Grey Sky Short Stories

The Suicide Note

Written May 10th of 2016

Based off of the 50 Word Saga "To Heaven, To Hell" by Logan Thomas

Strange what sleep leaves you vulnerable to. Some people sleep deeply enough that they don't remember what day it is or what they were doing before. Some forget where they were. Doctors constantly tell us that sleep is the best medicine, especially for illnesses so that the body has time to recover and fight off the disease. I find it ironic that hospital beds are perhaps the most uncomfortable of all, when it is a building of health. And when we're back home safe and sound, we sleep so deeply that we forget the experience.

Except, I forgot that I was dead.

I guess dead people forget things since their brains aren't functioning; common sense. But dead people don't feel claustrophobic as they realize the coffin door is inches before their noses. Or start to panic and push against the wooden beams. Or claw their way through six feet of dirt to the surface. Yet here I lean against a tombstone with my own name, thinking these very thoughts.

It is the middle of the night, and very cold. Cold to the point where I should be shivering and watching my breath spiral into the starlit sky, but I don't. In fact, my chest doesn't rise at all. I feel the cold, but I don't feel cold. Very complicated thoughts for a dead person.

I scratch my throat, surprised that it is swollen. Using both hands, I grasp my throat in a strangling motion and massage my neck. My lips part, and large clumps of dirt flow out. I stare at the considerable amount of sludge to my left. That tickled. I looked down on my filthy clothes that they, whoever they were, had dressed me for my funeral. It was all black, and the coat seemed to extend into a trench coat. It covering a white dress shirt, now smudged with dirt. I stood up on strong legs, striding between the tombstones thoughtlessly. About halfway out of the cemetery, I came to realize that I had no idea who I was.

Once again, that makes since. I was, am, dead, which includes my mind. As I walked down the dark streets, I noticed a newspaper tumbling in the wind. I bent down and snatched it from the concrete, and straightened the pages. It looked fairly new as I flipped it over to the front to view the date; November 13th, 1981. I scoffed softly. How cliché, the fact that I had risen from the depths of the dead on a Friday the thirteenth. Perhaps there was some meaning to strange superstitions after all. I paged to the obituaries section, skimming through the photos in search of a familiar face.

I paused, my thumb rubbing the soft paper anxiously (can the dead even feel anxiety?). A photo of a young man was placed towards the bottom with a short paragraph as the obituary. The man had slicked-to-the-side dark hair, contrasting his bright eyes which seemed almost white in the photo. His cheekbones were sharp, making his face seem skeletal and gaunt. He gazed at the camera with a disconsolate glare, and although it was only a facial shot, I knew his hands were woven together and clenched. His name was Myron Reapur, and I also knew that he was me.

The section was short, and in no way loving. Unfortunately, I had no recollection of my prior life, and as I clenched the thin paper white knuckled, an inner rage forged itself forward towards my family. The paragraph described how Myron was a disturbed child and on several accounts tried to strangle his sister and brother. When he was thirteen, he was sent to the Concord Asylum to be treated for his obvious mental illness. Five years later, of becoming increasingly violent, he committed multiple murders and eventually, suicide on November fourth.

I mindlessly reached up to my right temple, feeling the round scab a little larger than my thumb, a gunshot wound. I refused to believe that as insane as I was in my life, I committed suicide. But at the same time, I became glad I did to save all the people I threatened. I threw down the paper and ground it into the concrete. It was all a lie...my rising, this article, everything. It had to be.