Supermarket - Bobby Hall Page 0,85

to the gun and picking it up. “It didn’t have to be this way, you know!” he said, wielding the firearm carelessly, almost with a laziness. “We had something special, man! And you had to go and ruin it all by wanting your—” Frank made air quotes with his fingers—“ ‘Sanity back!’ Hahaha, fuck outta here, man.”

I tried to get up, but I slipped on my own blood.

“This place is amazing, man,” Frank continued. “I pretend like I hated it, but I loved it here. I mean, I was born here.”

Frank turned from me, taking in the supermarket for what seemed to be the last time. This was my opportunity, but . . . how do you kill a man who doesn’t exist?

Before fully rising to my feet, I was already dashing toward him. Just as he turned in my direction, I landed a fierce blow to the temple.

“Ah, shit!” he yelled. I punched him in the stomach. He keeled over in pain. That’s when I drove my knee deep into his nose, breaking it immediately. I grabbed the hand holding the gun and slammed it into the shelf, slicing his wrist on the exposed metal edge. The gun dropped. Frank grabbed me by the neck, punching me in my left ear.

I could only imagine how this fight must have looked on the security cameras—one man beating himself to a bloody pulp. Must have looked like some twisted Buster Keaton bit.

Frank grabbed the gun, turned back, and fired. The burning sensation radiated through my arm. I looked down. Blood started to trickle out of my shoulder.

“You shot me?”

“Yeah, I guess I did, haha,” Frank replied.

I always imagined what it would feel like to be shot, and the feeling was . . . like nothing I had ever felt. It felt like someone had cut me open and stuck a fiery piece of coal deep inside me.

“Well, old friend,” said Frank, raising the gun to my head. “Looks like this is the end of the line.”

I looked down the barrel of the gun. Just as Frank pulled the trigger, Mia came from behind him, pushing the gun from his grip and sending it skidding under the aisle’s shelving units. With my good arm, I grabbed Frank by his shirt. We struggled and struggled.

How do I kill a man who doesn’t exist? A man who lives only in my head?

He threw punches but couldn’t land a swing from the angle I had him at, so he stopped swinging and quickly did something I wish I had seen coming. He stuck his middle finger in front of my face.

“Fuck yoooouuuuuuu!” he yelled. He pressed his middle finger deep inside the wound.

The pain was agonizing. If the initial feeling of being shot was the worst pain I’d ever experienced, this was even worse because the shock had worn off. I was experiencing Every. Single. Moment.

And even worse than the pain Frank had inflicted? Knowing there was no Frank. Not really, anyway. And it was just me, gutting myself all alone there in aisle nine, while poor Mia watched the man she loved fall apart.

I was losing. After all this, I couldn’t believe the main character of a fictional book I wrote . . . was in the middle of brutally murdering me. He pulled his finger from the wound and grabbed my brown coat by the zipper, pulling me closer, ready to punch me in my already broken nose. I could see his hand, stained in my blood, coming in.

This was it, I could feel it. This next blow would end it. I had to do something! As he cocked his arm back for the final blow, I screamed and . . . punched him back with everything I had. The punch would have knocked him down, but he was still holding on to my jacket.

As he began to fall, he pulled on the jacket, flinging it upward. The upward inertia projected the contents of my right pocket into the air.

It was like slow motion, watching them fall to the ground. Frank leaning to the left, trying to regain his balance, trying to find his footing.

It was the pills. Hundreds of them.

For those of you who don’t know, sanity is really just a state of mind . . . quite literally. You see, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are rooted in a chemical imbalance in the brain. Doctors often prescribe medication to correct the chemical equilibrium. Thus, in turn, they have a positive effect