Chapter 1: Suicidal Lies

dark, but hopefully, hopeful

As David prepared to put rat poison in the honey and cinnamon drink he had already prepared, he thought how only one woman in his entire twenty years existence had found him irresistible enough to ask him to marry her.

 “I know you’re an axe murderer or something but I ain’t seen no one smell better,” he could hear his ex, saying in his mind and it distracted him.  She knew he liked his habit of wearing what most people considered way too much cologne and that he always wondered where she got the phrase axe murderer from.  She was neither black nor even from the inner city.  Therefore he concluded as always her word choice must be leftover in her mind from a previous boyfriend that he wondered if she had made it with or not.  “However,” she continued pronouncing the word slowly and sensuously as if to suggest something far more attractive to him than his thoughts, “I love everything there is about you, even your stink except it’s a fact you haven’t married me yet.”

David was suddenly captivated by her increasingly serious statement and yet he could not believe what she was saying.  “Why?” he said automatically doubting her motives, “What have you done?” and thinking, ‘Who could she have gone out with?  I’ve been with her every day for over six months.’

“Well…?” she said and the word hung in the air for a while until she added, “Aren’t you going to ask me to-?”

He was thinking, ‘It might have been when she said she was just going to buy pads that time, or when-’

“David!” she screamed at him getting his attention away from his silent speculation and suspicions.  Then when it was clear she had his full attention she added more lovingly, “David?  Will you marry me?”

“Why?” he asked again.

“Oh, you-!” she shouted at him, “I love you.  Why won’t you just believe that?  You must know I would never do anything to jeopardize that?” she added and began to whisk herself away in a hurry.

He quickly recovered and reaching out barely caught her shoulders in time to prevent her from leaving.  But she looked him in the eye and his micro expressions must have given him away and he knew it.  He just let her go.  Surely she wouldn’t ask him to marry her one minute and then cheat on him the next, would she?  

He tried but could not remember her walk as she walked away from him.  Instead he had to concentrate for longer than he liked to remember it, perhaps his favorite memory of her. 

He was about to pull the blinds then as he walked toward the windows of his first floor apartment when what he saw amazed him.  It was Eugene Poole of the rock group the Egotists and he was slumped over just outside David’s apartment doing something.  Then in a momentary flash David realized what it was.  Poole appeared to be putting a gun to his mouth.

Reacting with stealth he went out his door into the hall, rounded the corner and walked swiftly toward Poole.  Then, when he finally reached the singer, he slapped the gun out of Poole’s hands even though Poole seemed to either be dead or dying though no shots were fired.

Someone must have called the cops for it was not long until they were at the scene and taking over for David.  He had melted into the crowd and fled unseen from the complex in an attempt to obscure the fact all this took place right outside his apartment. 

Then he just walked around town pretending not to know anything about what happened for over two hours.  Then he returned to his apartment as he normally did with no one apparently any the wiser.  However he flushed the rat poison mixed with honey and cinnamon drink he had prepared for his own suicide attempt before any of this happened.  Ultimately he flushed it several more times, and actually worried about his health for even having dealt with the nasty stuff barehanded.  But finally it hit him just how close it had really been.

He began to shake.  He felt very warm and excited.  Was it fear?  He wasn’t sure, but whatever it was, it was no fun.  He paced the room, opening the blinds all the way so that he could see where Poole had been and saw a yellow tape with “CRIME SCENE” written on it attached in a triangle from his windows to a portable stop sign.  Then he started to become nauseous and felt a need to distract his thinking.  So he also turned on the news and the audio came on very suddenly.

“… an unknown passerby slapped the realistic looking water pistol from Poole’s hands spilling the cyanide laced Kool-Aid on the sidewalk.  Thus Eugene Poole committed suicide in full view of the entire apartment complex in broad daylight.  Police are asking that the unidentified passerby come to the police station since they would like to know his side of the incident.  He is not wanted, nor is any police action anticipated.  There seems to be some confusion concerning what exactly happened before their arrival at the scene.”

“Great!” Suez shouted so loudly his neighbor pounded on the wall briefly and though he was somewhat perturbed David lay down on the couch and flipped the channel where Hogan’s Heroes was already in progress, when it hit him again how close it had actually been.  How similar the incidences of Poole’s success and his own failures were?  He had not only failed to stop the rock star from dying he had lost interest in his own suicide during the two hour walk.

He washed the glass that once had the honey and cinnamon, and rat poison in it, wiped it and put it in the cupboard when he suddenly began to feel hot tears come to his face.  He felt like he had returned to a saner world with some sort of direction in mind.

Mental illness was not unheard of where he lived but all his life he had ignored even the mention of it, believing it would never touch him.  That is just the way things were done.  One couldn’t possibly worry about all the problems of society so one just ignored most of it and hoped not to embarrass one’s self by one’s own ignorance.

He was completely unaware of who to call now that he realized he was a danger to himself.  Had it been he was in danger from someone else he knew he could choose the right options.  There were other options too, like counseling centers, and psychologists of many kinds, and even psychiatrists.  He decided to give one of the latter a call.

He looked up the number of one in the phonebook and as it rang, he very nearly gave up.

“Hello?” a voice on the line finally said as he really did hang up this time.

They must have called right back for the phone’s ringtone sounded almost immediately which was highly uncharacteristic of anyone David could fathom that might have his number.

He never answered it.