Preview: BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR

by DAN SHPYRA

The water was rushing down from the rough patches of the brinks; nonetheless, Jack’s inner waterfall was far greater than one in front of him. Thoughts were striking his mind and heart as though they were an anvil. His heart was pounding; tremor took over his whole body. “God, even now, I cannot be free of it.” Jack’s desperate mind did not even give him a chance a regain control. His hands were holding cables tighter than he ever held his rifle; his pale limbs went numb. “Fear not, buddy, just do it and be done with it!”, this time Jack cried out loud, but his bravery had left him a long time ago; thus, no actions had followed after. It was a full moon when Jack`s shoe slipped from his foot, and just like that, it despaired into roaring water beyond the bridge. “It is simple, one step, and you will be like your shoe: freed from this wretched body,” he whispered to himself. It had been four months since Jack got back from Afghanistan; it had been hundred and twenty-one times he went upon the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. He was to soar down himself this time, but nothing more than a shoe slipped into the waters.

Soaked under the rain, he was limping back home. Suddenly, as it started, the rain stopped; the dawn was breaking and showing the first lights of spring`s sun. Just a small figure among the wooden giants, Jack never even glimpsed above his head; his head was his forest, his fortress, and his prison. Even though he thought he knew how to escape it, he failed it a hundred and twenty-one times. Men do not cry, it is only drops of the rain that covered his face, or so he wanted to believe. It is hard to shoot the rifle, but it is even harder to live after you did so. However, it is not a battlefield where he made his first shot, it was when Jack had signed the contract. That shot had killed his past, his present, and nearly killed his future.