Jerzy

Jerzy awoke from a fitful sleep, his body aching from head to toe. He focused his gummed up eyes on the bedside clock - it was 9am. He felt more tired than when he went to bed some ten hours earlier. Pulling the curtains aside filled the room with pale winter sunlight. Sensing it was crisply cold outside a shiver ran through him. It had to be today, he decided. He'd put it off for too long. His check-list of fors and againsts comfirmed it, and he felt relieved. Pulling his track suit over his T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, Jerzy slid his feet into his slippers, stood up and walked stiffly up the stairs into his study. The room was cold, but he didn't turn the heater on. Sitting at his desk he unlocked the big bottom drawer. At the back, carefully wrapped in chamois, was the souvenir he brough back from the war. As Jerzy unwrapped the pistol, he realised it hadn't been fired in 50 years. He checked the ammunition clip and it was still filled with bullets. His mind flashed back to the the day he retrieved it from a dying German officer. He'd be about my age now, Jerzy reckoned. 'Now... ' Jerzy thought aloud. Placing the pistol to his temple he curled a finger around the trigger and squeezed. The very last sound he heard was the click of the hammer.