aisalynn | My Suicide Story/Essay

In an earlier post I mention (at the end of a very long post) an essay I had to write about suicide. We had to have something to prove, but I turned it into a story instead. There's still a thesis! Its just not as obvious... Anyway, I'm posting it on here, 'cause I'm proud of it. Its rather long though, so I don't know how many people will actually read it. Its a bit bloody... so if you like that... er.. and if you don't.. well you could read it anyway. *pleading eyes*

A Part in the Clouds

The sunlight cut through the rain, glittering in the tiny droplets only to be caught and smothered by the thick smog that hung above the city. It had rain for days, and the streets below were wet and muddy. People in ponchos and raincoats muttered as they went about their business, it was too hot, and the plastic stuck to their skin uncomfortably. A woman dragged her son by the hand, scolding him as he tried to splash in the puddles. Another man stepped out of a café, saying a quick prayer for the rain to stop.

Far above their heads, there was a part in the clouds, and sun shined on one man, sitting alone on the top edge of a building. The man was beautiful. His long hair blew around his face in the slight breeze, his high-cheekboned and strong jawed face showing no emotion. A mask. Even his eyes looked empty, hollow, dead, as he looked at people on the streets.

He didn’t move. He barely breathed. If someone were looking at him they might not think him real. A beautiful statue: not a man, not a human. But no one saw him. No one saw this statue of a man, who sat, taking no notice of the rain. But when the rain stopped, the man finally moved. He looked up at the sky, at the part in the clouds where he could see just a little of blue. And for moment, his mask shattered, and his face contorted with pain, with disgust, with hatred.

“Why?” he whispered. “Why not strike me down? Why not send someone, to push me of this ledge?” He did not scream, or cry out in anguish, but his voice trembled with it. He looked down at his left hand. In it was long, slender dagger. He held it by the tip of the blade, running his fingers up and down the metal.

Slowly, he looked back up at the sky, his face once more that of a mask. He brought his right hand up to point at his chest. “What if I place it right here?” he whispered. “Right here. With the very same knife. The very same knife… What then?”

His eyes half closed, and a small smile appeared on his lips, as if he was experiencing sudden rapture, or listening to the gentle sound of music no one else could hear. A small breeze blew the damp hair from his face, erased the small droplets of water from his skin. The smile grew wider, and he allowed himself to enjoy it. This simple pleasure. He knew he did not deserve it, oh no. He deserved a lot of things perhaps, a painful death, a cell somewhere to spend the rest of his life, an existence in the plane of the sedated, where hurting, talking, thinking wasn’t possible. But the innocent pleasure of a breeze on a hot sticky day he did not deserve. But he took it any way. It would be his last after all.

He no longer held the dagger by the blade, but grasped the hilt. He brought it slowly to point to his chest. This is what he deserved. Death. A slow, painful death, by the same blade that was the cause of hers.

But that wasn’t true was it? After all, it was he who held the blade. He who made it sink into her, parting the flesh like it was silk. It was he who stopped her as she screamed, muffling the sound so he didn’t have to hear it, so it wouldn’t echo in his head, accusing him, reminding him, never letting him forget what he did, what he had to do, that he had wanted to do it.

But it was the blood that wouldn’t let him forget. It welled up from the wound, gushing over the knife and onto his hands, hot and dark and fresh. It was everywhere: in the fabric of her clothes, clumping in her hair, gurgling in her throat as her screams finally died. It filled the air with the smell of it, until he was gagging with every breath. And it didn’t go away. It stained his skin, his clothes, dried under his fingernails, brown and gritty. And the scent of it seemed to linger, he could always catch a whiff of it now and then…

No, it was not the screams that made him remember, but the blood. The blood and the blade.

It was only fitting that he should end his own life with the same blade.

He tightened his grip on the dagger, preparing to carry out his self imposed punishment, this payment, this atonement: what he deserved. He raised his face once more to the sky, and the sun shone down upon him, a part in the clouds, a break in the rain.

“Will you try to stop me?” he whispered.

No. It was what he deserved.

He took a breath, braced himself… and paused. For a minute he was completely still, a statue once again, a marble depiction of human desperation, beauty and sin.

And then his hand shook. Just slightly, but the tremor traveled from the hand though the arm and into the shoulders, continuing until his entire body shook with the convulsions, and the knife fell from his hand. He seemed to collapse upon himself as he sobbed, doubled over with the force of it.

He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.

He choked on his tears and his breath came out in sharp, harsh gasps. Oh god… he was going to have to live with this. The blood and the screams and the smell… it would never end. Because he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring that knife to his skin, force it through and then wait for himself to die, wait as the blood drained out of him… the blood. The blood. Pouring out of him and filling the muggy air with its scent, thick and warm as it pulsed out of him, as he grew colder, paler, as his very life rushed away from him in a river of red. The blood. Oh god…

The sobs finally ceased, his breath quieted, and his shaking body slumped in exhaustion. Yes, he was going to have to live with this. He straightened and looked once more at the city below him. It was grey, brown and wet. It was hot and humid and dreary. It was ugly. But there was a small part in the clouds, and the sunlight danced upon droplets of rain It streamed down to reach him, a beautiful man on top of roof in an ugly city. He didn’t know if it was some kind of blessing or forgiveness. If it was, he certainly didn’t deserve it. He didn’t know if it was an accusation, or a spotlight for what was supposed to be his last moment in his own tortured, twisted play.

But it didn’t matter.

He turned away and walked back to the rooftop exit. Opening the door, he looked back one more time, at the knife on the ground. The sunlight glinted harshly on the cold steel, accusing him and promising him things at the same time. Things he no longer wanted, and thing he could never have. He walked through the door and closed it behind him. Outside, the clouds shifted, and the sunlight disappeared, as if its job were done.

My Suicide Story/Essay

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