And He Lived… Blah Blah Blah

Throughout my life I’ve frequently imagined myself as various characters, versions of my persona with certain traits accentuated. Bravery. Romance. Intelligence. Strength. You name it, I dreamt it. Well, there’s no need to be anyone else anymore, so here’s the concluding paragraphs to the story of my life;

He finished typing on the laptop and slowly exhaled, he was finally done with this life. And that was okay. To his left the belt was already tied around the bedpost. It scared him to look at it, how something so ordinary was about to unravel his entire world. He pressed play on the song and left the laptop screen open on the webpage for them. His heart began to pound and his skin went cold and clammy. This is it. Like so many times before, only this time there was no escape plan. No rescue would come for him today. They’d never make it in time. He climbed onto the bed and slipped the would-be noose around his neck. All he had to do was relax and sit down, gravity would do the rest. He pulled the blue sheet down to his left. This would obscure him from view, but they’d find him eventually. When they realized that he wasn’t asleep in his bed, it was just pillows made to look like his outline. Everything was so dramatic, so theatrical, so well planned out. Suicide is not something to be taken lightly, if you’re going to do it, do it right. His legs began to ache from crouching so he stopped tensing and eased down slowly. Suddenly he felt it, the pressure inside his head, like it would pop. His lips and nose began to tingle, his breath came short and sharp; all ragged expulsion and desperate intakes. He could hear his heart beat through every fibre of his being, scratch that he could feel it beating. Like some distant earthquake it rocked his entire body. Everything seemed so far away and his limbs grew heavy. To save himself all he had to do was stand up. But with every second that passed, that option grew dimmer and dimmer. His vision blurred and the blackness set in. A thought darted across his mind. Was this a mistake? He dismissed it almost as quickly as it came. His body’s last ditch attempt to save itself. Not this time, old friend, I’m throwing in the towel. His body juddered and he blacked out.

Within the blackness his final dream began to play, like a movie on a rickety old projector. In it he stood up and took the noose off. His neck was fine. His body was fine. It was better than fine, he felt stronger than ever. He stood up straight and basked in the warm light flooding the room. Around him people were gathering and placing warm, soft hands on him. They were him. All the iterations he’d created in his mind over the years. There was the strong athletic him. The intelligent, successful him. The him for which everything had worked out perfectly. Now his mind was dying, collapsing in on itself, it only made sense for them to come forth. And the room around them was gone. The entire house had faded away, and they were in a field. Rolling pastures of pure green that stretched as far as the eye could see. Every version of him smiled softly and stepped into him. And as he absorbed each one, he realized the potential each one had possessed. One remained. One he’d never seen before. It had pale, blotchy skin; tinged with a purple hue. Its eye were half open and he could see burst blood vessels around the iris. The skin around its neck was ragged and discoloured. It didn’t take him long to work out he was staring at his own corpse. It looked up at him and the skin peeled away. Underneath was a smooth, pearly white skeleton. Vapour rose from the ground around it and clothed it in darkness. Robes of purest black that swirled and danced like smoke; it reached out its hand and he instinctively took it. Suddenly nothing else mattered, he didn’t matter. He was a speck of dust floating through the unimaginably vast chasm of darkness that forms our universe. Stars raced by, worlds no one would ever visit shot past him and he smiled. His eyes began to close as he slipped out of time and space itself. His body was gone; he was just energy now; darting around searching for something, anything to do. He could feel himself being drawn away and he passed back into the universe; slipping as imperceptibly into life as he did out of it.

He opened his eyes for the first time and cried. For a second he remembered everything about his life before, and then…

It was all new again.