10.
The frame of the gun is unexpectedly heavy as I grasp it with numb fingers. It’s coldness pierces my skin as I turn it over and over in trembling hands.
Each time the metal hits my palm, a sharp shiver surges through me, building a twisted sense of strength that courses like electricity through my veins. I can’t believe how much power is dangling from my index finger.

9.
I’m going to do it this time. I’ve got scars to prove past failure and I won’t let deficiency mark me again. This time, I will not fail. There is irony in this though. If I hadn’t already failed, I wouldn’t be standing here today, gun clenched tight in my fist, ready to put an end to the suffering I brought upon everyone. Including me.

8.
And it’s so much suffering, so much pain. 

7.
At school, I’m the freak, the misfit, the outcast—just say “Amara,” and the whispers start to fly.
“You mean the one whose face looks like it was taken to with a jackhammer?”
“Oh, that nutjob with the creepy scars on her arm. Emo freak.”
“Who?”
And every last bit of it is justified. Each cold, biting truth, all the taunts and cruel rumors muttered under breath.
Why else would fate let it happen unless I deserved it?

6.
At home, I’m the ball and chain bound tightly to my parents’ leg, never able to emulate the paradisiac footsteps of my sister.   
“C’s again Amara? Chloe got straight A’s all through high school.”
“I’m very disappointed in your behavior Amara! Chloe would never pull a stint like that.”
“Choe just told me she was accepted into Harvard. What are you doing with your life Amara? You can’t stay shut in your room forever.”
I was never good enough and I never would have been. At least now they’ll have one last thing to compare to Chloe. I doubt she killed herself in the bathroom of a basement at fourteen.
I hope they loathe my desertion and I as much as I do them.

5.
At my precipitous surge of anger, tears unexpectedly cloud my eyes and the gun suddenly feels like lead in my hand. I place it on the edge of the sink, where it rests quietly, unaware of its next task to come.
I look up and face myself in the mirror, despising—as I always do—what stares me back. Stringy waves of mousy hair, patched black in some areas from previous dye jobs. Sickly pale skin stippled with acne scars. Thin chapped and peeling lips. Enough eyeliner to outline a crime scene. And my eyes, so dead and dark and despondent you’d think they’d be a better fit on a corpse. My eyes, so beaten down by harsh words and disgusted tones that no light will ever shine behind them again. My eyes, so utterly and completely useless it’s a miracle I’m still considered a living, breathing person.
But judging how lifeless I am inside, I’m really not human.

4.
The storm cloud of anger reining my tears shatters and they stream down my mottled face, dragging rivers of eyeliner with them.
I want this. I want this.

3.
A shuddering hand encloses the gun.
Shivers wrench down my spine.
I slowly raise it to head.

2.
I want this, I want this.
It’s the only way to end it all. And that’s all I want. For this misery and anguish and desperate agony to dissolve into nothing but long-forgotten memories.

My finger curls around the trigger.

1.

Pain rips through my body and tears it to shreds. A muted screams escapes my lips.

Infinite darkness.

0.
Nothing.