Chapter 1: A Means to an End

First thing is first: I do not condone suicide in any capacity, under any circumstances short of possibly a painful and terminal disease. And even then, please just try, for those around you. For your impact is intangible and further than your sight.

The number for the suicide hotline should you need it is 1-800-273-8255. Do not wait, please seek the help you may need.

I do not want to hear of anyone attempting it with agendas provoked by my writing.

But I need to write what I need to write. There is no way around it, much like the natural yet feared concept of death. And if you are susceptible to such concepts and literature, then I urge you to read something else.

But if you so choose to stay, choose to take this journey of death and fate, I promise that I will do good by these concepts.

• • •

Creeaakk.

The door to Arik's apartment opened as obnoxiously as ever, with the metallic screech of rusted hinges and a symphony of wooden creaks sung from the old door frame. He always recognized the sound as a foreboding of how his day would go when leaving the house. He found that silly since it's just what wood and metal does after a certain amount of time, but that was simply the way his brain worked these days.

Everything was just a twisted symbol of fate that kept his mind bottled in his own problems. It was irritating, it was annoying, and it was draining.

He kicked the door shut behind him and took a long look at his dark and blue empty living room. Normally a sigh of defeat would break the stare, but this time the stare was met with a chuckle. A chuckle and a sluggish shuffle to the kitchen.

"It's ironic that I sold my furniture and TV out of desperation for money. Now I can't even relax in my living room one final time."

The light in the kitchen flickered on, revealing a single rat that had chewed its way into the bag of Arik's last loaf of bread. One of the last items of food he had left. It yanked its snout out of the plastic sack and locked its beady frightened eyes with Arik's baggy own.

"But at least I've got an audience."

Arik frisbee'ed a thick orange paper across the kitchen that read 'EVICTION NOTICE' along the top. He then took his black leather jacket off and threw it on the counter, covering up the multiple knife marks stabbed and slashed into the wood and scaring off the bread bandit. Finally, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope with a sleeping dog drawn on it before placing it atop the jacket, hesitantly.

His suicide note.

It was addressed to key people in his life, namely: his friends, his ex-girlfriend, and his parents. He didn't initially intend to write one as once he killed himself nothing would ever be of his concern again. But after more consideration and having his bucket list final conversations with these dear people, he decided he truly didn't want to hurt them too much more or cause any kind of chain reaction.

It was like his last bit of selflessness in a world he didn't feel deserved it. His final message to only the loved in attempt to help ease their minds into a memory of him that focused more on his brighter qualities of what he once was. It just wasn't fair to leave without an explanation and he felt at least they deserved that.

It was his last piece of art in some ways as well. And that was enough to muster the willpower to write the damned thing.

Arik pulled a singular bent cigarette out of his pocket, followed by a lighter with the engravings of a skull he carved with a razor a while back. Lighting the cigarette, he shuffled over to the living room window, the outside lights dancing on the wall and ceiling through the raggedy blinds of the window. Pulling the side string, the blinds flew up in one quick motion, illuminating Arik's sad mug once again.

He lived six stories up in an old apartment building that, for all intents and purposes, should have been condemned long ago. The landlords were morale nazis, the neighbors blind or deaf aliens, and the rooms were infested with rodents and roaches. The only appealing thing about Arik's apartment was the view from the window.

No buildings in sight were as tall as his and he had a nice view of the polluted concrete jungle he lived in for the last 10 years since moving out of his parent's place at 18. It was dark outside, so yellow light lit up roads and put a glowing hue into the sky like an artificial sunset.

"Nope. Not gonna miss this place," he stated after shooting a cloud of smoke at the window.

Turning away from the nightlife, he took a step toward his bedroom but was halted when he looked up to his ceiling. He knew it was there the whole time, but he had been ignoring it for some reason.

A noose tied around a ceiling fan.

Arik stared at it, completely motionless, as if encased in stone. If he had to tell you what he was thinking at that time, he could not. He was lost in pure concentration and felt something resembling fear and salvation playing pong with his brain. The only reason he snapped out of it and broke from his stoney prison was because his cigarette had burned out and singed his fingers.

"Ah," he muttered. It wasn't the reaction of someone who had just been burned, but the reaction of someone who was simply confused as to where the time went.

A piercing stare analyzed the cigarette butt before flicking it across the room and continuing to the bedroom.

The bedroom wasn't much more welcoming than the living room, having nothing but a few piled up dirty clothes, a rickety wooden chair, and an assortment of Arik's past art strewn about. He was reminiscing on past projects before he had gone to hang out with his friend earlier that day.

A lot of the illustrations depicted a large brindle dog in them. It was a calling card of sorts, but even more than that,it was his old dog, Chewis. Chewis died a long time ago but the pain of how it all went down and the hole Arik was left with stayed with him forever. So, as a way to deal with it and remember him, Arik began drawing Chewis in a lot of his work and felt as if Chewis and him were still going on a journey through life together.

You could easily point out that Arik was being hypocritical and that Chewis's death should have been the perfect life lesson for how others would feel about Arik's death. But Arik had been-there-done-that, and he was just tired of being strong. He didn't have the energy to worry about others like that anymore. But at least Chewis could be with him to the end. He was drawn on the suicide note after all.

Arik had felt tears beginning to well up from the inner sanctums of the machination known as his soul. But with a rigid and blank face, he tore his gaze from the illustrations of pen and coal and grabbed the chair. He drug it all the way to the living room, under the ceiling fan, in line with the noose.

Standing onto the chair made it sway slightly under his weight as he fiddled with the rope soon to go around his neck. It was serious now. No more thinking about it, for thoughts had come to action.

The coarse strands of the rope lightly scratched his face on the way down, and left an uncomfortable feeling as they dug into his neck. Every second felt gradually slower as his heart began racing, and his breathing became heavy. A scrunched up face built courage and an escalating growl filled the silence of the tragic room.

When that courage stood taller than his fear, he kicked the chair out from beneath him.

What ensued was a flash of chaos. The thud of a chair hitting the carpet was like a starting pistol at a track and field race. But Arik's sprint was toward death's door, and his track was a rope strangling him with malicious vigor.

The true irony of it all was that Arik wasn't going anywhere. In fact, he dangled there, kicking and choking as spit flew from his mouth and blood rushed to his panicked face. He knew what he had gotten himself into, but the overstimulating sensation and the human brain's innate instinct of survival was enough to scramble him into an adrenalized frenzy.

The pain was horrendous. Outside contact of the rope felt like someone tried to decapitate him with a baseball bat and the inside of his throat had become a blender of hot agony. His teeth felt as if they were soon to crack under his jaw pressure and a splitting headache ricocheted off his skull.

Then came the tragedy.

A hollow ting and boisterous rip interrupted his selfish struggle and he plummeted to the ground. Before even realizing what had happened, the ceiling fan the rope was tied to came crashing against his back, driving him harder into the floor. Drywall dust and shards of glass danced in the air around him like confetti at the end of a good magic trick.

A moment of silence shrouded the red faced man, followed by a sharp inhale and dogged choking. Each breath in was like intaking an acidic miasma, as if he had just came back from suicide an creature that no longer breathed air, but choked on it. His throat still felt as if a rope was attempting to squeeze it in half, and Arik haphazardly ripped it from his head.

His unrelenting cough had found a partner as banging from the floor below him sounded off.

"Shut the hell up!" roared the voice downstairs.

Arik looked around at the mess before him, then looked up at the dark hole in the ceiling, snapped wires creeping out. His coughing settled a bit and turned to hoarse whimpers, then sobs that became muffled by burying his face in the carpet.

He had failed.

And it wasn't just a matter of him failing, because he actually didn't want to die. You see, death was scary to him and fear had kept him from pulling the trigger for years now. But he had recently come to a point to where he simply didn't want to keep trying more than he was scared of death. That being said, if he still wanted to die, he would have to psyche himself up all over again. And that was just another damned cherry atop his sundae of trash he had the burden to carry.

Honk honk! a car echoed in the distance.

The devastated failure's attention was directed toward the window, and within seconds his crying ceased and a face of determination and rage ignited behind tears.

A pained and cracked voice managed a whisper. "Try to stop me this time, Death."

Arik stood up slowly and squeezed his fists as tight as possible, glass breaking under his shoes. Once again he let out an escalating growl before charging for the window at full sprint. But he didn't actually feel like he was running. In fact, it felt as if each step was pushing the world behind him, like some herculean treadmill of fate.

By the time he had reached the window, he was fully screaming, pushing through the red hot pain in his throat. The adrenaline coursing through his body made time slow to a crawl again and he could feel every inch of contact as he dived through the pane of glass. In a new ironic sense, the pane of glass was actually not very painful at all. It was actually delightfully brittle and gave way how he had always pictured. Or so he thought.

He had made it most of the way out of the window at this point when he realized the deep slashes on his arm and the cold sensations scattered throughout his head and body. The biggest of which was around his lower abdominals. He had cut open his belly on the shards of glass still in the window frame, and pain was sure to kick in soon.

As the rest of his body made its way out of the apartment, he plummeted six stories down to a shadowy concrete path below. The air rushed past his ears and his stomach dropped as if he was on a roller coaster.

He didn't want to survive this one, not with those gashes. Plus, if this failed, then everybody would know of his suicide attempt and he would never be able to do it right again.

And so, his last words escaped his lips, and his last tears his eyes.

"Just die."