The house is a two story building, with a long hallway between my parent’s room and my old one which are both on the second floor. The hallway has a side railing that overlooks the big living room on the first floor. I slide my hand across the railing like I always did as a kid, and walk to my old room. It’s been turned into some office and storage space since I went to college. I unhook the window and walk out on the shingles, and sit by the edge over the front porch. Ever since Snap died, I placed a dream catcher by where I slipped off. My mom told me it would keep that owl away. Keep me safe.
I take out the picture of Isaac, and place it next to the weather worn dream catcher resting under the window pane. I look at the huge strolling white clouds in the sky. “What’s it like out there, buddy? Is it heaven or hell? I hope there’s something. I even hope there is a hell, because I know at least, I’ll be with you again.”
I leave and go through the window and down the hallway, but see Creon’s room. I fall into it on the ground. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry little brother!” the carpet becomes damp as lay my face against it. “I wanted to watch you go to college! I wanted to take your first bar, become your uncle,” I cough, I can’t do this anymore! “I just can’t Creon, I’m sorry. You wouldn’t even recognize me anymore. I’m not your brother.”
I leave the house with the pistol, and go to the hill overlook near my old college, and watch the sun set as I sit on a bench. I remember when I was a kid my parents made me go to church. The biggest thing about it all, that confused me the most, was that we had souls. They were described as if there was a second one of us inside our fleshy body, and that they can be saved or destroyed by God. As I grew older however, I outgrew this belief and the validity of religion in general.
But one thing was true from it all. We have souls, and mine was destroyed. Not the souls that religion preached about, but my essence. The essence of what it means to be human.
The evening arrives, the falling sun casts its last light onto the college in the valley before me. The few students on the overlook with me begin to leave back to their lives. I remember it is Spring Break for them—it would have been for me too. All around my feet are crushed beer cans and other trash from the numerous parties and one night stands that have happened here since time immemorial
I look around to confirm I am the last one on this overlook as the stars begin to shine above. I grip the hard plastic handle of the gun in my sweater pocket, but it instantly stings from the cut on my hand I received yesterday. I grab it with my other hand, and place it on the bench next to me. I stare at the lit up campus and sky for a while. I try to look for that goodbye feeling you attempt to achieve before you move on to something else.
When my soul left, it left me unbearably empty. This emptiness was not light though, but heavy. It has become a gigantic boulder strapped to my back that I have carried around ever since. To feel full, to feel the joy of life, that is to be light and free. Instead, this emptiness grips me, and keeps me trapped in place and shrugged over like Atlas. I carry my own world of emptiness and the friends it brings along. These friends dot my globe like ugly black continents that pollute the oceans of my life: depression, fear, despair, and hopelessness. My Atlas has one country and citizenship, agony.
I try to search for that goodbye but I just can’t find it.
Whatever, they’re overrated anyway.
I grab the gun and stare at the barrel, the barrel stares back at me. The moonlight flickers about on its dark surface, giving it an essence of mystery as secret as death itself. I used to be terrified of dying. Now though, I see it for what it really is, a way out, and it doesn’t worry me or concern me of what may come after death, if anything comes at all. All I really need to know about it is that it ends whatever I am feeling here during this life.
I switch the safety off and raise the gun, aiming it at my face. After a few moments I lower the weapon. This is no way to go out, looking at the ugly end of a gun. I look up at the stars again. Their splendor is the last thing I want to remember before I am gone. They are beautiful, even despite the fact that I had recently returned from a war on one of them. A war that took my mind and soul and chose to, out of some cruel fucking joke I guess, to leave only my empty body behind. Tonight, I will finish the process.
I search the stars for the one I fought under the past year till I find its general location. I wonder how many people in it its star system are looking out into the sky right now, and maybe gazing upon my sun. Oblivious that I am about to take my life.
I bring the gun back to my forehead and feel the cold trickle of sweat on my palms and forehead. Suicide is not an easy thing, or the coward’s way out as many people label it. It takes resolve and determination to do it, courage really. I mean, I just finished participating in a war where at any moment I could have been killed, or if I so wanted to, I could have easily killed myself by simply walking into the open of the battlefield.
But I didn’t, instead, I held onto some whimsical belief that I could find redemption and purpose to my meaning again, if… maybe, just maybe I came back.
But what can one person really do to make a difference?
Why should I carry on with this pain inside of me, just to try and take a parting shot at the practically invincible system that destroyed me in the first place? A system I really have no chance against. A system that would easily use its immeasurable power to stop me before I even tried, like they did back on Nova Terra when I fought for them.
There’s a difference between giving up and accepting the reality of defeat.
I am just a body at the morgue without the ticket on its toe yet.
I lower the gun, and move to the edge of the overlook. The fog rolls in and creates a dream state of grey that casts itself onto everything it touches. Right here, right here is where I can see everything for what it is, a veil of uncertainty and fear that wraps itself around everyone’s life like the fog does right now to me. Right here is where it all started, the end of my life. So it will also be right here where I finish it.
I’m gonna do it now. Just get it over with. I place the barrel to my mouth and bite my teeth around the uncomfortable surface of the object. My tongue pushes its self-up against the barrel edge, but then moves quickly to the side of my mouth. I do this out of fear by thinking how bad it would probably hurt my tongue if it were so close to the exiting bullet. I have to pull the pistol out so that I can laugh without chocking. Then laugh harder at the thought that I was afraid of choking on a loaded weapon inside of my mouth. I fall to my knees to regain my breath.
I yell out into the dark valley from my overlook, “Why can’t I just fucking do it!”
Nothing.
“Huh? Why can’t I just fucking put this against my head and pull the goddamn trigger!” I put the gun to my temple but all I feel is my heartbeat pounding louder through my eardrums. “I’ve killed so many people, why is it so hard to just kill one more?”
Nothing.
“You know life, the only thing you ever gave me, was nothing. Nothing!”
Nothing.
“Yeah that’s right, just fucking keep doing it again. Keep giving me nothing.”
Nothing.
I hold my breath and place the gun back into my mouth—kill me! The trigger is strangely heavy as my finger rests against it. Heavy with the sorrow I feel. Heavy with the self-hatred I feel. Heavy with the fear I feel.
Suicide is not any easy thing to do. I know that for sure. I place the gun back on the bench and curl up on the side of the seat with it. I am pathetic. I can’t even do it. I talk myself up all day and I still can’t even do it. I hate my life so much, but still, I can’t even fucking do it.