And freedom tastes of reality... [First story I've written for the class]

Here we go with another story, this is actually only the second story that I've ever written. The one lower down is the third and the first was a collaborative effort with my brother when I was 13 or 14 that will never see the light of day ever, I hope that it is in fact destroyed, I'm currently looking at notebooks from that time and if it were any worse (even a tiny bit) than those, I'd have to blow my brains out to prevent a possible reoffense. I don't really have a title for it. I guess I'll use "There Goes My Gun" for now. That's a good song, the Pixies are god damn incredible. It's shorter and I didn't write the first line, it was given to us as part of the exercise. In a week or so I plan on posting the opening scene of the much longer short story that serves as the final.

Samantha would always regret leaving the balcony doors unlocked. A man stands on the balcony, the sun rising a deep orange behind him. He opens one door halfway and slides through the opening on to the light red carpet of the living room, lit with the first creeping rays of dawn. He moves through the living room, his legs swinging with the precision of a metronome. Opening the door to Samantha's bedroom, he steps towards her bed. Standing over her as she sleeps, he lets out a polite cough. Rolling over she looks up and sees a thin figure silhouetted in the door frame.

Still in shock, she gapes as he reaches into his jacket and draws a small semi-automatic pistol, glinting a bright silver. Raising the gun slowly, he puts the barrel against his right temple, the pistol and his forearm flat as a board. He let's a terse “sorry,” escape his lips as he squeezes the trigger. The sharp report of the pistol pierces her ears as blood sprays from the left side of his head. His body collapses out of sight on to the floor.

Her ears still ringing from the shot, she stares at the space where he stood. Samantha reaches for the light switch, her hand moving through the dark in a smooth practiced manner, it had done the same on hundreds of other nights. Light fills the room stinging her eyes.

Leaning over the edge of the bed she looks at the figure now thrown into sharp relief by the cheap fluorescent light fixed to the ceiling. Lying on the floor is the corpse of a thin gray haired man in his mid-fifties wearing a dark blue suit and a plain red cloth tie. Blood now drips slowly from his head staining the white carpet.

Stretching from ear to ear on the man's face is a grin filled with straight, gleaming teeth. Her mouth opens and closes in a pantomime of speech. Eventually it drops open and she begins to scream as tears stream from her eyes. She continues to scream until the police arrive, then stares with dull unfocused eyes, her cheeks stained with tears and jaw now drooping against her chest, seemingly unable or unwilling to speak or move. The paramedics move her out of her apartment, through a crowd of onlookers, into the waiting ambulance.