Sucide is Painless?

  Suicide is Painless?

Thick wisps of white smoke raised from his nostrils. The ghost of my memories, he whispered to himself. Sitting on the fire escape with a Blunt  in one hand and a bottle of questionable contents in the other, Shaun contemplated the Manhattan skyline through the obstructed view that the highrise apartment building offered him. With impaired vision and bloodshot eyes he stared at the structures of shining glass and cold, hard steel. There was one odd, unfinished building on in the place, in the memory of where two used to be.

  He couldn’t have been any older than three years old when his father and so many others Shawn didn’t know perished in the tragedies of September eleventh. He didn’t remember anything about his father. From what his mother told him he  shouldn’t have.

“He was just like you. Same big floppy ears as you.  Same bold brown eyes, always.... staring at me in judgement” Aaliyah said, one night when she was too drunk to hold her tongue. “He was just as stubborn as you, I remember that morning... he was too sick to say a whole sentence with coughing but he had just.... had to go to work. He never gave a damn about me, just like you”. That was his earliest memory of his mother.

  If it wasn’t for his Mariyah he would had have to raised himself. The day his life had drastically improved was the day when his mother had gotten too drunk to remember how to climb the stairs, and rolled down a flight. She had  fractured several bones in the fall. While she was laid up in the hospital Mariyah took care of Shawn. Mariyah was Aaliyahs older sister by five years. Aaliyah and Mariyah could have been mistaken for twins, they both had inherited straight black hair, full lips and almond brown eyes from their mother. Fortunately only one of them inherited the alcoholic trait from their father, Unfortunately for Shawn it was his mother.

   Shawn grew bored of staring at the sun. He took one last puff of the blunt and let it fall to the pavement below. He tried to raise but the alcohol had done its work and his legs buckled under him. The fall left him on his hands and knees but he had somehow managed to keep his drink from spilling. Grasping a rusty sidebars he steadied himself. He climbed back into the apartment he called home

through a dusty window.

  He fell again.

   But this time his face hit the floor before his hands. Same as first time, he rose again. Wiping the dust from his hand on his shirt, he felt something warm and wet soak through the cloth and onto his chest. He looked down to see the the thick crimson streak across his chest. Then looking at his hand and realizing he had been cut. It’s deep, he thought to himself. He looked behind him, his eyes searching for answers. The glass bottle was shattered. When it broke he had been too drunk to hear it & too drunk to feel the shards of glass cutting him.

   Standing  in the middle of the living room watching his blood flow from the gash in his palm. Listening to droplets of blood going splat on the hardwood floor. The small droplets of blood became a small red puddle on the floor. He began to feel light headed. He staggered to the kitchen. Looking for something but nothing in particular.

  And then out of the corner of his eye, the prescription bottle with a label that read “Blood thickeners” .

   That should slow the blood flow, He thought to himself, not really thinking at all.

   He struggled with the child lock for awhile but reckless folly continued when the bottle cover snapped open. Emptying the bottle into the unharmed palm, he stared at the pills before lifting his hand to his mouth. He craved the bottle now more than ever as swallowing the rash amount of pills dry was challenging. But as always, The idiocy persevered.

   Then there was a burning in his stomach that made it feel like he was about to retch, but no such luck. Instead the fire turned into a throbbing numbness that spread throughout this body like wildfire. His legs buckled under him and he found himself on the floor again. Trying to rise, he found that he couldn’t move. So he stayed there, looking at the dust on the floor. Until his vision became blurred, and soon enough the blur became darkness. As the dark crept towards him he thought, hoped he would die, right there on the kitchen floor.

   He did not die.

   When the darkness reached him, his eyelids grew heavy. He gave in to desire, closing his eyes, not knowing if he’d be able to open them again.

   A dreadful cold woke him, his eyes struggled to adjust to the blackness that surrounded him. He found that he could move again, the gash in his palm has somehow been mended & the ground beneath him was sand rather than the hardwood. Taking up a handful of sand, he found that it was black and as cold as the air around him.

   Where am I?  

   His senses slowly return to him, smell first. The scent of smoke and seawater filled his nostrils. Then the boy’s eyes adjusted to the light, or lack thereof. He same streaks of red dancing in the distance, that was the only light in this dark dream or is this hell? Although impaired, the dead & condemned or the sleeping & dreaming brain of the boy never took long to put together light & smoke. Seeking asylum from the cold, the boy wandered toward the flame.

   He tripped over something rough & wooden, a root he realized. He crawled on all fours fearing he might fall again if he tried to walk on two. His hands found many other roots, so much he decided to look up in hope of finding something else that was alive. Instead he found leafless trees, with dying branches that jutted up into a starless sky.

   He continued to crawl towards the flame, until his hand found cold hard rock. That gave him the courage to stand on his legs again. The boy walked on the black pavement, with every step moving closer to the dancing flame. As he got closer to it he realized that the flames had feasted on a structure. There was shattered glass and charred wood on the ground. Parts of the structure still stood but they would soon collapse.

   He wandered over to the fire, desperate for the fire’s comfort, the ashes crunched underfoot.

  A cold came, a dreadful cold that cut through his thin cotton clothes, rippled his skin with goosebumps, froze flesh & crippled muscle.

  Then he woke up.

  His mother on her knees with a rosary chain coiled around clasped hand, softly chanting a prayer in spanish. He sat in silence watching her plea to God or Jesus or whoever she was praying to. Shawn never really understood the whole “Trinity” thing. in fact he never understood religion. He tried to wait until she was done, because it seemed like the respectful thing to do. But after about five minutes the recital of foreign words became irritating. He cleared his throat loudly hoping to hinder her prayer.

  It did.

  She looked up at him with red, swollen eyes. He looked down at her with cold, unfeeling eyes. She smiled, relieved, tears swelling in the corners of her eyes. He scoffed and rolled his eyes. She pushed herself back to her feet, still smiling, moving slowly towards him. He shifted in his bed, uncomfortable. She hugged him, squeezing tightly. His mother’s embrace felt awkward. Her cheeks were wet and clammy from the tears she had shed, her hair made his skin itch wherever it fell.

   He felt relieved when she let go. But then she began crying, and for half a heartbeat Shawn ALMOST felt sorry for her.

“Any louder it might actually be convincing” he said. “I mean the sobbing and the tears might actually be convincing if I never knew better.”

   For a moment she removed her hands from her face and sobbed something inaudible before hiding her face beneath her hands again.

“You know you really shouldn’t cry, you spend hours applying tons of makeup to that face of yours and those water works are just wasting it”

   Her sobbing quieted and instead of using her hands to hide her tears she used her hands to wipe them. For a moment he thought she might choke on the words but she managed to get them out in time.

“I thought you were going to die”

“Thought or hoped”

   She looked as if he had just slapped her in the face. “You’re are my only child, I live you more than anything on this earth...”

“Any bartender would disagree”

“I’ve been sober for three years but your ungrateful a*s is tempting me”

“That’s the Aaliyah, I know. Cursing & drinking.”

She caught herself, a softer, caring tone “No, no I’m not going to fight with you...” she smiled, that made him more uncomfortable than any amount of IV drips shoved into any nook or crevice on his body. “How are you feeling?”

“Act like you care, you’re really good at acting. You should pursue a career in it, get yourself an agent and a few action shots you’ll have a leading role in no time, you know, if you start now you’d probably win an oscar before Leonardo DiCaprio.”

   She ignored the jape, placed a hand on his head and began to run her fingers through his hair “How are you feeling?” he tried to swat away her hand but found himself too weak.

   “Stop it” he said, but of course she didn’t. She went as far as to hug him. Let me go!” he chanted but she still ignored him squeezing tighter until the worlds became muffled and then the tears came again. It was worse this time since she was next to him. Her wet his neck & the sobbing was all he could hear. He sat there disgusted by his mother’s wet embrace still too effete to do anything about it. Until finally, she broke off of him.

   She recomposed herself and then asked “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what?” he said as he wiped her tears off his neck with the collar of his hospital gown.

   “That you were having problems! I mean I understand if you didn’t want to talk to me, but at least talk to somebody”

“What are you talking about?” he said, genuinely confused.

“Don’t play dumb with me Shawn!” she exclaimed “If you weren’t having problems then why’d you try to kill yourself?” the tears began to flow again.

  Suicide?

“I didn’t try to kill myself...” He said, but it sounded more an unsure question.

   Memories of everything he had done before the dark  darted back into his head. He twisted his hand over to see a long line of scars where one might slit his wrist, the glass from the broken bottle. He retraced his steps through mind, the liqour & the prescription pills. Common sense should have told him that those two never go together, but a mixture of alcohol & boredom had robbed him of his common sense.

   He wasn’t trying to commit suicide but somehow he made it look like it.

   He found something something in that funny, so much that he began to chuckle. He found even that painful. It hurt his throat & stomach. It wouldn’t be easy to convince her that he wasn’t trying to take his own life, so he decided to let her think he did.

“What did they do to me” he asked.

  “You did this to yourself” she scolded him. “Eddy found you passed out in a pool of your own blood & vomit. He drove to the emergency room. They had to give you blood, pump your stomach, The doctors said if you had spent a couple more seconds or lose another ounce of blood you would have been died”

“Cool Story. So when can I get out of here?”

He waited for an answer but it never came.

“When am I gonna be able to go home?”

   Aaliyah stood there staring at her first & only child, in silence. Shawn thought she was going to ignore the question until she said “You’re not going home”

“You’re kicking me out?”  It was unexpected but not surprising.

“No, God knows I should, but no” she turned to look out the window. “I’m sending you to a rehabilitation facility”

“No,no, no”

“That wasn’t a request”

   A nurse with unfortunate timing popped her head through the door. “Visitation hours are almost ov-”

“I KNOW HOW TO READ A CLOCK” Aaliyah cut her off.

   The nurse wisely shied away. Silence ensued until a doctor walked in.

She was surprised to see Shawn awake & talking. She checked his pulse & a few other things that were protocol for a patient who just woke up from a coma. After that, the doctor held a conversation with his mother which Shawn did not care to hear. Instead he sat in the hospital bed looking at the bandages on his arms, at least five on each.

    Sometime later his mother left, she never said goodbye, but see gave him a look, it was a look that he had never seen before. It was a look that somehow mixed pity, sadness, heartbreak, pain & disappointment. A look that a wife might give her cheating spouse before she shot him to death. After she left came the dinner tray, but the legends about hospital food & the smell of disinfectant took away his appetite.

    When night came he found himself listening to the moans & wails of something he assumed was a man behind the blue curtain that split the room in half. As there was nothing interesting on tv & no matter how long or hard he closed his eyes sleep wouldn’t come. He spent half the night with a pillow over his head until finally the moaning stopped. He removed the pillow & made a futile attempt to get up. Something was missing not grones from the thing behind the curtain.  Something that was more persistent and annoying.

He looked about the room trying to remember what it was, the clock. The hands had stopped moving and the constant ticking stopped with them.

  Just out of batteries.

 No, something else is wrong, something else is missing. He listened &  heard Nothing. No noise from traffic, Even at this time of the night & that was extremely peculiar. Then he heard the door open. A figure with his or her features shrouded in the darkness. Even in the darkness, you could see that the outfit worn by the stranger, wasn’t scrubs worn by nurses. The shadow moved towards him. It came it to the light. It was a man. A with red short hair, at least six feet tall. He grabbed Shawn and flung him over his, like nothing.

   Shawn, being too weak to do anything about it. He tried to scream out for help but found himself short of breath, and the scream came out as a meek whimper. By the time they reached the halfway down the hallway, Shawn had accepted defeat, he was being kidnapped, probably to be sold into a child prostitution, slavery. He couldn't decide which was worse, but he would learn.

  Still there was something stranger that happened that night. As he was being carried down the hallway. No one looked at the pair, no one even batted an eye, In fact nobody even blinked. Everyone was perfectly still. Frozen, one might say.

    That was when Shawn decided that this is a dream or a nightmare. That somehow calmed him. They took the stairs because of course the elevators were also frozen. Six flights of steps, every time his kidnapper took a step, his shoulder jabbed into Shawn’s mid section. When they exited the hospital there was a white S.U.V illegally parked into the place usually reserved for ambulances.

  The doors were left open, he put Shawn in the passenger seat slam the door shut. The stranger sat in the drivers seat. He took a deep breath and then alarmingly charismatically said “I apologize that we met this under these term. My name is Pierce Barr & I work for the UN.” Pierce extended his hand to Shawn, expecting him to shake it. Instead Shawn’s gaze flickered from Pierce’s face to hand.

   The noise came back, the traffic, the people. It all came back to life in less than a second.

  Shawn thought of slapping his hand, but he found himself too weak.

“What do you want from me” Shawn asked.

   “A handshake” Pierce replied.

“Look if you’re kidnapping me for ransom, My mom’s a secretary she doesn’t get paid much, I doubt she has that kind of money, but even if she does I doubt she’d pay you”

   Pierce laughed. “Don’t be so hard on your mom. And I’m not here for money. I know you’re special.” He took a cigarette out of the carton in his pocket out of the box in his front pocket. “It’s getting expensive to kill your lungs nowadays” he said as he lit up “What is it? eleven dollars a box!”

   The second hand smoke filled the car, a fragrance Shawn had grown accustomed to.

“Special? I’m not a retard” Shawn spat back.

Pierce looked at him, quite puzzled. The took the cigarette from his lips after inhaling. Then proceeded to press it against Shawn’s arm. Shawn had tried to flinch away from the burning bud but wasn't quick enough.

“DUDE, WHAT THE F-” The realization that he never felt the flame cut him off mid sentence. Silence followed.

“‘Retard’ is a very offensive word, you shouldn't use it” Pierce said as he turned the keys in the ignition.

   The radio was loud enough to kill the need for conversation. Shawn brushed the ashes of his arm and checked for a burn mark, there was none to be found. They were driving through drove without exchanging word. Eventually Shawn recognized the streets he had walked all his life, Queens.

“Where are you taking me” Shawn asked.

  Either the music was too loud or Pierce was really into the song, either way Pierce didn't hear him.

“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?” Shawn tried to yell over the radio, But Pierce still didn't hear. So he turned down the volume, that alone caught Pierce’s attention.

Pierce reached into the back row of seats without taking his eyes of the road, felt around for awhile and then threw a duffle bag into Shawns lap. “I can’t have you meeting the others, walking through the airport in a hospital gown & smelling like sickness & bleach.”

  “Airport, others? Where the hell are you taking me?”

“It’s all so hard to explain, it’s better you witness it for yourself.”

  Before he knew it, the white S.U.V pulled up in front the apartment complex Shawn had lived most of his miserable life in.

“Go get yourself cleaned up & pack for warm weather. Make it quick we have a lot of things to do.”

Shawn gave him a cross eyed look but Pierce just said “Must I carry you again?”

   Shawn left the car, duffle bag strapped over his shoulder. At first his legs wobbled like those of a newborn  fawn, but eventually he found his balance. The door was open but no one was home. Dangerously strange but normal compared to the events of the morning he was having. The kitchen floor was spotless. The hardwood so polished, you would never have thought that just a few days ago, a boy was laying on it bleeding to death.

   He climbed the steps to his room, his legs weak. Nothing had been touched since he left, he stepped over the pile of clothes and unfinished school work to get to his bathroom. He left the hospital robe on the floor and stepped into the shower. The felt the desire to try something he had never done before to turn on only the hot water. He acted on impulse and turned the knob marked with red to it’s limit. He turned his back to the stream as a normal person seeking relief from ice cold water might have. He felt the warmth of the steaming water on his bare skin but not the sting the average human might have. Instead of impulse to run away from the heat, Shawn felt to desire to embrace it.

   The heat felt better than any temporary intoxication or high he had ever experienced. He turned towards it feeling the incalescence on his face, he stood there for what seemed like seemed like a short time, cleaning himself until the cold water came.

                   D****T, OUT OF HOT WATER

  That’s when he decided it had been enough. He stepped out of the shower to find that every mirror and glass in the room was foggy. He dried himself of applied lotion and deodorant then threw on a simple white t-shirt, basketball shorts and Converses. He look threw his closet and drawers and threw similar attire into the duffle bag. The boy found a mirror wiped of some of the vapor and ran his hand through his hair to keep it out of his face. He zipped up the bag and made it as far as the last step before remembering he left his toothbrush, he turned back for it.

   He was almost out of the room when he saw the letter on his bedside table. It was folded and had “Shawn” in what looked like his mothers hand writing. He held it in his hand he pondered reading it or not. He ultimately decided he never had time, he stuffed it into the duffle bag.

   He left his house not knowing when or if he’d ever see that door again. When he reached the sidewalk the thought occurred to him. “What the hell are you doing, getting into cars with a stranger.” Like the angel that would appear on the shoulder of someone about to make a choice in one of those thirty minute sitcoms. Sure enough the red devil was there too, hauntingly saying “What choice do you have???”  The head that imagined both of them was thinking of walking into the path of an oncoming car, but it decided with it’s luck he’d probably survive. He continued to walk toward the white S.U.V .

   He sat in the passenger seat with the duffle bag at his feet. The sun was now rising.

“What took you so long? you were in there almost two hours.” Pierce said as he turned the key again.

“If you must know, I was masturbating.” Shawn lied, he was doing something better than that some kind of meditation but he had decided that the best way to end a conversation was to make the other person feel uncomfortable. This conversation needed to end quickly, it’s too early & Shawn hadn’t gotten any sleep.

But it didn’t end the conversation. “I doubt you’d be able to last two minutes, much less two hours.” Pierce quipped back.

   Shawn didn't bother to reply to that, He was sure he could have said something overused involving Pierce’s mother but something of that nature would be too easy and he was tired. Shawn yawned, his he settled into the car seat, closed his eyes & slept.

   Only waking up when to car came to a sudden stop. The boy wasn't sure how long he had slept, he didn't care. He didn't know where he was either. He looked around and saw mostly houses with manicured lawns and no fences, still in New York but further upstate. A urban neighborhood for mostly upper middle class.

   They stopped in front of the house, that was almost identical to all the others. The only difference, in the driveway, the BMW didn't have a ROMNEY - RYAN 2012 sticker on the bumper.

Reviews

[iamthewriter]

You got a good start, honestly. Small minor snag's... thought's not written right for where your try to lead the actual though pattern. Your close, try (one more time) to read out the story and pay attention line by line of the minor mix ups in the actual flow of them. {you'll spot them, there's not a lot of them.} The speaking parts look strong (you keep within each of the stories characters well) However, there's time jags in the story {like where you were in the hospital denying mother insisting's to commit you. (there should be 'I don't know... 'more' there [suggestion only]. Keep writing though, however you write it out, keep adding to it. It will make a great novel on day.

[spitballing]

A few small corrections.

"She looked up at him with red, swollen eyes. He looked down at her with cold, unfeeling eyes. She smiled, relieved, tears swelling in the corners of her eyes. He scoffed and rolled his eyes." The word eyes is said here a bit to often.

"She looked as if he had just slapped her in the face. “You’re are my only child, I live you more than anything on this earth...” " It should be You're my only child, I love you

"She ignored the jape," Jape should be jab.

Also if he can heal, how did the doctors in the hospital not notice?

There's a few more typos in this. Rather small ones, but you should give this one more good read through.

Other then that, this was really good. The main character is really well written and you do get a sense of the guy very early on. I do like the use of the red words, it makes the work rather creative. The set up is also pretty interesting. Pretty darn good I have to say.

[Dayne]

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to review my work. Thanks for the corrections because I've proof read it once. I really meant to put jape there but now that you've pointed it out to me, I see that 'jab' would fit better. It's not that he heals quickly but that he doesn't burn, so it seems I'll have to rewrite and clarify. Thank you again.