This is a very short piece of fiction I wrote while being bored at work. I work with the mentally ill, so this sort of writing kind of creeps up on me from time to time. It’s supposed to bring awareness to the millions of people struggling with depression or some other form of mental illness who never seek help for it. Tragedies like this happen every day. If you know someone struggling with depression, please, encourage them to seek help. Shannon closed the door behind her, and let out a sigh. The sound of the bus’s engine faded down the street, and she didn’t even bother to look out the window. She just sat there smiling, fingering away a tear of relief that nestled in the corner of her eye. This was the day. At last. A laugh escaped her quivering lips, so unexpected that it made her jump. The laugh finished its dying echo through the empty chambers of the house, reverberating off the cool oak decor and the extra tall ceiling of the main room, and all was still again. Still. No Goddamn kid’s running-footsteps breaking the sweetened silence, no fucking ringing phone, no Goddamn David tapping his fucking shoe on the floor while he watches reruns of Married with Children, laughing a little too hard at Al’s disdain for his stupid wife. Bitterness still hung in the air from David’s coffee, though, still sitting on the table next to the unopened paper, cold and untouched. Cold and untouched just like Shannon. Just like this fucking house. Shannon smiled, flipping her dress and twirling around in the open foray beside the staircase, alone at last. As she danced, she got goosebumps imagining what her family would see when they got home. That was the best part. God, that look on David’s face, alone, would be to die for. And, yes, that was part of it. God, what a bore David was. Is. And those kids, would they even give a shit? Or would they just go on, leaving their stupid fucking things all over the stupid fucking house. Would they even notice? Would they even see her? Would they cry? Shannon laughed again. When she first took it from David’s drawer, it felt so cold and made her shiver as she slipped it in the band of her pants, but now it had grown warm, being pressed against her skin for so long. She pulled it out and kissed it. The pistol, her savior, was black as David’s coffee, and just about as plain as he was. Nothing special. Just a cheap little nine millimeter. Oh, but the things that it could do! So unlike David in that aspect. The kitchen lay to the left of the foray, and there on the table, Shannon wrote her family a note. This is all she had to say: “Fuck you.” Another smile snuck out through her lips. Shannon danced back toward the front door, and as her goosebumps peaked and the butterflies in her stomach flew their greatest flight yet, she put the pistol to her temple and squeezed the trigger, painting that bitter oak with vibrant arcs of red and gray. Her feet stopped moving and over she fell, her head bouncing off the floor to land emotionless, staring at the front door, pupils expanding to ever-black. Before remnants of the last breath left her lungs, Shannon forced an honest smile to greet her family with. It would be the only one she ever gave.