October 1

Erika has all of her plans worked out to create the perfect cluster suicide.

 Chatper1

 

October 1

 

     Today, I have officially succeeded in persuading the seventh person to sign the Pact.  I will record what happens between now, October 1, 2007, and when it goes into action.  After that, I won't need to write about it.  Everyone will know, when they find this, who they were f*****g with.  And who is haunting them.  My  entries will be interlaced with those of Lewis, exchanging every other day, to create a record of what happened throughout the longevity of the Pact.  We have it all planned out.  

 

The final person to sign the Pact was, as expected, Lewis.  He seemed extraordinarily shocked when I told him about it in the middle of class, when I saw the cuts on his arm.  He seemed even more disturbed when I actually let him read the Pact.  I'm shocked by his reaction; you would think, after being my best friend for five years, that he would expect something such as this from me.  I have always been, in his words, “insane.”  He has generally been more down to Earth, and more stable, although definitely depressed.  He has good reasons to be.  The idea of a Pact probably didn't appeal to him at first because it involved other people getting 

"hurt” as well.  In class, though, he couldn't question me too much without others hearing.  He has that kind of voice.  Luckily, mine doesn't carry.

“Are you seriously getting people to sign a pact?”

“Yes.  And you have no place to look at me as immoral, considering those gashes are more intravenous than anything I have ever done,” I replied. “Hurting yourself is the exact same thing as hurting other people.  I bet it would hurt your poor mothers’ feelings, if she knew.”  He continued to gaze at the piece of paper, deep in thought.  Seven long, deep cuts, obviously done with a razor, were on his right arm, covered by nothing considering he was stupid enough to roll his sleeves up.  I bet he used one of those box cutters he leaves all around his room.  The cuts were vertical, fresh, and I knew he had attempted it yesterday.  He had tried it many tedious times – I had usually tried to stop him.  Deep down I know he is too much a coward to actually press hard enough.  If you want to die, you will.  This time he had not told me, which bothered me as much as the fact that he tried it at all.

“Yeah, but this is me.  I'm not going and talking people who are depressed into signing this. I keep my issues to myself.”

“No you don’t, your sleeve is rolled up, a*****e.  I'm only offering these miserable people a way out of their pain. I'm like Gandhi.”

“You are so far from being Gandhi...” Lewis rolled his eyes at me.  “Erika... are you serious about all of this?” 

“Completely.”  After several moments of looking at the Pact, and then back at me, and back again, patting his own military-style blonde hair, as he does when he is nervous, he nodded.

“I'll sign it.”  I handed him a pen.  It was the same pen I and the others used.  It’s important that the Pact looks professional, so when they find it, this whole deal won’t look like a f*****g idiot led the other idiots to the water and drowned them.  They will know that I am a genius.

“That's what I thought.”  I was hugging myself tightly, freezing somehow.  I could feel myself shuddering.  This has happened a lot lately

“Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Just freezing.”

“How? You look like an Eskimo today.”

“Thanks.”

“I meant you have on a lot of clothing.”

“Oh I know. My nose isn't flat enough to actually look like one.”  He smiled.  I read his signature on the Pact.  It was beneath everyone else's, of course, because it took me so  long to work up to asking him to sign it.  He is the most intelligent of the people who signed it, besides myself, and he has a habit of challenging me and my ideas.  Depression has become a trend, which is probably why talking the others into signing this was so easy.  I’m not quite done getting their minds in the right place, but trend followers are sheep anyway.

  So now that the Pact is done, I had seven names.  Erika Cohen, Miriam Lodge, Tommy Smith, Francis Jacques, Robin Cross, Joshua Bellmen, and Lewis Black. 

 I have seven people.  Lewis was my main fixation, as far as signing this.  We've done everything together.  Not everything ... not like that  ... but he is my best friend.  He will be forever.  I notice way too much about him, I always have.  Like how he went from being a short, skinny guy when we were younger into what he is now.  And what he is now appeals to quite a few people, which is certainly not okay with me.  He's even taller and stronger than me now.

 

Kathleen Harvey is definitely on my hit list before we act upon our plans.  I can not stand her.  I see her every day, talking to some football player, in her high heels and cheer leading ribbon, giving me looks.  I've said nothing to this girl in over three years, and I definitely think it's time for her to give looks to someone else, and stop telling people that I am a sociopath.  At this point, I have nothing to lose and I don't care.  She may care once I take one of those ribbons and wrap them around her under-sized esophagus and strangle her to death.  Then who will she look at?

 

I smile every time I read the seven signatures at the bottom of the Pact.  They all have different styles of writing, with one common goal of dying on the date I chose.  I wrote the Pact, I chose the date, and I chose how it is going to be played out.  I chose it all.  And no one is going to challenge me, because they aren't mentally strong enough to do so.  Oddly enough, I feel mentally stronger than I ever have before.  It's enlightening to know that you're going to die.  Really, actually, going to die.  Everyone knows they'll die, sometime.  After they're old, after they have kids, after they live.  They know, but they're not aware.  But in the moment that they feel all the blood draining, from that freak accident falling out of the boat, when the motor hits them, or they feel themselves falling, and the air exploding their lungs, and the ground flying up towards them faster than they can fall towards it, they come to face the reality that they are going to die.  I made it more simple for these seven people I care about so much.  It's as simple as signing a Pact with the devil.  I imagine that's what Lewis thinks he did.

 

At lunch, when he and I were standing alone together, he asked me why I even wrote the Pact.

“You know what it's like to feel the most excruciating pain you've ever been in, and it not be at all physical.  You know what it's like to see scissors and instead of remembering s****y art from kindergarten, you think of how much you want to slide the blades across your wrist.  End it all.  You know what I'm talking about.”

“I know,” he sighed. “But why this?” Why this, why this.  It’s always why with him. 

“If I'm going to go out, I don't want to go out alone.” 

“But Miriam isn't particularly depressed.  She just wants to... be you.” This is true.  She idolizes me and has for two years.  She's quite stupid.  If I told her I don't wear underwear, which I do, she would go commando to school for the rest of her pathetic life.  I honestly almost like it, that someone idolizes me, because quite frankly, I am not appreciated as much as I should be by the people I know.  I'm not good enough. Not pretty enough, thin enough, rich enough, talkative enough.  I'm crazy enough though.  Definitely out of my f*****g mind.  They don't hesitate to point that out.  But I'm not on medication anymore, after I tried to over-dose on it.  Besides, I'm not schizophrenic.  I didn't need pills for that.  I needed pills to make me sleep, for a long time.  Forever, even.  I just didn't want to wake up.

“Well, this will be one more thing to make her like me.  She's already dyed her hair and bought everything I own.  If you‘re weird enough to do all of that, you should die anyway.”

“You are cold and heartless, you know?”  I nodded.  

 

I don't know why those words stuck in my head.  Cold and heartless.  Maybe he is right.  I can't remember feeling any other way than this.  I can't remember what it's like to love anyone else.  Else.  And I will leave it at that.  Lewis can be naïve until the day we die.  

 

Tomorrow, everyone that signed the Pact is meeting up to discuss details.  Everyone needs to know exactly what to do to make this work perfectly.  This isn't going to be any average cluster suicide.  Everyone is going to know about this.  In one week.

 

Erika.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Don't be too harsh. Give tips and advice if needed, as I do want this to be published eventually.

Reviews

[EILEEN McGUINNESS]

This is deeply disturbing and really incapsulates in a short piece of writing why so many of the young folk today are mixed up fruit cakes,there is a lack of leadership,role models and too many dead ends.
There is nothing to inspire or give hope i can feel the empathy in this writing but see no justification for the message which is written it frankly disgusts me that people want to quit living knowing that when they do that all they leave behind from their sorry lives are the smell of rotting flesh in a 6 foot casket or a pile of grubby ashes yuck,we must aim for more we only get one shot at life then we are done and who cares?
Well the family might if you are lucky enough to have two parents and they don't fight like cat and dog.
Nobody ever goes to heaven or hell they don't exist that is just a fable limbo or spirits trapped absolute bullshit there is nothing beyond life so make choices good not out of self pity and senseless thoughts.