Jonathan Tucker sat down at his kitchen table to enjoy his last meal: A two pound steak marinated in olive oil, black pepper, garlic and rosemary with sautéed Brussels sprouts and a bowl of bean and barley soup. For dessert, a slice of rhubarb pie and a beer (Modelo, to be exact) to wash it all down. For a last meal it would have been decent if only he could bring himself to enjoy it more. He looked around his little apartment, now void of all joy. His wife had left him a few months earlier. It was probably for the best. On top of his Anna being gone, he’d gotten laid off from his job at the outdoors sports store six months ago and he had become extremely depressed, nearly to the point where he couldn’t function. Sheila left him a few weeks after he got laid off and promptly filed for divorce.
Jonathan would make it easier on her. He walked over to the far living room wall. There were pictures of a smiling couple with their little girl. His little girl, his Anna.
Oh, his Anna…
She died eight months ago. Just another victim of the serial killer finally identified as Marcus Fletcher. It all seemed so surreal, his little girl’s death. She was taken from their life just like that. No warning, just one visit from the cops. Anna first went missing on a Thursday in November, right from the grade school parking lot. There had been a misunderstanding between Sheila and him about who would pick her up from school that day. They both arrived at the apartment thinking that the other one had gone to get her. Frantic calls were made to the parents of some of Anna’s friends, hoping she was with them but no one had seen her that day.
Twelve stomach-churning, sleepless nights later the cops were at their door. Anna had been found dead in a dumpster and stuffed in a duffel bag outside of a video store only miles from their home. Her head was shaved to the skin and her teeth had been pulled out. The police informed them that Anna had apparently been picked up by a man in a brown truck who claimed that her father had to stay late at work and had asked him to pick her up. He then took her out of town to an abandoned horse stable where, Jonathan and Sheila learned, she died quickly and painlessly with an injection of arsenic. They were told this as if knowing that fact was supposed to help them cope. After the injection Fletcher brushed Anna’s teeth and washed and combed her hair before removing it all. Sheila threw-up and fainted upon hearing what he’d done. Jonathan had to fight the same urge himself. Anna was Fletcher’s fifth and final victim, all girls between the ages of seven and ten. According the news, one bowl was found in Fletcher’s attic for each victim. He would drape the little girl’s hair in and around the side of the bowl and lay their teeth in the center as if to recreate a bird’s nest with eggs in it. All he was after were those items, and no one had a clue as to why.
Why? Even though he knew the answer couldn’t bring Anna back, even though he knew no answer would ever be satisfactory, Jonathan obsessed over that one simple question: Why? And now they would never know because Marcus Fletcher had been strangled to death by his cellmate in prison not two nights after being arrested. It was suspected that the guards on duty that night not only saw a fight break out between the two prisoners and did nothing to stop it, but encouraged it and even went as far as to handcuff Fletcher to the cell bars so he could no longer fight back. What happened that night was never fully investigated.
After Anna’s death, whatever was left of Jonathan and Sheila’s marriage gave way beneath them. Both of them were completely consumed by guilt and equally consumed with quickly growing hatred towards each other for letting such a thing happen.
Jonathan shook his head, as if to shake the thought out of his brain, before averting his eyes to another picture. This one was of him when he was in the Marines during the Gulf War. Inside the frame under the picture hung a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.
After the war in the Gulf, Jonathan was diagnosed with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder, better known at the time as Gulf War syndrome. When he came back he found it hard to adjust to civilian life. He would jump at ordinary things like loud cars, slamming doors and fireworks. He also suffered from nightmares every night for years. It was always the same. He'd find himself in a battle pinned down by enemy fire. There was an explosion from a grenade he knew he had thrown, followed by a flying, twisted mass of body parts. Hands and feet and decapitated heads hit him like shrapnel. As Jonathon wiped the blood from his face he’d yell into the sky without a sound while a tightness gripped his chest harder and harder until he’d wake up sweating and panting. After a few years the dreams became less frequent until they finally stopped. But they all came back after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and were even worse.
Getting married to Sheila when he was 30 couldn’t stop his suffering, and neither could having Anna three years later. But they both helped him survive.
Now he had no one.
Jonathan turned around and saw himself in a mirror. He was forty-two with muscular, big arms, a wide chest, and even thicker legs. He felt old and rundown. Sometimes he would look away, unable to face himself. But there was other times, like right then, when all he wanted to do was destroy that tired, worthless old man.
Jonathan screamed and threw the picture across the room. He tore down the other pictures and threw them, too, before putting his foot through the drywall. He thrashed around his apartment, breaking anything he got his hands on. Jonathon had one option: He would shoot himself. He had to shoot himself. The night he found out Anna died he knew he had to, but he couldn’t gain the nerve until Sheila left him. Now there was nothing to hold him back. Stomping into the bedroom he picked the gun up from his nightstand (his favorite, a 45 colt revolver) and checked to see if it was loaded. It was, like always. He cocked back the hammer, put the barrel to his head and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Nothing happened? He thought.
The trigger was limp and the hammer didn't even budge. The mechanism connecting the trigger and the hammer together was broken. Jonathan gave out a grief stricken laugh, then dropped the gun and cried. Sobs turned into wide-eyed hyperventilation. I can’t believe it! He mentally screamed. It was beyond his expertise to fix. A throb in Jonathan’s head made him aware of his surroundings again. He went to the medicine cabinet, vaguely thinking about finding painkillers.
He didn't find any painkillers, but what he did find surprised him. There, right in the back of the medicine cabinet, was a full vial of insulin and a needle. Sheila born with type one diabetes. It surprised him that she’d left this behind. As he pulled the needle and vial out of their black casing Jonathan went wide-eyed again with realization. His heart pounded so fiercely that every limb seemed to have its own aching pulse. His head throbbed more every second and the pressure behind his eyes was becoming more intense. Shaking hands grabbed the vile and the needle. Jonathan was so engulfed by desperation and anger than he hardly noticed he was back on his living room couch. He filled the needle up (What’s going to happen when I’m dead? He wondered), tapped it with his finger (It can’t be worse than this. It CAN’T be!), and plunged it into a bulging vein in his arm, pushing its contents into his bloodstream. He threw the needle aside and laid back.
He thought about his mother and father who both died in a car accident seven years ago.
His peripheral vision was starting to go; two black curtains were slowly moving across Jonathan’s eyes. Fear combined with a deep sense of relief closed around his entire body and thoughts.
He remembered his darling Anna. She always had a smile on her face. They would sometimes go fishing together. She would always throw the fish back, She didn’t like killing the poor little fishes.
The curtains move closer. Involuntary crying overtook Jonathon’s final waking moments.
Anna didn't watch very much TV, but there was one show that she just adored. My little Pony: Something is Something. He never could remember the last part. Somehow she always convinced him to watch it with her. Jonathan remembered Anna was always beside herself with giddy joy whenever a new episode would air.
The curtains closed shut, and the last thing he remembered before the darkness took him, was his Anna and her smiling face.