He drank himself blind wallowing in relived histories of sin. His mind and senses replayed the past, seeing and feeling all again: war, murder, the soft pull of a trigger and the heart-skip, soul-thump of dropped ordinance in close range; each murder-song of heavy and medium machine guns firing, the light crack near and spit plumes of sand when bullets bear down, arriving before reported sounds of their firing.
He smelled the scents and saw the after-scenes. All of it, for what? The disillusion sent him into darkness.
He lived again the after-depression: drink and women had but never loved—ephemeral highs that that left after-emptinesses even darker than beginning one from which he ran.
He wanted it to end.
He drank into a darkness, alone with his emptiness, a book, and .45; no letter, no note, only an exit without explanation.
Tears and drink blurred vision as the emptiness took full hold, closing in his mind doors and histories never to be opened again, eliminating every exit save the last.
In his tears and blindness, he racked the action, feeling it’s slide, seeing glimmer and shape but not detail of brass casing and bullet as metallic ring set it home.
He cried in his emptiness. Before closing final door, he tested God.
With no words, only energy within, his soul besought in despair, “God, if you are real, show me a sign!”
He opened the book to page marked by paper slip, untouched or visited for years. On marked and waiting page he read,
“Always rejoice. Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you…Extinguish not the spirit…”[i]
Cold chill responded with hot flare after down spine then outward in face and all extremities. His emptiness shook loose and he ran outside vomiting away all the poison within him into darkness of the night.
Sickness ended, and when it passed, he looked to the heavens upon an infinitude of stars—light and hope as he had not bothered to see—scattered across an equally infinite darkness.
His body heaved, convulsing still, in sight and staring on the cosmos.
Tears of pain changed. They became tears of beginning healing.
The door he sought to enter closed before him as a new door opened.
“Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” he spoke to God and heavens, face still awashed in tears.
The door he sought to enter closed forever before him as a new door opened.
He stared on the stars, points and light of hope in a universe of darkness, and he felt a light within him, one forgotten for so long.
Out of the blackness, a new day rose.
[i] 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-19, Douay-Rheims Bible