camera

His voice was raspy, like he’d been chainsmoking or screaming a lot. I didn’t know which. Probably both. When he turned his back to me and walked away I turned on the camera. I followed him with the camera across the parking lot, training the lens on his Vans sneakers, then the sky, then some telephone poles. I was feeling very “artsy”. We got to the curb and he put his tip-toes on its edge, getting ready to leap. I watched his baby blue eyes through golden summer hair as he mumbled to himself, not speaking the words, just mumbling them: “three…two…one.”

He leaped from the curb and tried to roll his body under a passing car. The car’s front tire steamrolled halfway onto his chest before its skid to a stop. I ran over to my friend, Kevin, dying under the tires of a SUV in our shitty fucking suburban town’s football field parking lot, and I looked into those baby blue eyes for the last time. When I heard the whistles blowing, signaling the end of football practice, and the jocks and the coaches running over to us, I started to get an erection. Kevin was gurgling now, his mouth burping up wads of blood, but through it all I heard the final thing he’d ever say to me: “I did it, dude. I really did it.” I trained my camera on his blood-filled smile. Click.