"Cross your Heart and Hope to Die
Swear that you won't tell no lie"
-You Can Run (Adam Jones)
Suicide is a strange sensation.
You can never really tell what goes on your mind as the final gasps for air escapes your lung. Of course, this is strictly speaking for Hanging or Drowning. It may apply to Jumping or pills if you live long enough to feel the effects. Guns are a little more immediate for any thoughts during the process though.
But I digress.
When a person begins to die, the thoughts that lead up to a premature death can differ for everyone.
But there's always two things that will enter your mind. And two outcomes.
"I'm dying. This is it. It'll all be over soon."
Or
"Oh God, no. I can't do this."
And what follows is either you die and it does all end. Or that you live, and the attempt fails.
What comes after is entirely up to the results. A chain reaction of bewilderment, confusion, and chaos follows after. Like a storm beginning to ravage a small, peaceful town.
I'm sorry, that's a gross miscalculation.
It was never a peaceful town, nor did the storm just begin.
It was always there.
A storm of dire, empty, angry, and sad thoughts.
The town of Quartz was a depressing rural town where people kept to themselves and didn't trust the majority of everyone.
That was the most ironic thing, considering small towns produces strong, united communities.
No, the only thing that goes around here is gossip and meaningless relationships.
In this town, there are only 4 people that I trusted.
But my older brother was long gone from a car accident.
And my mom is away at least half of the year. I never knew my Dad. He died before I could care about him.
So that leaves my older sister, Hannah, and my friend Nicholas.
I'm almost sad to leave them to be honest.
In the past few years, I've watched people leave and never come back from this place.
Everyone in Quartz wants to leave this place as soon as possible because behind the quiet and peaceful vibe this town has, it wasn't a secret that this place was a valley death.
High accident rates, Suicide Capital of the East Coast, and the most miserable atmosphere ever known to man.
I've watched this town break men into tears and make smiling children cry.
But the worst of it all was Quartz High.
A teenage wasteland for the faint of heart.
The students here keep to themselves unless you were born with the magic ticket called talent or had the guts to speak out.
The only person that can actually stand this place was Nicholas.
"You're food's getting cold, Mark." He'd tell me as I stare blankly at the food our school gives out.
Over the years I've lost any desire to live or leave.
Shackled into this weary life after you spent your ticket.
Yes, I had a ticket once.
Me and my brother.
We were both gonna get out of this town and start actually living.
He had the art. I had the vision.
But there wasn't a point anymore. He wasn't here anymore. No one else can make my visions come to life. My mother wasn't here. My father was never here. And eventually, my sister will one day leave me. And Nicholas will.
I'm alone in this empty world where no one is really here.
Sometimes I envied Nicholas and his optimistic point of view.
"Do you think my hair looks nice? The summer weather really is setting in." he would say to me, showing of his short, spiky hair. Though it is a summer weather, him wearing a jacket is a glaring contradiction.
"I really want to get out of here." He pauses. "Go somewhere cold."
I may not have any desire to leave this place, but I do want to leave. This world.
But for some reason, he thinks I want to leave Quartz and start something.
"You understand, don't you?"
I just nodded to satisfy him.
The only thing that really stops me right now is how my actions would affect the few people I do trust. And that it would be too painful.
If there's one thing Quartz was good at, it was keeping guns away from peoples hands. So a swift death wasn't going to be an option. As far as I know, only Nicholas' father owned a gun. And he was a cop.
"You ever wonder what it feels like to the people who get shot and die?" He'd ask me when I mention his dad. "Not that it matters. Barely any criminal here. Its pointless."
As he said this to me for the last time, he popped an aspirin for a headache he had. As he did, he looked so calm. Ever so calm..
It was in that day that I realized I could just down a couple of the pills my sister, who is also a nurse, keeps at the cabinet. I could just shovel them down my throat and sleep tonight. And hopefully my sister doesn't notice me.
That day I decided to leave, I had already lost any conscience of how this will affect people. Sometimes you really have to let things go if it meant getting things done.
Besides, I already made a bunch of letters before I go.
When I got home from school, I checked to see if my sister was around. She wasn't. An all nighter most likely.
So I went straight for the medicine cabinet.
But of course, someone had to knock on the door.
It was Nicholas.
"Hey." He still had that soothing look on his face. "I just wanted to drop by and see if you wanted to play some Diablo III with me and just hang out. Like old times."
I just had to entertain him, wait for him to go home.
As we spent hours mindlessly killing monsters, I began to feel some of the doubts come back to me. Nicholas, who spent the hours with me to play and chat about how things change so quickly and about life in general, made a lot of my anxieties about death resurface.
"There's so much out there. I wish I could reach them."
"You will." I say, to the only person I know capable of doing it.
He smiled. "Thanks. I know you will too." And that sort of hits me hard. Can I reach them?
He dropped the controller and began standing up. "I need to get home. Its getting late." It was 5 in the afternoon, but I suppose his dad would worry.
"Keep the game. People will come by here more if you had it." He says. "Bye."
I watched him get on his bike and pedal home.
So much out there huh?
I guess in a way, Quartz was just a starting place in a world of possibilities. But can someone so broken like me reach them?
This made me rethink of tonight. Hold it off perhaps for tomorrow.
That day, I was the one to find Nicholas at school. go on with our day and reach the cafeteria at lunch.
"I thought about what you said. And I don't know. Can I really reach out to the world?"
He smiles. "Of course you can. Even with the people you lost, what's in that great mind of yours can never be taken away. Even if your brother wasn't here, that shouldn't stop you from chasing what you wanted."
"But let's be honest Nick. If anyone's reaching anything out there, it's you."
He chuckles. "No I won't."
"You're being pessimistic. Why won't you reach anything?"
"Because I'm not even here in the first place."
That was true. He wasn't here. Never was. This conversation we had was nothing but my imagination trying to stop me from processing this day.
Today, Nicholas didn't come to school. He never will.
He was found in his room with a gunshot wound to his head.
Nicholas had been dead since that night. His father had been on the job and his mother had went to relatives for the week, and his sister was in college. Nicholas had no neighbors since they lived at the edge of the residential district where no one lived.
He had only been found when his father went into his room to wake him up for school.
So you ask what really is happening today as I attempted to fabricate this little scene with me and my dead friend?
I'm at the hospital, outside the morgue with my sister. Nicholas' father slumped down to his sides, crying for his baby boy to come back to him.
"There were letters on his person when he died." The mortician handed me a letter. "This is for you."
With it my name was written in his familiar cursive penmanship and his favorite blue pen.
In every Darkness, there's always a chance that a light will come out to guide you.
Mark Gibson, there is still light in your darkness.
While mine has faded, yours is far from it.
Reach out and escape from here.
Its too late for me, but don't let this chance slip you away.
-Nicholas Hayes
This was incredibly hypocritical and unfair.
Darkness and Light? Escape?
Why couldn't he see for himself these words he had written?
It was only later, when I visited him, that I found out.
Nicholas had been cutting himself for the past few months. It explained the jackets.
His mother didn't leave for their relatives like Nicholas had previously told me. She had been on the run after his father had found her threatening him if he told anyone about the physical and sexual abuse she had been inflicting upon him.
Regardless to say, he had been on a manhunt for his wife, that's why he had been out for a while.
Nicholas had also started to fail his classes, which I never noticed because I had been too busy trying to think of a way to die.
And he had dropped photography club for unknown reasons, despite loving photography.
This also traced back to his mother, who had kept taking pictures of a feeble Nicholas, weakened from her assaults.
I was excused from school that day. I spent the entire afternoon lying down on the couch, playing Diablo III.
I never noticed any of my tears streaking down my cheek today. I was dead silent.
As I brushed my teeth after eating my microwaved dinner, I thought to myself.
Did Nicholas get out of here like he wanted?
Did he get what he wanted?
Was it better for him to end his pain?
Was there really light in the darkness? The happiest person I know couldn't live with the darkness, no matter how much light he seemed to radiate.
Why did he leave me? Why do people keep leaving me?
Maybe that means I should just leave too.
But how should I even leave? Where would I go? Do I try to find this light or wallow in darkness?
And at that moment, in the sink, I saw the bottles of pills I prepared.
