Seaside Suicide Note

Seaside Suicide note

It’s funny. I study this red plastic exact-o knife in my hand—dull silver along the body and a reflected gleam of firelight shimmering along the edge—and I wonder: what did I do to make Josh quit me like he did—fuck!—quit everything like he did? Was the direction we were heading that wrong? Together, we were magic…or so I thought. School was fine, and he had the coolest mom around; everybody thought so.

This isn’t the knife he used, but I can pretend. I’ll make it the same with my imagination. He always used to love how I made shit up. I wish the whole last week was all in my head, like a bad dream or a scary story.

Out in the dark, from the bluffs above the sand, I hear my friends. They cope with Josh’s death in their own way: they explore, they fuck and they suck – all in the name of Josh; like a farewell toast of flesh and fluid. Pairs wandered off, leaving me and Josh to say our goodbyes in private.

Well, that’s what they said they were doing, but I knew. And I think he would’ve wanted it that way; for this night to be some kind of fuckfest or something. Yup, amid varying stages of drunken revelry, the class of 2011 grope and grunt their way to a state of being called Forget.

Here by the mingled mellow orange of the once raging bonfire, I want nothing more than to abandon everything I’ve ever known and everything I might ever learn. But my ‘forget’ can’t be found between the legs of another. Not anymore. And there’s only one body fluid I’m gonna shed tonight … and I may even cry out as it leaves me. Maybe.

Sure, hearing them doin’ it makes me miss him; makes me think I’ll never again feel what they got right now; makes me wanna find him and refill the Josh-sized gap in my heart.

But this party tonight—big fire, two kegs, and enough weed to dull the pain—is for him…a kind of going away party. It’s not about me and my needs. Earlier, after the funeral, I sat beside the hole he was gonna spend eternity rotting in, and things clicked into place for me. I was pissed, but I knew what needed doing. I screamed at God, sittin’ up there in heaven, told him to take care of my man for me ‘til I saw him again. I don’t think He was listening, cuz he didn’t say shit or shut-up back to a lonely girl, pouring her heart out. I also don’t think up was where Josh was heading.

I read once that there’s a place in Hell set aside for suicides, but fuck it. If that’s the case we’ll be together anyway. And it sure as shit’s gotta be better than this place.

Dead is dead and you gotta release, right? Besides, me and him are like magnetic. Nothing can keep us apart for long.

He said goodbye with a note written in the sand and, just like that, he was gone. This is where he did it. Exactly one week ago tonight, not ten feet from where I sit, then bled out into the bonfire. When Carly, my bff and maker-of-the-best-fucking-margarita-anywhere, said we should do this—the party—my initial reaction was, well, not good. I kinda freaked a little. Do you blame me? I think she might still be a little pissed at me for slapping her, but she said she understands what my deal is and that I wasn’t the only one who loved him. I never told her what his final note to the world said:

“Goodbye Mom, goodbye Laura. Fuck the rest of you.”

Carly would be included among the ‘rest of you’ section of that note. Ha! Fucker.

At least he mentioned me. That’s something, right? Maybe if she’d known what he said I wouldn’t have had to come here and pretend to be strong. I could have done this at home in the tub instead.

After the boys lit the fire I thought I felt him here with us, thought I felt something touch my neck like he used to with his chin scruff, but that could have been the weed…or maybe the tide moving out. I dunno. Now all I feel is a cold so deep my bones hurt. Maybe the party would’ve happened anyway and him dying was a good a reason as any for us to come to the beach.

The light from the waning fire is eaten before gaining enough darkness to see the water, but I hear it gurgling; out beyond the pilings, the rocks hold back waves with a ‘shush-whoosh’; a peaceful whispered lullaby … to calm me as I close my eyes.

I close my eyes because I don’t want to see it. And if I were to watch, I could never, ever, open my skin the way it needs to be opened: up ‘n down; that’s the way it’s done. Go deep, but not so deep with the first one that you cut tendons, ’cause you need the strength and dexterity for the other wrist. I learned that off the internet.

Right now, when there are one-bazillion things I’d rather spend my last minutes on, I think of my father; would he congratulate me for following through and finishing something, for finally making the ‘cut’? “Fuck you for invading my head, Dad,” I whisper, but not loud enough for my friends to hear.

A muffled yelp from out in the bushes trailing a string of ‘oh-gawd’s', hammers at me as I take a deep, cleansing breath. The night’s moisture settles around and in me, stirring the washed-up corpses of fish littering the shoreline to fill every lungful of air with the bitter taste of their rotted tombstone. The smell is a fitting one; it allows me to focus on focusing, and dampens the gleeful bursts of fuck-sounds from the dark.

“I wonder,” I say to the knife, to the ‘no one’ there to hold me, “Will I drain away with the blood, or will I simply cease when my heart stops pumping?”

I pop the black safety catch and extend the blade: clack…clack…clack; each inch resounds like a broken bone.

A giggle reaches me as I lower the blade to my skin just above the bluish network of veins in my left wrist.

Another titter of hushed laughter is chased by a splash.

As far as I knew all my friends were either gone or back in the bushes, not in the water.

I squint, but still can’t see further than the shoreline and the light, bubbling reach of the midnight tide.

“Hello,” I say, not loud, but loud enough reach the water. “Who’s there?”

I wait. I wait so long I begin to believe I’m too stoned to know the difference. I strain and hold my breath so long the pain becomes something alive; burning with a need to be freed—and still I hear nothing from out in the water. Unable to hold my breath anymore, I expel stale air and gulp the briny sea air.

From out beyond the pilings, from behind and all around me, a whispered taunt reaches my ears: “Very impressive, but if you hope to have any success, I suggest you use that pretty little knife instead.”

My eyes flick to the knife in my hand—still poised above my wrist—and I thrust the knife out like a crucifix, a ward against any evil lurking in the dark. I could start rhyming off friends names, but already know the voice belongs to none of them. Could be the beer, might be ‘cause I don’t care, but I’m not really scared—just feeling intruded upon.

Instead, I say, “Piss off. This is private time.”

“I beg to differ. You invited me.”

“Like hell I did. I didn’t say shit until you laughed.”

“I’m sorry for that—I really am—but you’re so full of the drama of your situation that I couldn’t help myself.”

“That’s it. One word from me and there’s gonna be five guys down here beating your ass. Come out of the water.”

Louder now, from just beyond the firelight, from just over my shoulder as a salty breath in my ear, came, “As you wish, but we’re alone, Laura. No one can hear us.”

I jump to my feet, stumbling drunkenly in the sand as I wheel around. Gone are the grunts and squeaks; gone is gurgling slap of lazy waves meeting the pilings; and the fire sits at my feet, mute: I’m deaf to all but my own breath labouring in my ears.

“No!” I scream, but instead of piercing the night, the word falls straight from my lips and dies in the sand at my feet. “Guys? Carly …?”

From the corner of my eye comes a rippling emergence—an inexplicable coming together of shimmering half-light into one rising mass. My hands fall to my sides as my mind negates my eyes. Distantly, I register pain in my thigh from a glancing slice from the forgotten knife as my hands fell. A warm tear of blood slides down my leg and is lost in the sand.

The surf foams and swirls before me, usurping my reality one inch at a time.

A hairless, faceless head; a pale chest and slender torso, arms raised, palms raised to the half-gone moon. Further it rises, devoid of both body hair and genitalia: an androgynous melding of Man-shaped light.

I stand frozen as it strides toward me, trailing an oil-like slick of radiance as it shucks water for sand. Each step brings definition to a formerly blank face, until its silvery eyes find mine and an open-mouthed smile reveals the only deviation from its uniform colour: perfectly white teeth.

As though an invisible cocoon holds us both, each sound, each smell, is an amplified assault on my senses. Below the ever growing tang of the sea rides a hint of blood: a final primal toast. I know what comes next and am not afraid. Somehow this is a summoning of my own design.

It says: “May I sit with you?”

I don’t answer right away. I can’t. My lip quivers and I bite it.

“Sure,” I say, dreamily. Gone is my former insolence, my false bravado. My mouth is so dry. I lick my lips, and say, “Are you Death?”

“No, not as you know it. Death is final; an end of something that once began. I am as eternal and enduring as time.” His hand closes over mine, a touch as dark and cold as the bottom of the ocean that numbs me down to the spine of my soul.

“Are you going to kill me?” I’m at once hopeful and terrified. Hopeful because I wouldn’t need to kill myself; terrified because the choice would no longer be mine.

“Does death frighten you?”

Although his eyes are no different from his skin, I’m held rapt; I’m mesmerized by their muted reflection, by their unfathomable depth. “A little. Yes. Is it going to hurt?”

“Do you want it to?”

“No.” And I really, really don’t either. I only chose the knife in the first place because that’s how Josh did it. I thought it would be romantic, like Romeo and Juliet. Also, the internet said it didn’t hurt too much, compared to…other stuff.

“Then, no, it won’t.” But it smiles and tilts its head ever so slightly.

“Are you lying?”

“Does it matter?”

I want to say’ fuck, yes—it matters-very-fucking-much’, but melancholy dampens my resolve. Instead, I say, “How—how are you gonna, you know, do it?”

“I’m not. You are.”

Tears well up and blur its face, blur the night, into a limpid pool of melting stars. I blink the tears away but more come pouring forth.

“Show me the breaking of your heart, little one. Do you weep for you or for a dead memory?”

“For J-Josh,” I stammer through chattering teeth.

“Ah, good.” The creature places a hand upon my chest and my knees weaken, while my heart hammers at my rib-cage. “Use that,” it says. “Realize your pain.”

“I do. I feel it.” Braless, my nipples respond to its icy touch—constricting, hardening like pencil erasers beneath its hand—and it thrills me to my toes.

“Do you want the pain to end?”

“I do. I really do.”

“Do you really?”

The creature circles my body, holding me close from behind. Its chin rests on my shoulder, and its hands slide down the length of my arms, raising them along with its own to criss-cross my body in a lovers embrace.

Its breath in my ear is a chilled breeze. “Use the knife. Let me be your courage.”

So I do: for Josh, for my asshole father, but mostly for one last gush of warmth before an eternity of ice. I pick up the half-buried plastic exact-o knife and wipe sand and blood from the blade.

I raise the blade to my exposed wrist and say one last silent farewell. The creature, still holding me tight from behind, tenses, and I pause.

As though it were caught amid the throes of a prolonged orgasm, it grunted, “Do it. End your suffering.”

My will slips away, but again I falter as the point pricks the thick skin above the pad of my thumb. A button of blood dots my wrist as an unknown fear grips me, sending tremors echoing though my body.

“I-I can’t.”

Its hold relaxes, but its arms remain crossed beneath my breasts. “You can’t?”

“No. I’m afraid.”

“Then don’t fear.” It untangles both arms from my waist, steps around me and takes both my hands in its own. “You don’t need to do it.”

Relief floods through me, washing away the cold, the doubt. I can move forward from this. Josh was my life, but he’s gone now. I need to move on.

“Thank you,” I say. “I didn’t realize—”

“But now you do? Now you see and fear the torments you would know?” He turns my wrist and licks blood from the wound.

“Yes,” I breathe, emotion turning my voice to a whisper.

“Good.” His grasp tightens around my wrist as a cruel smile turns up the corners of his mouth. “Now we can begin.”

“No-no-nooo,” I moan.

I try, but can’t match its strength. Its other hand closes over mine holding the knife. Bones crack as its fingers clamp down and guide the trembling blade to my upturned wrist.

I watch as the blade slides deep—too deep. The edge scrapes bone and snaps off before my hand is yanked away. Fiery pain blossoms and courses up my arm as my blood paints the sand. The creature releases me and steps away to watch. My crushed fingers spasm as the broken knife falls to the sand.

The pain is short-lived. A bone-deep cold settles over me as I drop to my knees.

A dizzying grief overwhelms me, consumes me. I sob silently as the creature kneels down in an ever widening pool of my blood and watches my life drain into the sand.

Before me, the creature hunkers down, digs a finger into the sand, and writes:

“Goodbye Dad. I finally got something right…”

My eyes fade before reading all, but I think I know what it’ll say.

Out beyond the pilings, waves gently lap at the face of the girders. Up in the bluffs, under the cover of a starless sky, a feral moan marks a prolonged climax as grief and passion collide.