Unfortunate

“It’s not like it’s going to matter”
“How can you be so sure?”
“From the minute you picked up that bandana she was lost to you, and you know it.”
“NO! I refuse to accept this!”
“Fine by me, it’s your funeral.”

As he felt the blood running down his temple his mind wandered back to that last brief conversation. He had been certain that the kid had been wrong. His inability to face the truth had never been a problem before, but this time Reginald had known for certain it would get him killed.

He had never expected this though. How could he? All your life, there is only one point of view that matters. You are always the lead character in your own story. Your own world by definition revolves around you, so you will be the hero of your own story. You will be the one who comes out on top, since if you don’t come out on top, you won’t be there to experience the story, therefore there is no story.

An explosion in the distance made him turn his head.
Aargh, wrong move.
            Even though he was pretty sure he had stopped moving his head, the world had not stopped moving. Round and round it went, as if his body had finally realized it had been spinning round the world at about 1600 kilometers an hour for the last 53 years.

He closed his eyes.
This is getting me nowhere.
           When he opened his eyes, the frantic spinning of the world had come to a screeching halt, but his head was now officially on the floor.

It’s a rude awakening when you discover that actually, you were just a supporting character in someone else’s story. It’s especially painful when that message arrives via a stray bullet ricocheting of a golden care bear statue. A bullet which hadn’t even had the decency to be aimed at him in the first place!

He wasn’t even sure if the kid was the hero of this story. Who knows, maybe the explosion he had just heard had blown him and his girl sky high, to the further glory of some other shmuck who was probably never going to get anything real done either.
Maybe this is our eternal fate then, to be supporting characters of supporting characters in a never ending loop of senseless misdirection and superiority complexes…

He had given up on trying to feel anything, the pain had gone a long time ago and despair just seemed silly at this point. As he felt his consciousness prepare for a silent exit, a thought occurred to him.
What kind of name is “Rambo” anyway?