Steven James
The King
To Matt and Shawna
Dum vivimus vivamus.
Epigraph
A Wasp settled on the head of a Snake, and not only stung him several times, but clung obstinately to the head of his victim. Maddened with pain the Snake tried every means he could think of to get rid of the creature, but without success. At last he became desperate, and crying, “Kill you I will, even at the cost of my own life,” he laid his head with the Wasp on it under the wheel of a passing wagon, and they both perished together.
Prologue
When Corey Wellington woke up at 5:14 a.m., he had no intention of killing himself.
Over the last twenty years the thought of taking his own life had, in fact, crossed his mind many times, but never as clearly, as distinctly, as that first time, when he was a junior in high school and Caitlyn Vaughn stood him up at prom, and everyone knew about it, and it felt like someone had knocked his feet out from under him and hit him with a baseball bat in the gut at the same time.
In retrospect it seemed silly, childish even — feeling so devastated by something so inconsequential — but at the time it’d felt like his entire world had crumbled.
That night he’d gone to his father’s den in the basement and taken the key to the gun cabinet from the desk drawer where his dad kept it, where he’d thought it was safely hidden from his two curious children.
Corey had opened the gun case, loaded one of the revolvers, and then sat at the desk for a long time with the handgun cradled in his hands.
It felt cold and heavier than it looked.
Wonder, dreams, hopes, all those things that make life livable seemed to be slipping away like a stream of spent possibilities. There was nothing he could think of that he looked forward to: not summer vacation or his senior year or seeing any movie or listening to any song or playing any video game or being with any girl.
It was as if everything that lay on the horizon of that moment held nothing but the promise of more rejection and despair without any hope of healing.
Yes, a girl can do that to you. Yes, she can rip out your reason for living, just like that, with one glance, one comment, one prom-night giggle when she blows you off and then jokes about it with her friends.
He’d raised the pistol and slid the end of the barrel into his mouth.
Can you ever really know the reason behind an action? Can you ever really tell for sure why you did one thing instead of another? That, yes, this is why you quit your job, bought the Toyota instead of the Ford, ordered spaghetti rather than pizza, didn’t pull the trigger when you had the chance.
Maybe it was cowardice, maybe it was some strange breed of courage that kept him from putting a bullet in his brain that night, but at last he’d replaced the revolver and ammunition in the cabinet, and no one had ever known that he’d had a gun barrel clenched between his teeth and his finger pressed against the trigger on prom night.
In the months that followed, thinking about how close he’d come to ending it all had frightened him, and he’d found a persistent heaviness lurking on the edge of his thoughts. Eventually, he’d started taking meds to quiet the depression and keep those thoughts of irreversible solutions away, but still, over the years, it had stolen one marriage, two jobs, and any number of friends from him.
But not since that night in high school two decades earlier had the thought come to him as overpoweringly as it did today: Kill yourself, Corey. Take your life. This is something you can do right now. This very day.
He found his way to the kitchen, put on some coffee just like he did every day, drew a hand across his head to calm his tangled mop of slightly graying hair, and ate two doughnuts and an apple whose skin was beginning to wrinkle.
His thoughts chased each other around in an ever-shrinking circle. I wonder what it would be like to be dead. To finally be free of all the hardships and struggles and disappointments of life.
Then another series of thoughts: What disappointments, Corey? Your life is not that bad!
Things at the law firm were good, his health was fine, he hadn’t been diagnosed with cancer or received any other shattering news. But still, for some reason, he found his eyes drifting around the kitchen until they landed on the wooden knife block beside the microwave on the countertop.
Yes, yes, he realized that he really did want to commit suicide, or self-murder, as it used to be so aptly called.
Self.
Murder.
It was true that two weeks ago he’d broken off a relationship with a woman whom he’d been seeing for eight months. Maybe that was causing this. Maybe some form of repressed anger or undealt-with loss was to blame, but he’d realized he wasn’t in love with her anymore, and when he told her, he’d found that, apparently, the feeling was mutual.
He’d dealt pretty well with the breakup, and as far as he knew, his ex-girlfriend was doing alright too.
However, now as he thought of it all again, it was as if part of his mind was trying to use that breakup as a justification for letting him think the final, dark things he was considering.
You can’t make a relationship work, Corey. It’s because of who you are. You can’t change who you are.
He eyed that alluring block of knives. They were certainly sharp enough; he knew this because he’d nearly cut his finger to the bone last month while slicing a tomato for his salad.
Yes, a knife was definitely a possibility — wrists, neck, inside of his upper arm. He didn’t know what that artery in the arm was called, but it was an important one, he knew that, one that was nearly impossible to quell the bleeding of once it was slit.
Maybe.
Stop it, Corey!
His gaze traveled toward the sink.
There was bleach below it. He guessed that if he swallowed a cupful of that, it would burn through his tongue, his throat, his stomach, kill him from the inside out.
A horrible way to die, to be murdered by yourself, but still he went to the sink, pulled out the bottle, and read the warning: Harmful or fatal if swallowed! Call a physician or poison control center immediately. Do not induce vomiting. Seek advanced medical care at once!
Yes, a good long guzzle of that would do it.
What are you even doing here, Corey? This train of thought, you can’t let yourself—
But think of it, though. No more breakups or pain, no more heartache or questions or fear, not ever again.
He dialed off the cap to the bleach, but as he brought the bottle to his mouth, the sharp, acrid smell drew him up short. He couldn’t imagine that liquid inside of him, that chemical killing him in a way he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.
But you don’t have any enemies, Corey. You don’t! You need to get ahold of yourself here, you need to—
He returned the bleach to its home in the cabinet but found himself unable to drive the urge away, that unsettling discomfort, that gathering of terrible thoughts coming together like a convergence of vultures inside his head.
A convergence.
Of.
Vultures.
Self-murder. Yes. You can do this. This is something you can do. Today.
There was still climbing rope in the basement from the times he’d gone out while he was in college. There was a chimney on the roof of his house. He could use that. Tie a good strong knot, loop the other end around his neck, get a running start—