They Dropped Like Flies, and it was Beautifully Stupid

They dropped like flies and it was beautifully stupid. I stared blankly at my own cup of poison for a moment before I dropped it to the ground. There was no need to join in the idiocy of a group suicide, and I had no intention of starting down that road now. A cult is a ridiculous notion anyway. I found myself wondering why I had joined it in the first place. Perhaps it was boredom, mere boredom and a need to belong to a group of mindless zombies for awhile. The challenge of holding onto my own mind and individuality had been worth it. But this? I refused to die for such stupid people. So I had pretended to drink while they all really drank and dropped like flies. All together. One seamless pile of death.

 

"Morons," I spat as I stomped on the cup and left. The plastic crackled in the sudden silence. White trash for white trash. That’s all it was. And all it, and they, would ever be.

 

Cold air blasted my face as I left the dingy building The Fraternity of Eternal Light and Peace had once lived in. Stupid name for a stupid group of people. What peace would there be in death? Besides, there had been no real thrill in hanging out with people who were already dead before the poisoned Kool-Aide hit their lips. Unfortunately, that’s how every one I had met recently was. Dead before they even started dying.

 

I plowed through the icy night, ignoring the snow as it came down and soaked my skin and hair. It didn’t matter. The cold did nothing to pierce the boredom, to pierce the silent, suffering numbness that just wouldn’t go away. There was nowhere to go either. I couldn’t very well go home. I had run off to join a cult after all. I’m sure whoever is there heard about the Fraternity at some point and time, and it wouldn’t be long before the dead were discovered and the panic would begin. I had no taste for their pity or their worry, so I had no reason to return. Just as I had no reason to call the police right then and there.

 

So instead, I just kept going forward, sparing no time to look back at anything. No need to dwell. As I walked it did dawn on me that I was just as bad as the people around me were. Boredom is in itself a form of death. Lovely hypocrisy. It’s something I’m apparently really good at.

 

Buildings passed by in dark formless masses. Occasionally a light lit a window here or there, and more often the sounds of sirens barreling to that one place where the druggie was overdosing, or the other where a wife screamed as her husband beat her broke the silence and dark of the night. The city had its monsters, and the police did their best to do something about it. I passed by, aware of the abuse and pain from some of those late-night lights, but spared no pity for them. The druggie did it to himself, and the wife probably deserved whatever her husband dealt out if she was still with him in the first place. It was none of my business.

 

Time crawled and it was an eternity before I made it to the great suspension bridge that crossed the ship channel. Here I stopped. A coat of ice and snow lay thick upon the road, as did the remnants of an earlier car crash. Bits of twisted steal forgotten by the clean up crew glinted in the overhead streetlights, as cold as the air and ice around them. They shone as stars upon the ground, shining backdrops to the black rubber that had once belonged to a tire. I stopped by the mess and peered out over the half-frozen ship channel. The wind roared in my ears--- it was so angry up so high ---and tore at my hair. Still, I didn’t notice it. The cold was no match for the thick robes we were all supposed to die in, no matter how hard the wind tried to consume it with it’s high minded fury.

 

I found myself climbing onto of the concrete edge of the bridge as the wind tried to push me over. Over…

 

How to feel alive again, how to make my own words true?

 

I reached out and grabbed the cords that stretched to each side of me and closed my eyes, breathing in the ice and fury of the whipping snow and moaning wind. For the first time in forever, I think I smiled. I might’ve even laughed.

 

I shuffled to the edge, the very edge, of the concrete that supported me. The wind caught the baggy robes and pushed them out behind me. This was different, right? Right. Nothing slow and boring for me. Beautiful stupid, yes, but adrenaline rushed into my veins and I felt my face stretch into an even wider grin in the biting cold.

 

"Hold onto something. This is gonna be wicked," I whispered, as I let go and fell forward.

 

I was never any good at following my own advice.

Author's Note

Highly unedited, and completely random.