"Nope. He's 'studying'," she said, etching air quotes with her fingers. "You need the fresh air. Go on."
He sighed, the sound of a man twice his age surrendering to the inevitable. "Fine. I wanted an ice cream anyway."
He trudged downstairs. In the living room, his older sister, Chloe, was sprawled on the couch, her face bathed in the flickering, colorful light of the television. The source of the noise pollution. 'Chronicles of a Clumsy Crown,' the fantasy sitcom she had been watching on a perpetual loop for the last three months.
He crept up behind her and gave a sharp, vicious tug to her ponytail.
"Ah—!" A pained groan escaped her as she whipped around, swinging a hand that sliced through the air a hair's breadth from his nose.
He stuck his tongue out, a childish gesture in the face of her fury. "Can't touch this, baby. I'm invincible."
"Jerk," Chloe spat, sinking back into the cushions.
Christoph sat on the lone armchair to pull on his worn sneakers. "How many times can you possibly rewatch this garbage? Don't you have anything else to do with your life?"
"Mind your own business."
"I'm serious," he pressed on, the words bubbling up like bile. "It's so obvious they're in love with each other, but they'll flirt with every stable boy and visiting duchess from here to the Dragon's Fart Plains. They'll start wars, get hundreds of people killed, just so she doesn't have to admit she has feelings. Friends don't overthrow a neighboring kingdom because you were feeling a bit moody, Chloe."
She grunted, eyes glued to the screen as a character slipped on a strategically placed banana peel.
"And what the hell is with the men in this world? It's always three guys pathetically in love with the same woman, or a girl who falls for a beggar who turns out to be a lost prince. And how does the villain become part of the main cast every time they foil his 'evil' plan? First, he's trying to curse the royal bloodline with an enchanted whoopee cushion, now he's their wacky neighbor who borrows sugar? And why? Why would you adapt a grim, thousand-page dark fantasy novel into a sitcom?"
"Breathe, lil bro," Chloe said, finally turning to him, a smirk on her face. "It's not that deep."
He let out a long, slow breath. "Yeah, I know. But it's all I hear, all day. It's seeping into my brain." He stood up. "I'm gonna get ice cream. You want one?"
Her eyes lit up, the argument forgotten. "Yeah! Strawberry this time."
"Got it."
He poked his head into the room next to the stairs. His little brother, Finn, was hunched over a desk, a textbook open but his phone hidden just beneath it, the blue light of the screen reflecting in his glasses. The kid flinched, startled.
"I'm buying ice cream. You want one?" Christoph asked.
Finn nodded enthusiastically. "Chocolate!"
"Okay." Christoph pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then at Finn. "I see you, man. I see you."
Outside, the evening air was cool, carrying the scent of cut grass and car exhaust. He put his earbuds in, letting a wave of distorted guitar wash over the world, a welcome wall of noise. He walked, humming along, a ghost in his own life. At his core, Christoph was bored. He played sports until they became predictable patterns. He read books until the plots became tired formulas. He'd tried everything, but the feeling always faded. The thrill of the win, the sorrow of a story, the burn of anger—it was all like a drug he'd built an immunity to. He watched people hustle past, running on their little hamster wheels, chasing goals that all ended in the same place. Why bother playing the game so hard when the king and the pawn get swept back into the same dark box at the end?
He bought the groceries and the three ice creams and was standing at a crosswalk, waiting for the light to turn green. He unwrapped his own—rum raisin—and took a bite, the cold sweetness a fleeting distraction.
That's when he felt a persistent, annoying poking at his side. He looked down to see a small child, maybe six or seven years old, pointing a demanding, sticky finger at the plastic bag in his hand.
"Hey," the kid said, his voice gratingly high. "Give me ice cream."
Christoph stared at him. Where are its parents? he thought. "No. Go buy your own."
The kid's face scrunched up into a mask of pure, unadulterated entitlement. "Give me the ice cream, or I'll scream and tell everyone you touched me in a wrong place."
Christoph froze, a cold dread mixing with a strange, dark admiration for the sheer audacity of the little demon. He looked around. No one was paying attention now, but they would be. Clicking his tongue in disgust, he reached into the bag and handed over Chloe's strawberry ice cream. "Take it. I hope a truck hits you."
The kid snatched it and waddled off toward the street without a word of thanks.
Christoph watched him go. And the light is still red, you little moron. As if the universe was listening, a massive delivery truck roared around the corner, its engine a guttural growl, barreling down the road at a speed that was definitely not legal. It was heading right for the kid.
Christoph's eyes widened slightly. Oh. So there is a God. And he has a sick sense of humor. Bye-bye, you little shit.
Then he saw it. The truck, with a loud, piercing screech of tortured rubber, swerved violently. It wasn't correcting its course. It was changing its target.
It was coming right for him.
The fuck? No, go for the kid! The kid! I'm suicidal, but I don't want to be turned into a meat crayon on asphalt!
The thought barely had time to form before the world erupted. There was a deafening roar of a horn, the blinding glare of headlights, and then a sound that was both a deafening crunch of metal and a wet, intimate pop of his own body. For a fraction of a second, the world became a kaleidoscope of shattering glass and a white-hot fire of pain that vaporized every thought, every memory, every last bit of boredom.
And then, nothing.
On the other side of the street, the entitled kid stood frozen, his face splattered with something warm and red. The strawberry ice cream slipped from his fingers and landed on the pavement with a soft, pathetic splat.