Supernovae

Ashley was six years old when she was invited to her first sleepover.
She’d heard her parents chatting about it, just outside her bedroom when they thought she was asleep. She didn’t understand all the big words they used, but she recognized their concern. They used to say she’d never get invited, that she was too close to being “one of the boys.”
Ashley thought that was silly. Sure, she spent lots of time with Kennedy at school, but that didn’t mean anything. Not really.
Cecily was one of the more popular girls in class—as far as a room full of first-grade students could tell, anyway. She’d made a big show out of inviting Ashley, rising from her seat and prancing over with a slip of paper in hand. “You’re invited to Cecily’s 7th Birthday Slumber Party!”
Now, standing in front of Cecily’s parents’ house, Ashley was a little intimidated. The property was huge, absolutely dwarfing Ashley’s own meager home. She even heard a faint strain of pop music coming from inside, so maybe the other girls were celebrating without her.
A forehead kiss from her mother gave her enough courage to ring the doorbell. And Cecily and her stepmom answered, all smiles, taking Ashley inside with them. Her bag was placed in Cecily’s room with the other girls’ things, her shoes were tossed away in the utility room, and her mind was spinning in circles while Cecily showed her around.
“We just got a new pool,” rich little Cecily was saying, leading Ashley around by the hand. “It’s still too cold to use it, but maybe you can come over in the summer and try it out. We’re playing in the basement right now—that’s where the theater room is. You like movies?”
“Yeah,” Ashley replied, a little distracted. “Is there, um, a bathroom?”
“There’s a couple,” Cecily said. “C’mon, I’ll show you.” She pulled Ashley toward the end of the hall, where a small room sat innocuously. Beside it, a flight of stairs led to the basement.
Ashley pushed the door open, flipped on the lights, and saw a naked body floating in the tub.
She stifled a scream. “Wh…What’s that?!”
“Hm?” Cecily stuck her head in through the doorway, her eyes resting on the strange display. “Oh, that. It’s my backup!”
Ashley took quick, sharp breaths through her nose as she peered into the tub. The thing in the water looked like Cecily—same blonde hair, same fair skin, everything—but there was an eerie flatness to its features. Ashley felt a stab of discomfort in her gut when she noticed the little chest wasn’t moving.
“Is it…sleeping?”
“What? No!” Cecily giggled. “It’s just staying moist. Dad says we hafta keep it in water until I need it.”
“Need it?” Ashley fidgeted, torn between using the bathroom in peace and clinging to Cecily like a lost pet. “For what?”
“Uh…in case I get in an accident?” Cecily cocked her head. “What’s the matter? Don’cha have one?”
Ashley turned away, both from Cecily and her bathing doppelganger. “No.”
“Huh. That’s weird.”
Cecily turned to leave, and Ashley followed—she didn’t feel like going to the bathroom after all.
The rest of the evening was swell, by Ashley’s standards. There was dancing, and singing, and watching a movie with jokes Ashley didn’t really understand, but they made the other girls laugh so Ashley laughed too. They stuffed their cheeks full of junk food and played dress-up with Cecily’s stepmother’s clothes. Cecily showed off her new phone, which she’d gotten for her birthday a few days prior. The girls took something they called a “selfie,” and even though Ashley felt a little out-of-place among the partygoers, they all cheered and squealed when she gave the camera a friendly smile.
“I’m gonna post it,” Cecily declared, tapping on her screen a few times. The built-in holo-caster displayed the photo she’d taken, with a small number of “likes” underneath. The number was going up quickly.
“Wow, they really like us!” one girl exclaimed.
“We’re gonna be famous!” cried another.
Ashley found herself wondering what Kennedy was up to.
Later in the night, as the girls were setting up their sleeping bags, Ashley felt her stomach begin to churn. It was a combination of nerves, snack food, and a subtle feeling of wrongness she didn’t have the vocabulary to explain. She told everyone she was going to the bathroom and hastily departed.
There were other bathrooms in Cecily’s house, as she’d said earlier, but Ashley only knew the one. And she didn’t want to bother Cecily’s stepmom if she didn’t need to. So she toddled into the bathroom she’d stood in earlier…and hesitated before turning on the lights.
Would that “backup” still be in here? Ashley didn’t want to know. She kept the lights off, sitting on the toilet and trying to steady her breathing. She thought of the smiling faces in the holo-caster, of the likes from online strangers. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness.
She saw the face of Cecily’s extra body, its head tilted just slightly in her direction.
She shrieked.
Thirty minutes later, Ashley’s mother helped her into her car and drove her home. She felt too nervous to stick around for the rest of the party, with that thing floating in the bathtub. She pressed her face against the car window and mourned the loss of the sleepover, not knowing that after this, she’d never be invited to another.



Ashley’s teachers were pretty quiet about backups; that is, until the fourth grade. The students had been called in from recess and were settling back into their desks, and Mrs. Chalmers was standing before them with an oddly pinched look on her face.
“Alright, class,” she said, her features contorting into a sorry excuse for a smile. “Who here know what a backup body is?”
A few hands went up. Ashley felt hers twitch under the desk, remembering the strangeness from years ago, but she kept them down.
“Backup bodies,” Mrs. Chalmers continued, seemingly ignoring the raised hands, “are a type of technology you kids will need to learn about sometime soon. They’re getting much more popular these days, and some of you may already have backups of your own!”
Ashley had heard her parents talking about it from the kitchen—they’d abandoned their habit of talking before her bedroom door, and they thought she couldn’t hear them from a couple of rooms away. They’d been saving up money to get backups for everyone in the family.
“A backup body is like…a copy,” Mrs. Chalmers explained, dialing up a holo-cast before her students. Two identical human models appeared, rotating slowly like planets on an axis. “They may look alike, but they’re not clones. Can anyone tell me why that is?”
It was Kennedy who spoke up, though his voice wobbled a bit. “It’s because your brain is only in one body,” he said.
“Right! Very good.” Mrs. Chalmers tapped her phone and one of the models disappeared. “If something bad happens to your body…doctors can put your brain into the backup, and you can try again!”
“It’s kind of like a video game,” Aaron commented.
“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” Mrs. Chalmers replied. “But remember, children: we must keep our backup bodies updated! They don’t age like we do until our brains are inside them, so they’re stuck at the same age…”—here, she dragged two fingers over her screen, and the remaining model grew larger—“even if we grow past them.”
In the next break between classes, Ashley posted about the lesson on her profile. It got a few likes, but the selfie she posted afterward received even more.
Two weeks later, Richard Dobson died.
Ashley hardly knew him, but she knew her parents were more familiar. He came over every so often, bottles of some gross-smelling drinks in hand. From her bedroom, as she browsed her media feeds and played around with her father’s guitar, she heard their voices get louder and more slurred throughout the night.
It wasn’t until after he died that Ashley learned it was alcohol he’d been bringing over, and his drinking had brought his life to an untimely close. She felt a little saddened about it, but brushed it off; after all, it was her parents who really knew the guy. She was just a bystander in their little soirees.
She was home alone the day a red-headed boy appeared on her doorstep, hands stuffed into his pockets as he whistled the theme song to some old TV show.
Ashley’s mother had been trying to teach her to be brave, so she answered the door. “C…Can I help you?”
“’Course you can!” the boy exclaimed. “It’s me! Mr. Dobson! But you can call me Rich.”
When Ashley’s parents got home from work and saw the strange boy in their living room, they explained the situation: Mr. Dobson had died, but he also had a backup. The problem was that he hadn’t updated it in close to forty years.
“Such a shame,” Ashley’s mother said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “At least you get to experience life all over again, though. Right?”
“A veritable fountain of youth,” Ashley’s father commented, pouring himself a glass of wine. “Guess it’ll be a while before you can join us for one of these, though.”
Mr. Dobson whistled through the gap in his backup body’s teeth. “Guess so.”
Ashley let herself be sandwiched between her parents on the couch—it was almost like being a real grown-up, watching her mother and father drink. She felt Mr. Dobson’s eyes on her all evening, and she didn’t like it. Was that part of the grown-up experience too?
From then on, Mr. Dobson—or Rich, as he’d insisted everyone call him—came over much more often. Sometimes, he even showed up when Ashley’s parents weren’t home. Ashley tried not to let him in a few times, but he’d start pounding on the door when she didn’t answer.
Then, one day, as they sat on the couch and waited for her parents to come home, he put his hands on her.
Ashley retaliated, shoving him away. “What are you doing?!”
“Come on, it’s no problem,” Rich said as he scooted closer. “I’m a kid now, y’see? So it’s okay. We’re just kids. Just kids having fun.”
When Ashley’s parents arrived twenty minutes later, they found Rich sitting on the stairs, alone. Ashley had locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out for anything.
Ashley’s posts about having a bad day garnered more attention than she’d expected. Her video post of a short guitar song she’d written was even more popular, despite being just a few chords. She was watching the video on her holo-cast, over and over again, when a text from Kennedy appeared.
“Saw your posts. Wanna talk?”
Ashley and Kennedy talked long into the night, and Ashley almost forgot to finish her homework because of it. By the time she’d finally hung up and begun getting ready for bed, the living room was quiet. Ashley went downstairs, nibbled on some of the now-cold pizza her parents had offered earlier, and drank two glasses of water. As she looked out the window in the direction of Rich’s—no, Mr. Dobson’s—house, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
About a month after that, Ashley’s parents sat her down in the dining room for what they called a “serious talk.” Ashley was terrified; after all, there was a chance Mr. Dobson had told them about how she’d shut him out. She wasn’t ready for that conversation, and as she slumped into her chair, she had the feeling she’d never be.
Instead, Ashley’s mother reached out and took her hand. “Ashley, sweetie, we’ve decided we’re not going to invite Mr. Dobson over anymore.”
“Oh, really?” Ashley asked. “Why?”
“There’s…an issue with backup bodies like his,” Ashley’s mother explained. “He’s—”
“His adult brain wouldn’t fit into that child body,” Ashley’s father cut in. “He held on for a while, but…well, Ashley, his memories are going away.”
Ashley’s cheeks paled. “What?”
“His brain was put into a younger body,” Ashley’s mother said. She ran her thumb over Ashley’s hand in the way she knew Ashley found soothing. “So it…turned into a younger brain. To catch up.”
“There are always memory issues with these things,” her father mumbled. Then, louder: “We’re saving up to get you a backup, honey, and we’re going to make sure it’s updated at least once a year.” He folded his arms over his chest, his body puffed up like a penguin’s. “Less room for error that way.”
“Less chances for memory loss,” her mother added. “Okay, sweetie?”
Over the weekend, Ashley rode her bike past Mr. Dobson’s house. He was sitting on his front porch, scrolling through his social feed with a dull look in his eyes. He was hardly registering anything he saw, his mind forcibly regressed and struggling to adjust. A positively ancient woman stood nearby, smoking a cigarette—possibly Mr. Dobson’s mother, Ashley supposed. Only she hadn’t aged backwards with him.
“This is my fault,” she was saying to herself. “The checkups…I thought your father was taking you. I should have known. This is all my fault.”
Ashley felt something inside her twist uncomfortably. She pulled out her phone and called Kennedy: she had the feeling she shouldn’t be alone right now.



In middle school, Ashley’s parents came into some unexpected wealth. Apparently, an elderly aunt had recently passed on, and her backups were just as withered as she was. Plus, she’d supposedly written in her will that she didn’t want to be brought back when the Lord came for her.
That was something else Ashley heard her parents arguing about. They’d given up on hiding their conversations from her.
Ashley and her family moved to a new house, across town. It was much bigger, much nicer, and much farther away from the eerie child who had once been Richard Dobson. Yet, somehow, nothing about the new house felt comfortable to her, so she tried to get out as often as possible.
Her selfies and videos were posted from various cafes and the occasional friend’s house. When she got her first call from a record label—a call she’d summarily rejected—she was hanging out in the bleachers after school. When she started contemplating holding a real concert, instead of the ones she holo-casted to a decent online audience, she was sitting in a booth in the corner of a fast-food restaurant. When she heard her parents fighting over what seemed like nothing, she was in her room.
Ashley considered writing her own will, if only so she wouldn’t have to get stuffed into a backup after she died. It was mostly because the updating appointments, which most people called “checkups” as a euphemism of some kind, were horribly uncomfortable. Having a needle in her arm while the scientists sampled her DNA was bad enough, but seeing a model of her naked body on a computer screen was even worse. She’d begun to wonder if she liked her looks at all.
She saw Cecily at one of her appointments, once. She seemed stifled, as if something had been ripped from her. Ashley noticed a long, thin scar running down one of her arms.
Staying at home only made Ashley feel worse these days. It was an unfamiliar place, only given life by her parents’ squabbling. Kennedy’s house was nice. Kennedy’s house was the safest place she knew. Kennedy’s parents weren’t home much, and they didn’t care that Ashley stuck around. Ashley and Kennedy spent hours in the living room, channel-surfing and discussing their futures.
Kennedy was aimlessly flicking through channels when Ashley saw something about backups flash on the screen. “Wait,” she cut in, her mouth full of popcorn.
“Mm?”
“Go back,” she said. “What was that, about backups?”
“Uh, let’s see.” Kennedy moved a few channels backward.
It was a court case of some kind. The ticker at the bottom of the screen filled Ashley in: what was happening before her was a murder trial. The woman at the stand was being accused of killing her husband.
“Brutal,” Ashley commented.
“Yeah,” Kennedy added. “I read about this one yesterday. She killed her husband, then used a backup to bring him back…and killed him again.”
“That’s awful,” Ashley said. Her voice was flatter than she’d expected.
“I’d say,” Kennedy replied. His voice had a familiar, anxious wobble. Was he hiding something? Ashley decided to wait for him to bring it up when he felt most comfortable doing so.
The doors to the courtroom swung open, and a new figure stepped in: a man flanked by scientists whose shirts all bore logos for one of the bigger backup companies in the country, the Lazarus Foundation. The man’s eyes were glassy, his lips slightly parted, his steps almost mechanical.
Across the room, the woman’s pupils shrank. “You! How did you…?!”
“Oh my God, that’s her husband,” Kennedy said.
“No kidding?”
“Nope.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t hear about this case before,” Ashley said, watching the scientists help the husband’s backup to the stand.
“It was pretty viral for a few days,” Kennedy replied. “You might’ve been busy working on that album of yours.”
“Right,” Ashley said, glancing at her guitar. She’d been customizing it lately, with stickers Kennedy had helped her make and a paint job that made her father shake his head in dismay. But if he wasn’t going to let her use his guitar, he had no say over what she did with her own.
“You…killed me,” the man on screen said. He raised a shaking hand in the woman’s direction. “You killed…me…and killed me…again.”
“You cheated!” the woman shrieked back. “You betrayed me! You’re a sick bastard and I’d kill you again!”
“They didn’t say anything about cheating in the reports I read,” Kennedy commented.
“I guess that adds a new layer to things.” Ashley watched the man with a discerning eye. “Is he talking like that because of the backup?”
“Probably.” Kennedy reached for another handful of popcorn. “Using two backups in a short period of time is bound to scramble your brain a little.”
“That, or she killed him with head trauma, I guess.” Ashley shrugged.
The trial continued, and the two friends watched it in silence for a while. Obviously, the woman would be found guilty, but she seemed to be pleading insanity. Or something. Ashley hadn’t been paying attention in her lessons about law at school—she’d been too busy scribbling down song lyrics and sketching the occasional tattoo idea.
“I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for him,” Ashley said, “but he did cheat. I mean, that doesn’t excuse her killing him—or killing him twice—but…ugh.” The vague expression on the man’s face reminded her of Mr. Dobson. “I hate men.”
“Y-Yeah.” Kennedy’s voice was wobbling again. “Hey, um, Ashley?”
Ashley tore her gaze away from the television. “What’s up?”
Kennedy fidgeted, hands folded tightly together. “Could you…maybe, um…start calling me a girl?”



Ashley’s high school graduation wasn’t going to be the biggest deal ever. What mattered more was her next concert—it would be her first held out of town, and countless followers had said they’d attend. Her holo-casts were reaching hundreds of thousands of views, so the fame potential for a live show was enormous.
Ashley had been slacking off in the few weeks before graduation, but to be fair, she needed a rest. Schoolwork was exhausting. College plans were exhausting. Music, even though it kept her heart beating, could be exhausting at times. And she couldn’t get away from it anymore, now that Kennedy’s house was off-limits.
Kennedy was still in contact, though. She—God, it felt so right for Ashley to think of her best friend that way—was a college freshman, and she lived in the very town where Ashley was scheduled to perform. They called each other constantly, giving each other little updates on their lives, and Ashley savored each interaction they had.
In the past few years, Kennedy had flourished. Her name hadn’t changed, but everything else about her was entirely new—it was as if she’d transformed into a completely new woman. Ashley loved her a little, though she hadn’t admitted it for fear of making their friendship turn sour. Maybe she’d go for it after graduation, after those colleges read her applications, after her concert kicked so much ass she’d be riding the high for the next week and a half.
Kennedy’s family hadn’t been so supportive: they’d basically kicked her out the moment she turned eighteen. She didn’t seem to care much, though, since they’d been absent for so many years already. Ashley’s parents didn’t comment on the issue, but to be fair, they didn’t comment on much these days. The most conversation Ashley had with her family was on her trips to the Lazarus lab, where her checkups had started happening every few months.
“It’s more important than ever now,” Ashley’s mother had told her last time. “Since our little girl is heading out into the world and getting so much fame….” She’d paused here, sharing a sentimental glance with her husband. “I—we—want to make sure you have a plan B, just in case things go wrong out there.”
Ashley was starting to wonder when she could stop getting backups. If I die, I die, she told herself, writing the latest draft of her will between AP exams. Let me come home to the Lord, or whatever.
“Or whatever.” It wasn’t as good as her lyrics, but it would do. At least, it would when she got legal access to her will. She was turning eighteen in just a few months, and then, her life would truly be hers.
Ashley was updating her profile with pictures of her latest look—she’d taken to using photo filters to give herself body modifications, then contemplating getting them for real—when an incoming call appeared on her screen. She rolled her eyes and brushed it away, since the number wasn’t familiar; besides, she had tons of fans, and if one of them found her number somehow, she wouldn’t be surprised if they’d try to make contact.
A few minutes later, Ashley’s mother came into her room unannounced. “Mom, what is it?” Ashley asked, sitting up in bed. “I thought I said I didn’t wanna be disturbed.”
Ashley’s mother looked almost ghostlike, clinging to the doorframe with one hand and holding her phone in the other. “I just got a call from Kennedy’s parents,” she said. “There’s…been an accident.”
The next few hours were a whirlwind of despair. Kennedy had been driving back into town, apparently for a surprise visit with Ashley, when her car had been struck. The cops had arrested the man who hit her—he was clearly inebriated, or so Ashley had been told.
“Can…can she still make it to my graduation?” Ashley asked, sitting at the dinner table with her parents for the first time in ages.
“I’m told the recovery process is going smoothly,” Ashley’s mother reassured her. “So, yes, I’m sure Kennedy will be there.”
Ashley spent the weeks leading up to graduation sending Kennedy all the “get well soon” texts she could, updating her profile with posts asking for prayers. Anxiety bore down on her, but she held on, knowing Kennedy would be in town in time for her graduation. Both her mother and Kennedy’s mother had confirmed it, and as much as Ashley felt she didn’t need to hear it from authority figures like them, some small part of her appreciated it.
Ashley stood on stage in the school’s auditorium, where she’d performed several times before she became too much of an e-celeb to appear in such unguarded venues. Her cap hung loosely on her head as she searched the audience, her heart pounding in her chest. Kennedy. Kennedy, I’m here.
She came to the front of the stage to receive her diploma. As she shook the principal’s hand, she caught a glimpse of what she thought was a familiar face in the crowd. But it couldn’t have been Kennedy—the face still wore glasses, even though she’d switched to contacts. The face had short, brown bangs drooping over it, while Kennedy’s were long and had recently been dyed pink.
Ashley’s mother’s voice echoed in her mind. We want to make sure you have a plan B.
Her stomach dropped.
After the ceremony, she saw Kennedy with her parents. She was shorter now. Younger. Years of hormone replacement therapy, voice training, blossoming into her ideal body, all gone.
“Our Kennedy died out there, on the road.” Kennedy’s father was all smiles. “But we kept a backup all these years, even after he moved out.”
Kennedy’s mother’s joy was more subtle, but just as insidious. “I’m sorry, Ashley, it’s just….” She sniffled, pressed her hands to her chest, smiled a weepy smile. “We’re just so glad to have our son back.”
He?
Son?
Ashley had been kept in the dark for over a month.
Kennedy, trapped in her old cocoon, looked at Ashley with confusion. “Um…Ashley. We…we were friends, right?”
Ashley remembered the husband with the empty stare. Richard Dobson, his brain crushed from fitting into a younger body. Cecily’s backup, floating in the bathtub.
She fled from the room. She biked home. She vomited into the toilet.
She stole a few bottles of her parents’ vodka. She filled her social feed with posts about oppression, about children forced into the closet, about transphobia. About how the world had failed her and the woman she loved.
“Backups,” she hissed into the video feed, “are a fucking disease. And someone’s gotta cure it.”
She thought, once again, of Cecily’s backup. She remembered the scar on Cecily’s arm.
Ashley imagined herself, floating in the bathtub like flotsam, Cecily’s scars painted in bright red all over her body.
By the time her mother found her in the morning, she’d made that dream come true.



Ashley started her latest livestream with her makeup only half-finished. Half her face was blackened and purpled, the other gaunt and pale from poor nutrition. With shaking hands, she pointed the camera at herself, offering a bitter grin to her millions of fans.
“Hey,” she slurred. “Fancy seeing you here.”
She had no idea what backup this was. She’d been through a few now, she was sure, but she’d lost count. Her mother wasn’t telling her anything either—all she did nowadays was pour more money into the Lazarus Foundation to bring her back over and over. All she did was smile sadly from the sidelines, trying and failing to control her daughter’s social media profiles, using up all her resources to bring back someone who didn’t want to be saved.
Not that it mattered: Ashley’s backup was seventeen, after all. And she couldn’t survive the few months to her eighteenth birthday.
In one of the few lifetimes still floating in her shattered brain, Ashley remembered getting into her father’s car and driving it onto the highway. She’d always used her bike to get around, too concerned about the environment to ride in a gasoline-guzzling monster, but this time, she’d needed to be in something bigger. It had been a few weeks before her eighteenth birthday, and the therapy wasn’t helping. Nothing was helping.
She’d driven off the road, plunged into a ditch, died on impact. She’d planned to take someone else with her, but then she thought of Kennedy’s familiar-and-unfamiliar face, and the bitter feelings and searing guilt rose in her throat, and then the car was spinning, falling, breaking into nothing.
Another time, she had sneaked to the roof of the hospital. She’d gotten her hands on some alcohol, thanks to a janitor who recognized her music and thought he’d earn some personal time with her if he helped her out. She’d taken a final selfie, laughing at the ludicrous nature of the world, before throwing herself into the darkness and plunging nine floors down.
She’d planned to die by drowning on a later backup when she considered doing it live. Turns out audiences were willing to watch her do it.
After her first live suicide, most social media platforms banned her. That was fine: she kept finding ways to come back, and before an admin could close her streams out, she’d have done the deed. Then she’d come back against her will, the cycle would repeat anew, and her tear-stained face would appear on a holo-cast once again before she infiltrated her body with the business end of a butcher knife.
Ashley watched her number of viewers climb into the tens of millions, and she felt appeased for a moment. She watched the likes shoot upwards into the sky. Something in her chest snapped and her breathing became labored—her backups were being made so quickly these days that they were starting to deteriorate. She could break her own fingers with enough pressure. It didn’t matter.
“You know what I’m gonna say,” Ashley told her loving audience, “but I’m gonna…gonna say it anyway.” Something between a cough and a sob escaped her throat. “Backups…are a fuh-huuuh-cking disease. They keep bringing me back, guys. Because I’m my parents’…little angel, an’…hah….” She tossed her head back, her mouth open wide in a grotesque approximation of a laugh. In one lifetime, she’d pulled out her own teeth on camera, but found it wasn’t fast enough to kill her.
She’d been in this body for less than a week, which was probably a new record.
“Not sure…how much time we got,” Ashley said. “This might be the last stream, guys…we can only…only hope….”
The live chat was blowing up with messages. Fans—newer ones, she assumed—begging her not to do the deed. They hadn’t been here long enough to know who she was. Ashley, once an e-celeb bright as the sun, now a collapsing star burning out again and again.
“H-Heh-Heeelp me,” she begged an audience that couldn’t reach her, in a voice she wasn’t sure was telling the truth anymore. “It huh-huh-huuuuurts.”
From the window of her hotel room, she could see the city streets, lit up with activity and energy and horrible life. She laughed again. Her makeup smeared down her cheeks, dark tears landing on the bedsheets.
She remembered the song Richard Dobson was whistling on her doorstep.
“S-Suicide is pa-haaainless…it b-brings on many changes….”
She pressed the gun to her temple.
“And I…can take…or leave it…if I plee-heeease.”
She rested her finger on the trigger and cast one final, sick smile to her audience.
“And you can do the same thing if you please.”