Dark Places

Photo by Myself

*Drowning trigger warning*

 

It was a chilly evening in November when I decided to kill myself.

I had been flirting with the idea for a while now, more serious and less given the day, but with the dreary weather came more bad news and that sealed my fate.

In fact, it was not the first time, but something in me was broken now. I was certain it would be the last.

I pulled my car into the drive of my run-down apartment set back in the woods, my bed made amongst the spiders and small creatures. I fixed my eyes on a leaf strewn bank, headlights illuminating autumns decay. I spoke to myself in the chilled dark of the car, hands gripping the wheel glowing orange like a boogeyman.

“Grab the knife, boogeyman, put it in your pocket and give your mom a hug goodbye.”

I finally parked, the head lights illuminating a small circle in the grassless yard, worn down to the clay. My feet trod this small path probably millions of times now, wearing out my shoes and bones with worry, in a fools attempt to calm anxiety.

Now I drew in a thick shuddering breath, chill sewing itself neatly in my lungs.

“Go in, grab the knife, put it in your pocket, and hug Mom,” I said, crunching leaves as I mounted the six short steps that was my stairway to heaven.
As I stepped inside the darkened house, the realization the power was out struck me like another thunderbolt of bad news.

“Jake?” called out a weak voice.
I stepped forward through the dingy, pitch-black kitchen to the warm glow of candles flickering in the next room. My mother sat there, withered frame bundled in several blankets with her telephone screen facing outwards, illuminating me.

“They shut the power off,” she said, matter-o-factly.

“Sure did, mom.”

“Any news today?”

I had left the newest sheaf of rejections in the car.

“No, not today. Guess the mail didn’t run on Sunday.”
She peered at me, then lowered her phone screen.

“It’s Wednesday, Jake.”

“Right.”

She gazed at me over the phone screen before gesturing towards the foot table in front of her.

“Take one of these candles,” she said, “and a match to your room when you go.”

I grabbed a red candle and strode along, feeling more than seeing my way to the bedroom. My room was somewhat colder than the rest of the house and I shut the door, silently cursing my leaky windows.

“Fuck the windows,” I muttered aloud, remembering I was a grown man.

“Fuck the leaky windows of this crappy apartment. And the sorry doors too,” I added.

I lit the candle by feel and placed it on the floor, then lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

Watching the mosaic of shadows flicker turned the gears in my mind, reminding me of the gift that soured into a deadly curse.

My desk in the corner was littered with  pages of script and type, all returned to me from publishers. Lots of red letters of rejection spilled over the pages, dull, unfeeling pain in my wrists mimicking the sensation that had settled over me like a weight.

I began to undress then forgot, and so sat with my shirt off, pants pulled down around my ankles with shoes still on. I had no energy to take them off. I had no reason to anyway.
Why take the shoes off at all? I asked myself, then my thoughts ran away with me in tow, as they often did.

For all I cared, I had ought to lay there and rot away, my one purpose whittled away to years of rejections and try agains.
My money gone, what little I ever had. The bills are all three months past due and the power got shut off yesterday. All that’s left is gas fumes in the car that hasn’t been repossessed yet and a few things I couldn’t manage to sell, or even give away.

“Grab it and go,” a little voice whispered in my ear. “Grab the damned thing and go.”

The weight seemed lighter then, and I shifted. I pulled the pants back on and drew out a nicer button down from the closet. Sleep eluded me, as it had for several days.

Energy surged through me for the first time in weeks as I picked up a plain black handled knife and opened the blade. I tested  the edge on my finger, drawing blood as it kissed my skin.

I winced, but the pain sent a surge of adrenaline and something akin to purpose through me.

“This is how I’ll make myself new,” I said aloud, dark thoughts swirling inside. Perversely, I hoped that perhaps my work will become famous once I’m gone. I put on my only nice shirt, then stepped out of the bedroom, into the dark hallway. I walked towards the living room, following the sound of  “Real” housewives’ voices whining from my mother’s phone.

Mother hedged herself in against reality, consuming cheap entertainment while her only son let her down.

“I love you, Mom,” I said, bending to wrap my arms around her blanketed form.

She sighed, then freed one hand to pat my own.

“Love you too.”

I had thought it all through.

I used the last of my savings and the money from the car loan I knew I wouldn’t pay back to fix something up for mom. It was my cousins who lived far away. They were good people. Better than me at least.

I drove out ten minutes to the horse trails that wrapped around Lake Hartwell, miles and miles of small footpaths layered with horse excrement, excuse me, horse shit. The kind that anti climactically fell while they walked, most frequently of all times during Christmas parades, and most commonly landing on that final out of reach piece of candy you’d been eyeing that somehow had eluded hundreds of feet and tires.  

Thinking of horse shit and missed opportunities, I left the keys in the switch and a prewritten letter on the driver’s seat, along with information about my mother situation and her medicines.

For the hell of it, I rolled all the windows down and threw the trash out of the car, right back into road.

“Fine me!” I said, words swallowed by the stillness of the night.

 

The cousins would fly in tomorrow to pick Mom up. I grinned to myself as I wondered how they would get away from the airport. I had promised to pick them up. Oh well.

Still standing by the car I shrugged, casting off my coat. I gazed at the worn article with pride before slinging it into the woods. I did the same with my nice shirt, goosebumps rippling across my skin like frozen fire.

I used the dim light of the moon to pick my way ahead, first on a small stretch of logging road and then a foot path, heading straight for the lake. As I went, I fiddled with the knife in my pocket, slicing the tips of my fingers, getting myself prepared for the great bites it would take out of me.

After several miles of winding round, I stepped onto harder clay, the dirt crumbling away as the lake yawned in front of me. A small cliff stretched to the left and right of me as moonlight sparkled across still water. The other shore yawned a half mile off, stretching out here, narrowing there and continuing on under a great bridge to the north.

I held the phone light out, searching for a space to climb down and of course, stepped straight into a massive pile of the horse shit. So great my foot slid from under me, causing me to flail my arms out for balance and the phone go flying off. I caught myself, foot sliding forward into pine needles only an inch away from the fifteen or so foot drop.

I paused for a moment, thinking of my reaction and then laughed like a maniac. What kind of dead man saves himself? I wondered. Oh well.
I scrambled down the face almost blind, using roots and rocks that had been worn down since my childhood by myself and other excited youth from the college nearby. I hit the coarse sand, hard packed from a recent rain, striding for the water. I stopped at its edge, letting the water soak into the toes of my shoes.

I took out the little knife, blade not longer than two inches.
“So, you’re it, huh?” I asked it.

“You’re what I’ve been heading towards all these years?” I let my voice rise over the still water and empty beach.

“If I’d known, I’d have given up a long time ago!” I shouted. Lights glittered to the north over the bridge, a few lucky homes squatting at the water’s edge.

“If I’d known every talent I had was worthless,” I mused, “that my life was started forty years too late to be who I wanted, why, I’d have ended it the second I found out.”
“Fucking WorgBarner!” I shouted, kicking the water. With all my heart, I cursed the plant I’d spent years in wasting my life for a dollar.

“Fucking Kacey!” I cried, remembering my sweet girlfriend who had herself been thrown violently into this very lake. Only, by another person, and in a contraption of metal with fancy plastic and remarkably comfortable seats at about fifty miles an hour.
In my final act of defiance, I pulled my trousers down and sprayed urine about the beach, asserting some primordial sense of dominance.

“Good riddance to this sorry shithole,” I said, zipping my pants and stepping into the water.

I paused for a moment, reflecting my last act.. I stepped out of the water again, civilized. With hands in pockets, I became another casual observer.
“Bet that’s a nice view in the evening,” I said, nodding towards the houses. Then, slowly, I shook off the façade and let the tide of rage sweep me under again.
I swam out, kicking hard, fingers curled around the torch of Zeus’s fire. The cold water swirled round, encasing my body in a numb pain that gradually eroded all sensation. Breathing heavily, I peered back, barely able to make out the shores in the dim moonlight. I was never a strong swimmer, so unless I paddled hard, I sank immediately.

I gulped for air and swallowed a bit of water, then brayed as a donkey to clear my throat. With a great surge of rage, I boosted my head high above the water.

“I’ll leave you all to ruin it!” I shouted, this time picturing the many faces in the past who had refused my work, those who told me to try something new. All those people who had proven me wrong and, unfailingly, themselves correct.

I let all my breath out before diving down, pulling the blade on the knife as I did so. My fingers fumbled, numbed as they were from the cold. I felt, but blindly and underwater the torch slip away.
I flailed for it madly, trying to push myself down but being a weak swimmer, had no sense of direction whatsoever. Almost immediately I knew the search was hopeless. It was in that instant as well my very intelligent human body realized it’s incredibly moronic human brain was telling it to do something that did not make any earthly sense. That was to exist in a freezing body of water, flailing around and using a ton of energy without any oxygen.

Somehow, without bothering to run it by the moronic brain, my limbs managed to flail their own way to the surface, just as spots appeared in my vision. Air hit my face and I began violently coughing which quickly became vomiting all the lake water that had been filling my airway.

Stars exploded in the sky as my body took control, forcing itself to suck down air.

“There! Look right there! Knew I heard something!” a shrill voice called.

“Jesus Christ!” a gruff voice responded followed by a mighty splash.
Sometime before my lungs had finished wringing themselves out, I felt burly arms wrap themselves around me.

Still retching, I was hauled over the side of the boat. I became a great human tuna that flopped about, retching and gasping air in the bottom of an aluminum fishing boat.
I wonder now how much I’d go for per pound.

There was thumping on my back and the shrill voice was carrying on now, screaming what to do as the engine roared to life. Someone said something about a cell phone. Apparently 911 was called. I say apparently because this is where things really started to fade. My body decided it was done coughing after the heavy hand finished thumping my back. It was time for bed.
“Yer gonna be okay,” the gruff voice said. “Yer gonna be just fine.”

Oh well.