The Last Solution Prologue

It wasn’t the first time Sally had stood on the large rock that sat just off the vacant ocean shore. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt the ocean splash her face with its once refreshing mist. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt the ocean breeze blow her sundress back. It wasn’t the first time she’d opened her arms wide, spread them like an eagle’s wings, welcoming the embrace of whatever the ocean desired to throw at her. It certainly wasn’t the first time she’d stood on the edge of that rock and looked down at the some how welcoming yet violent waves below and wondered what it would be like to let them swallow her. For Sally many of these things were just typical things, things that were familiar to her, maybe a little too familiar. To her the rock was familiar, the ocean mist and breeze were familiar, and the sound of the waves was familiar. However, there was one thing Sally hadn’t experienced, one thing that wasn’t familiar to her, one thing she had desired to feel for too long, one last thing. She spread her arms wide one last time and took one last deep breath before she let herself slip into the oceans imprisoning waves. It hadn’t been the first time she’d felt all the things the ocean had offered her in the past, but it was the last.

Paul stood on the shore, his hands cupped around his mouth as he watched his fiance somehow gracefully fall into the hungry waves. “Sally! Sally no!” He ran toward the water and desperately tried to fight back against the waves that seemed to chain him to the shore. The sound they made as they splashed against the shore sounded like voices, like the waves telling him that Sally belonged to them now and that there was nothing he could do to get her back from them. Paul walked back onto the shore and fell to his knees, his face in his hands. The sand clung to his soaked pants like a frightened child clings to their parent. There was nothing he could do to save her and he knew it. He pulled his cell phone out of his water-logged pocket to call 911, but the water had fried it. He screamed in frustration and anger and threw the now useless phone into the ocean.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for the anger that he felt toward the ocean to dissipate and guilt to take its place. He felt responsible. He was the one who agreed to let her go to the rock, alone no less. He hit himself in the head several times with the palm of his hand, telling himself how stupid he was and that it was all his fault.

Sally sunk deeper and deeper. For a moment the light started to fade, but it quickly returned brighter than ever before. She smiled as the light seemed to wrap her in invisible arms and lift her toward itself. Everything around her began to fade, the sound of the waves and the feeling of water filling her lungs, the fish that seemed to want nothing to do with her just like all the people in her life, they all faded away into nothing but one bright and hypnotizing light.

After a long time Paul collected himself. He wiped his tears away and slowly lifted himself off his knees. He glared at the ocean one last time before he turned away and began to walk toward the car. He got in the driver’s seat and asked himself how he would cope, how he would deal with never seeing Sally again. He contemplated going back to the shore, swimming to the rock and climbing it, ending his life the same way Sally had ended hers. But he quickly dismissed the thought. “Suicide isn’t the answer,” he told himself. Then he thought about all the times he’d said the same thing to Sally. Every time she told him how miserable she was, how much she wanted to just end it. Every time he caught her holding a knife to her arm ready to cut just a little deeper than the last time. “Suicide isn’t the answer Sally. Suicide isn’t the answer,” he’d say to her as he wrapped his arms around her scarred and fragile body. The words echoed in his head like an obnoxious fly that wouldn’t stop buzzing in his ear. Suicide isn’t the answer. He wished the words would disappear, wished he could squash them, smash them into little pieces. Suddenly he didn’t believe his own words anymore. “But what it’s the only way,” he asked himself. And the words replayed in his head once more. 'Suicide isn’t the answer Paul. Suicide isn’t the answer.' He began to cry again, his eyes flooding with hot wet tears that he thought for sure would never stop.