The next time they opened, his heart felt like an empty carton of milk, crushed and discarded. The insides of his body moaned in pain. Picking up the pieces of his life seemed like such a chore. They were scattered everywhere, most of them shattered into tiny shards. And too many of them were lost, never to be found again. It was impossible for his life to be complete.
His body felt weighed down like it was carrying a thousand golf balls. Again it moaned from the inside. This time louder. His nose began to tingle and he felt the slight sting of salty tears fill his eyes. Donnie took a large breath to try to calm himself, but it was like adding oxygen to the fire burning inside him. He knew the best cure for this was more sleep. Delightful sleep. Everything was OK while he slept. Exhausted from crying, he drifted off again.
The next time he came to, Donnie scooped a bottle of water from the floor and sat down at the card table with his back to the Ramones poster. Other than a few of the three-wick candles, the room had no light. It was very dim.
Donnie Betts couldn’t conjure a reason to leave the storage unit ever again.
He shuffled things around in his backpack. Inside was every notebook he had ever filled. He left them there. Following the sounds of the rattling, his hands pulled out three plastic bottles of pills. One contained his mother’s sleeping pills, another was filled with heavy pain medication left over from his wisdom teeth removal, and the third was unidentifiable. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell them apart and he didn’t make the effort to ascertain which was which.
The skin beneath the scabs from his father’s suicide had just begun the long healing process. Those scabs had been ripped off him and Donnie was bleeding again. It was so much blood that amputation was the only answer. He saw no reason to suffer any longer.
He lined up all three bottles in front of him. There was no way that he was going to screw this up. He would swallow down two of each every thirty seconds until they were gone. Soon after, it would all be over.
The one person, the single person that he cared for more than any other, had just left. He had felt abandoned by his father when he killed himself, but Donnie knew that no one would miss him when he was gone. Donnie wasn’t going to kill himself to show everyone how much he meant or how much he would be missed. While he was awake, he suffered the constant battery of one thing after another that brought about memories of departed loved ones. When Donnie slept, he was unaware of that steady pain that flowed through his veins. Forget it all – no more heartache. Donnie was going to do it because he wanted to sleep forever.
He looked across the storage unit at the chalk outlines. There they were, hand in hand. The pain associated with seeing this affirmed that he was doing the right thing.
Pushing down and twisting, Donnie removed the caps from all three bottles and dumped their contents in three piles on the card table. Unit #143 was where he would die. He unscrewed the top of his water bottle.
Taking one last look at his and Megan’s silhouettes on the wall, Donnie noticed something that wasn’t there before. It was dark and he wasn’t sure that his eyes were functioning properly. He tilted his head and rubbed his right eye. There were words written in chalk. He picked up a candle from the corner of the room and walked to the wall.
While he slept and before she left, Megan had written on the concrete blocks of the storage unit. There was a speech bubble like in comic strips coming from her mouth. She was saying: “Donnie Betts is my hero.”
He read it again… and again… and again… and again… and again…
It read the same every time. “Donnie Betts is my hero.”
His courage came creeping back. Megan loved him. She admired him. She found him to be inspirational. Donnie needed to be brave. He needed to go on. For her. For him. He was a survivor. He could achieve the unattainable. “Donnie Betts is my hero.”
Everything changed.
He wanted to play his song again. He wanted to write more of them. He wanted to go to school. He wanted to get A’s. Donnie wanted to share his strength with his mother and help create a better life for them. He wanted to see Dirt again and pick up golf balls at the driving range. He wanted to go golfing on a real golf course with his clubs. He wanted to ride his bike. He wanted to find love again. He wanted to show the world that he could face every adversity imaginable and overcome them all!
He yanked the door of the storage unit open. The morning sun forced him to squint, but he adjusted quickly to the glare.
The air was crisp and clean. The sun was warm and welcoming. Donnie stared up at the sky. The future was wide open.
He wanted breakfast. He wanted to taste pancakes and bacon on his tongue and savor their scrumptiousness.
He slung his guitar around him so it hung on his back and snatched his backpack off the card table. It, along with his notebooks of despair, would go in the dumpster on his way out.
The only other item that he took with him was a chewed-up purple pen of Megan’s. He thought fondly of her and their time together. A piece of her would always be with him. They had built a love that would not die. And who knows, if he worked hard and got his grades up and studied for the SATs, he might end up at the same college as she. He slipped the pen in his back pocket.
There were endless possibilities awaiting him on the outside of Parkside Storage’s fence.
Donnie Betts, the hero, looked over Unit #143 and pulled its door closed for the last time.
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRISTOPHER CLEARY wrote scenes for talent shows in high school, plays in college, and a television pilot in Burbank, California. His undergraduate degree is in acting and his master’s degree is in project management. He loves rocking out to Pearl Jam, rooting for the Steelers, and taking it easy with his wife and dog.
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