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“It’s funny, I always imagined writing this but I never imagined doing it like this.”
Well, not much has changed. This certainly wasn’t the way he had been expecting this moment to go.
Maybe he’d finally have the guts to do what he had talked about in the letter. No one would know. He finally had no reason to live, and it would be so much nicer to just lie here with his sister before him and let himself rest. He wonders if anyone will find that letter, if anyone will come looking for him, a pathetic pulp of a man lying face up in a bog of blood with no story and no name, just some nobody from a nothing town who got unlucky like the rest of the nothings here. There’s a brief moment of hope that maybe someone will tell his story. Then he has one last moment of clarity; he is Timothy Rand. A nobody from Galloway, Louisiana, who made nothing of his life, wasting it until he was run dry. They’d remember Rolan, a successful lawyer, a respectable man, a man who helped people. They’d remember Kian, a rockstar, a vibrant personality, a man who even if he wasn’t all he pretended to be, was still one hell of a good friend. But when they looked him over, with his red tinted sunglasses and the stupid Led Zeppelin t-shirt he’d had for years, he’d only be known as another victim from the Galloway incident, another number on a report, another tally, another statistical value, another jagged puzzle piece in a mystery that will never be solved.
He dragged in another deep breath, wishing he had a lit cigarette between his lips. It’s his last moments on this Earth, he knows, as a pitiful piece of shit, so he isn’t going to feel ashamed of allowing himself that last pathetic wish. His heartbeat slows, and with it himself as a whole, his existence snuffed out with a single fleeting breath. If he stops fighting, he concedes himself to the ignorance of the world, a cold and unknowing and beautiful world, one that will not remember his name. But Rachel is there, she’s right there, and even though he had never felt like more of a fucking failure in his life, he feel the corner of his bloodied mouth twitch up uncontrollably, into something resembling a smile fueled by self-loathing. Everyone else is dead. He can’t save anyone, because there’s no one left to save. It’s all his fault.
He relaxes into the lake water. No one will come to save him, not this time. There’s a weight on his chest that feels like the burden of unspoken sentiments, but there’s no point in writing another letter that no one will read. Like a leech, he’s finally drained this town dry of everything that loved him, that he should have loved more in return, but he always knew he was living on borrowed time. He checks his watch. Despite everything, the clock hands are still flicking back and forth, one stroke before midnight. He’s got nothing left to live for, and for the first time in his life he prays to God and thanks Him for making it so. Hey, maybe his mom would even be proud of him for that. The water is seeping into his clothes, slowly overtaking his body, but he isn’t alone. His eyes close, but he still sees his little sister, features blurry but unmistakable. The light of his life that he thought had burned out years ago. So he let himself be guided into that light, the rest of the world he was leaving behind be damned, because Rand had always been a selfish asshole, and true to character, he told himself that he deserved this after everything he’d gone through. The icy water rose over his pale face, and somewhere in the back of his mind he found comfort in the fact that Rolan—the original Rolan—wouldn’t be alone anymore at the bottom of this godforsaken swamp. His last breath left his lungs, bubbling into the water, and his name lost all purpose and meaning. He was no longer a person; just more gore to pollute the air and bayou he used to call home. If he said goodbye, it went unheard, as the farewells of the forsaken were meaningless when they had nothing left to part with. His non-existent legacy is carried away on a gust of wind, a soliloquy of a scared kid who hated himself so much he didn’t realize how much he was loved by the world that passed him by. Now, he dies with this town, the last heartbeat of a people, gone without a trace.
Timothy Rand; the last to survive, but the first to be forgotten.
As his skin turns cold, the hands of the watch strike midnight.