One shot. If I could get my hands to stop shaking and aim, that’s all it would take. The gun was heavy and kept slipping from my sweaty palms. She stared up at me, her once playful, lively brown eyes stared up at me, now pale and vacant. Her skin was a sickly yellow color, her dark hair and clothes drenched in blood. It was all over her face, all over her hands, and caked under her broken nails. The smell of it made me want to go, but I couldn’t leave her there like that after everything we’d been through. I should have done it sooner.

I dropped the gun again, probably for the dozenth time, and watched her with tears in my eyes. She was struggling, trying to pull herself free from the car that pinned her to the street. She was half crushed, but still trying to reach me, to sink her teeth into me. She clawed at her own flesh, trying to rip herself from her useless legs. My stomach retched. I knew I had to do it soon, but I couldn’t find the courage. I was crying when I picked the gun back up. I told her I was sorry over and over, but she just stared at me hungrily, an otherworldly growl the only sound she made. She couldn’t understand me.

She was my best friend, my love, the only one I’d ever had. She had been beautiful once, until those things got to her. I could still see the bite wound, swollen, puss-filled, and discoloured from bruising. We’d tried cleaning it before she changed, tried bandaging it, but it just kept bleeding. In her last hour, dazed and sweeping in and out of consciousness, sweating buckets and throwing up, she’d torn the bandages away. She’d scratched at it, trying to get the poison out, completely delusional. I couldn’t comfort her or help her, I could only watch her die.

I attempted to aim the gun again. I hoped she would forgive me if there was an afterlife or a heaven, and squeezed my eyes shut, pulling the trigger.

The sound of the gun going off made me jump. I heard the bullet hit bone and she fell silent. I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to look, to see her brains and skull splattered against the white car, half her face missing, her lifeless body destroyed and unrecognizable. I cocked the gun again, placing the barrel in my mouth. It was still hot. I took a few deep, shaky breaths through my nose, praying. I hadn’t in years, but I was the only one left to. I prayed for her, for my family and friends; everyone I’d lost, and for myself.

I counted down from twelve, because it had been her favourite number. My finger rested gingerly on the trigger. I cried, harder than I ever had.

Three, two, one…

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I appologize if this offends anybody.