Harry sat at the table holding the gun to his head. His breathing was tense, his hands were clammy and his brow was moist with sweat. He felt the cold metal “O” of the barrel’s muzzle pressing like an ice cube against his temple. All he had to do was slightly squeeze a bit harder on the sensitive trigger and his troubles were over… Most of the best guns had an easy trigger. “You don’t want to have to think about it too much when you’re in a life or death situation,” the pawn store attendant had told Harry when he had responded to one of those “Buy a gun to protect your home” newspaper ads. But Harry couldn’t blow his brains out. Not yet, anyway. He was so pissed off he could hardly see straight. So he pulled the gun away from his head and lowered it slowly back to the table. He needed his brain. He had more thinking to do...

Harry’s out of town trip had canceled at the last minute before his flight took off, and he had come back home without calling his wife so as not to wake her. After letting himself in quietly, he had the misfortune to walk right into the aftermath of the adulterous scene. For crying out loud, they were both passed out in his bed together! What had he done to deserve this – this unbearable fate? A painful anxious feeling kept stabbing into his stomach like a red hot knife. Killing the source of it would be the only thing that would make that pain go away, or so the ugly little voice in his head kept insisting. Eventually, he accepted that it was his enemies who deserved a death sentence and not himself. Why shouldn’t they – his wife caught red-handed in bed with her lover at his very own house?

Harry studied the gun. He’d kept it for years in the back of the top shelf in the hall closet and never touched it. He felt the cool blue-black steel of it nice and smooth inside his hand like the skin of a cobra, gliding and caressing its deadly curves perfectly against his fingers. “Squeeze me,” it hissed. “I’ll make everything better.” A 357 magnum had enough force to rip its way through an automobile and still kill a man. Somebody had once told him that Smith and Wesson had been husband and wife. Only now, at this awful moment, did that fact make perfect sense.

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In the next room, the bedroom, Harry’s wife Paula was lying asleep carefree, passed out drunk in the arms of her co-worker, Phillip. Long lazy hours of cigarette smoke and their alcoholic soiree still hung thick in the air. Phillip, her “helpful mentor”. Harry spied her lipstick-smeared cocktail glass. As if the intensity of his gaze alone had surprised it, a small drop of condensed moisture raced away down the side of the glass. Beyond that he noticed her black bra strewn haphazardly on the floor in the doorway. Phillip, her “work friend”. Over the radio, some old-time singer crooned a song of love gone wrong, as if he was psychically aware of the mortal drama of this night and mocking Harry. Phillip, that son of a bitch!

These events encouraged the poisonous conclusion that kept beckoning to him. So, with the purpose of vengeance, Harry rose from his seat. He stepped quietly into the bedroom. Standing still among the shadows, he aimed the gun directly at her silhouetted sleeping body. His lovely wife, Paula. He sighted her along the top of the barrel and struggled against intense urges as his finger began squeezing on the trigger with an instinct of its own. She deserved to die. She had betrayed all that he had given her. His heart. His devotion. All now just a bunch of crap…

Then she stirred and made that purring sound he loved, but it was Phillip who cuddled her closer and made her smile in her sleep. “That bastard’s in such false comfort. I’ll shoot him first,” Harry mused to himself with a sinister smile, as he moved the gun sight over toward his enemy and aimed at his head. But just then the doorbell rang. Quickly, Harry stepped out of the room and into the front hallway closet, leaving the door cracked open in the shadows while he listened. The frantic door chimes continued to ring again and again. Harry heard the lovers’ murmurs of protest as they were roused out of their romantic stupor.

“Stay in here and I’ll take care of it” Paula said nervously to her paramour. Harry heard her kiss him and it made ice run through his veins. She couldn’t see him hiding in the hall closet as she staggered toward the door amid the doorbell’s relentless tolling. When she was out of his line of sight, he could only listen to what was going on. He heard the door burst open, and felt it throw Phyllis backwards with a thud against the wall on the other side of his hiding place. A woman’s frantic voice demanded “Where’s my husband? I know he’s here! I tracked him here last week and I saw his car parked down the street again. Phillip? PHILLIP!!!” she screamed. “Show yourself or I’ll blow this bitch away right now. Do you hear me?”

Her voice sounded vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place it. Harry heard her cock back the hammer of a weapon. Then he saw Phillip rush out of the bedroom past him to the door, and he heard him pleading with her. “No. You and me, we aren’t right for each other, baby. I knew we weren’t meant to stay together. I was going to tell you…” Then he heard her slap him in mid-sentence and he remained silent.

“How dare you!” she sobbed. Harry was considering walking out there next, just to give Paula her due... “I hate you!” the woman said, and then she must have lost control because she fired. Harry didn’t realize it at first, but the bullet missed its target. It hit the wall behind Phillip and penetrated it quite easily, striking Harry who stood behind it squarely in the back. A flash of pain went through him making Harry drop his gun. As it struck the floor, it too went off, firing backwards through the wall. Its lethal payload struck Phillip’s estranged wife in the chest and she fell to the floor with a gasp. Harry had fallen forward out of the closet, landing on his side, but he crawled forward until he was able to view the scene in the foyer.

That’s when Harry first recognized his accidental victim as she lay gazing back at him. She was dying, too, sprawled a few feet away on the white tiled floor in a scarlet pool of her own blood. As their weary eyes met, Harry realized in the quickness of an instant two very specific things.

One: That the woman dying across the floor from him was also the betrayed spouse of the shocked couple still standing. The two scandalous lovers who now stood gaping at them in horror were also just beginning to realize that Death had quickly dealt them both a free pass at their shady game of adultery.

Two: That they had met years ago. She was that little burlesque dancer from the French Quarter who had liked him so much back when he was in college. They’d gone out a couple of times and Harry had just stopped calling her back. She’d been a touch too vanilla for his wild tastes back then, but then take a look at Paula, the “rocky road” of a woman he had dropped out of college to marry. “What a fool I was,” he thought... Although he tried in vain, he couldn’t quite remember this poor woman’s name.

So it was all Harry could do was to just lie there looking at her looking back at him while they bled to death. He felt the darkness coming. “Is this justice? One shot at a good life? Is that all you get?” he wondered. He was staring at her, her beautiful blue eyes filled with sweat and tears and death. He knew she was struggling to recognize him, too. He wanted to tell her he was wrong to have bailed on her those thirty years ago, but at this late point, there was not enough breath left in his rattling lungs to speak it. She was no better off, but she must have figured out who he was too, because she flashed a sweet smile at him and somehow, he felt redeemed. Then, by the mercy of some angel, right before he faded out, Harry finally remembered her name... “Hope”..