content warning: suicide
(Get anything done today?)
Not really.
(How come?)
I just… didn’t.
(That isn’t a good reason.)
It’s hard.
(No, it isn’t.)
It’s hard to come up with a good reason.
(Why don’t you try?)
Okay… I skipped my classes to sleep in, then went out for a walk.
(Which is why you didn’t do any work.)
I walked the grass all the way down to the lake—you know the lake. My shoes got all wet from the rain, but I kept on walking because they were already sodden, and I didn’t care anymore. The blades of grass looked heavy with dew. I imagined the rolling beads as tears and felt like I could cry right there.
(Why didn’t you?)
I thought about lying down in it. Just to let the mud eat me up for a while. But I didn’t want to have to wash my jacket when I got back.
(Smart.)
There were ducks on the water. Far away enough that I could barely see them—only distant specks in the white fog like reverse stars. It’d probably be quite nice to be a duck, I started thinking. There’s not a thought behind their little, black eyes. Seems peaceful. I even used to like swimming. And they get great deals on all-you-can-eat bread buffets.
(You’re not ‘sposed to feed them bread.)
I know that. The fog rolled on over the lake, covering the ducks, and suddenly I was lost in a snowstorm. Besides my little patch of wet green-and-brown there was nothing apart from an unfurling white sheet—a blizzard without its bite—that emptied the air of all sounds and sights. My face stung from the chill. I closed my eyes to find that the insides of my eyelids were bleached white as well. A total… nothingness… pierced them as sharply as a knife.
(That’s dramatic.)
It’s what I felt.
(No, it isn’t. You can’t feel fog.)
I felt like I was the only person in the world; like I was the only traveller lost in this strange blizzard; and that I wouldn’t be found for years, like those frozen corpses that wind up everywhere on Everest. I’d be long-gone by then. So… I stood there for a long while. I seriously thought about jumping into the lake. I thought about swimming with the ducks. And then about floating on the surface beside them afterwards, forever, covered by an avalanche. I thought about it, but… I didn’t want to get my jacket wet.
(Smart.)
You think so?
(Definitely. Your jacket’d get all mucked up with scum and duck-shit and stuff.)
I suppose so.
(And then…)
I went home.
(Good-oh. Bit dull. Tell me ‘bout another.)
Another what?
(Another walk.)
Listen to an audiobook.
(Please.)
I thought I was being dramatic.
(You’re a writer. That’s a good thing.)
Piss off. Okay. Sure. It was a couple weeks ago. It was night. I was walking away from home, along the road by the river—you know it. A car passed, headlights painting me, blaring dubstep, and I could see the vague outlines of four people, all guys my age, sat in it. They yelled at me as they passed and made gestures from out the windows—banter, I assumed—but I didn’t hear what they shouted. Not thinking, I stuck my thumb in the air and waved at them. I suppose I was trying to be in on the joke, play it cool, you know? But they must’ve thought I’d stuck my middle finger up at them because the car screeched to a halt, like him who was driving had properly slammed the brakes, and their arms extended from the windows all waving their own middle fingers back at me. One stuck his head out the passenger side and yelled You what, mate! and I replied at the same volume, grinning: Was a thumbs up, mate, you blind? I don’t know why, but I found it funny.
(‘Course you did.)
I thought he’d beat me up. I’m sure he considered it, because the passenger door opened halfway before his mate tapped him on the shoulder, said something I couldn’t hear, he shrugged, and they drove off. I kept walking, but I also kept thinking about that car. I had it in my head they knew the route I’d walk and were waiting at the end to jump me.
(Scary!)
I wasn’t… Not scared. I didn’t want to be hospitalised, of course, but I kept walking the same route as before—down past the old church. I had goosebumps and there was a prickling sensation in my chest like static electricity. Not scared, though. I was… anticipating… the fight. I pocketed a good, heavy rock from the ground and just kept on walking.
(So, you figured you could take them, big man that you are?)
No. I’ve never been in a fight before. It was odd.
(Misplaced confidence, maybe?)
Not that either. I was angry. I hadn’t noticed before, but, thinking about it, I was angry. I wanted to hurt, and be hurt, and smash that rock against that guy’s face, and feel his fist against my nose; and the blood running down my chin onto his shirt; and the way he broke because he’d chosen the one person who, in that one moment, didn’t want to be fucked with.
Nothing to say?
(I’m just surprised.)
I was too.
(What happened?)
I walked the same route all the way home. They weren’t waiting for me. I threw the rock away.
(Yeah. I liked that one. How'd you come up with it?)
It happened… I didn't write it. I just, well, embellished it a bit.
(Nah. None of that stuff, that anger, that wanting-to-die-ness. That's not really what you feel, is it?)
It is. It's just that I have trouble—
(Expressing it? No. You're a writer for fuck's-sake. Your life's ambition is to make things up.)
That's not—
(So, let me tell you all about my own walk:
I went to the woods the other day. It was a nice, sunny, perfectly pleasant day. To embellish things a little we'll pretend there were storm clouds on the horizon—you know, all that foreboding horseshit you love. I walked by a tree and thought about hanging myself on it. But, here's the thing, I didn't actually picture myself hanging there on that tree. I pictured a character; someone I'd made up as a vessel for all that imagined pain. I walked by a river and thought about drowning him. I walked by a cliff and thought about throwing him off it. I crossed a fucking road and thought about holding him down in the headlights 'til something ran us down like the scared little fucking animals we are. And I wrote it all down, see. I created some unlucky bastard, other than myself, so I'd have an excuse to write shitty poetry about how much I think I want to die.
You want my advice? Write about something happy.
What?
Nothing to say?