One Life Left...

I watch her jump off the edge, plummeting to her doom and there is nothing I can do about it.This is what she wanted so there is no talking her out of it.
My friend wants to die and there is nothing I can do but watch in horror ....
Pause!
Before you judge, just understand that the situation is not exactly what it seems.
I know it seems like I'm merely spectating my friend jump off a bridge and falling to her death thousands of feet to the ground without a single attempt to stop her.
Well I am, but let me explain the whole situation.

My name is Khaya and I live in a society very similar but also quite different to yours.
In my world, possibly a bit far into your future, believe it or not but each person has nine lives. Yes, you heard me right, Nine!
No one really understands how this amazing feat came to be but there have been rumors over the decades.Some speculate that it was the work of God and one of His unexplained mysteries while others speculate it being the work of man behind closed doors trying to play God.
The truth is that no one really knows for sure how it came to be but best believe it's a gift given to the whole of humanity.

Apparently for millions of years in the past, people used to only have one life and even had a motto,YOLO, to represent such.They are said to have held on to this life so much that they would do anything to preserve it. I can't imagine such desperation, all to preserve a single life. I mean you could make one mistake and it's 'game over' for you. I really can't imagine living like that.
Wait, I'm lying.  That's literally how my oh-so - conservative self lives so I completely can imagine it.
Even in a society where everyone has nine lives, you do get people who still hold on to each one as if it's precious and their last, especially the religious and those who've wasted all eight and are down to their last, but you also get the reckless idiots who don't really care and don't really see death as a threat, much like my friend,Zenzele.
I call her Zen for short. I love my friend and she's fun to be around but she's an idiot. She's under the belief that we have nine lives for a reason and each one should be lived to the fullest - that being doing reckless and foolish stunts.
Stunts like the one she's about to attempt right now.
They call it 'tricky-cord bungee jumping'. As you can guess by the 2 hyphenated words in the sentence,"tricky-cord", the bungee cord isn't exactly to be fully trusted but that's surprisingly part of the fun. The aim of the game is not survival.
Survival is purely out of the picture.
You are secured onto a specially designed bungee cord with quick release technology that suspends you in the air,stopping you from falling for a few moments... before it breaks off suddenly and you plummet thousands of feet to your death!
That's what catches people off-guard and quite shocking too, that's the best part of the ordeal. They never know when the cord will be released and when you will fall to your death.
When people expect the cord to break, it doesn't and keeps pulling them back up, but the moment when it doesn't do so anymore is so surprising.
Why is such a dreadful activity even legal? It's the society we live in.
Apparently there is no greater pleasure than the rush felt right before you die. It is said to surpass every known and addictive drug in terms of providing pleasure.The recorded chemical data from the bodies of "tricky-cord bungee jumping" participants reflects the presence of so much dopamine and serotonin in their bodies that experts are still unsure whether it's the impact with the ground that kills the participants or if the happy hormone overload finishes the job while they are still in the air.
One thing for sure is that by the time they wake up again, all traces of physical injury or excessive dopamine in their system is gone.
How?
Well, I guess that brings us to the most interesting part about this "Lazarus ability" that we have.
When one loses their life to a death of whatever nature, as long as they have more lives left, they go through a dedicated healing window.
What exactly does that mean?
Well,depending on your health and age, amongst a long list of qualities that vary from person to person, your body will take at least 24 hours to repair itself. Lost a limb? It will regenerate.
Got disintegrated in an explosion? From the tiniest molecule of what's left from your body, it will start developing itself until you're back to how you last were when you were alive. Died from an overdose? By the time you wake up again, your body chemistry will have been restored to optimum and phenomenal levels. Nothing is impossible with this little gift which is precisely why everyone chooses to abuse it. Everyone including my idiotic friend.
So, back to reality.
I watch Zen from the safety of the spectating area in the bungee-jumping center along with a few other people also watching friends and family take part in such peculiar theatrics. Amongst those seated next to me is a blonde woman, her face cakey with excessive make up and she's donning attire she seemingly is way too old to be in, leaving very little to the imagination. She suddenly begins cheering and a teenage girl on the other side amongst those about to leap, seemingly between 17 and 19, blows back an innocent and loving kiss in her direction. It must be her daughter. It will literally take such parents, the liberal kind who refuse to raise their kids in a mature manner, let alone grow up themselves, to encourage their children to waste their lives and leap to their death. It's a sickening concept to think of, honestly.
Looking back to give me a very overzealous thumbs up and wide grin, Zen has been properly strapped in and is ready to carry on with the horrifying act.
I have never seen a person so excited to meet death. It's literally hard to imagine anyone being excited for such but as I've previously said, my world is stranger than yours.
The only reason I'm here but not jumping with her, apart from my very conservative views is that no matter how excited the leap might make me and no matter how much dopamine can flow in my system, I can't foresee it being enough to knock me out before hitting the hard concrete ground all the way at the bottom with a splat and painting it red all over and I cannot imagine such pain.
Maybe one day but not today.
Today, my duty is to collect my friend's corpse and transport it to Max, her boyfriend's house.
Why specifically Max's house?
Well, as you would've guessed it, Zen's parental figures seem to have no knowledge of the fact that their daughter is missing-or rather wasted-a few lives.
They are still under the impression that their lovely and innocent daughter has all nine of her lives intact.
In the past, it was one's virginity that was this important and parents sought to ensure their children keep uncorrupted. Today, it's lives and on that very note, it is one of the reasons why I'm not very fond of Zen's boyfriend.
As mentioned above that virginity was what was regarded as so sacred, in the modern day it is lives.
Boys, instead of seeking to take a girl's innocence as a way of her conveying her adoration towards him instead seek to take a girl's life instead.
You may think they are sick for such an expectation until you see how happy young and naive girls are to comply, young and naive girls like Zen.
My biggest suspicion is that this reckless spirit and careless nature that Zen has is the influence of being around Max.
Not only that but he's taken about three of Zen's lives in the past year of them dating.
Three!
Out of those three, one he performed on my friend's body while the other two were suicides while he watched, because what's a greater pleasure than watching someone give and end their very life for you?
That's how we've been led to think. It's a society of psychopaths.
As any friend would, speaking to my friend about leaving Zen has been attempted but like half of everything else I say, it falls on deaf ears.
There's always excuses but the one that got to me the most was the day after he killed her himself and  she said to me the next day after waking up, "Why would I want to stop? Why would I want anything either than this feeling? As much as I trust him to bring my body to life with the right touch, I should be able to trust him to bring me pleasure by taking the life out of my body." and I was speechless. Apparently just as much as he brought her pleasure by experiment with her body in an intimate manner, him murdering  her was the same.
She'd told me that she had been bound and he'd taken his time exploring her body with a sharp blade, seeing her blood being his release and the final climax being watching the last of her breath silently leave her body.
That's when I knew that we'd reached a dangerous level of existence, by sexualising death and murder, and once something is sexualised, it can't be seen in any different manner.
We are a society of sick people, the first amongst those being Max yet I can't do anything about it.
You know that situation when you come from a party and you're too drunk to even look in the direction of your way home so decide to sleep over at a friend's house instead?
Well, replace being a little too drunk with being a little too dead and you'll understand why I'm taking Zen to her psycho excuse of a boyfriend's house.
As much as I don't like him, I can't exactly take my friend's corpse to my conservative household or to her parents' house, who have no idea she's ever died so what option am I left with?
You guessed it, Max's house and by his house I don't mean his parents' house but his actual house.
The man is in his late thirties and is married with three kids.
Zen and I are barely 19 yet she's already in competition with his wife for his attention.
Apparently his wife has her suspicions regarding her husband's infidelity but suspicions can only go so far without proof, which is hard to imagine since there's already been so much blood shed in this unholy union between Zen and Max. According to Zen, he loves her because she allows him to do things to her he can only dream of asking from his wife. Vile, treacherous and disgusting things I can imagine and she's all for it.
I seriously need to reconsider my choice in friends but then again I can never leave or judge Zen.
Despite her questionable life choices, she's been a very good and understanding friend who has been with me through the worst of situations so it is up to me to be with her in her moments of confusion and see her out,starting with now.
With a very wide grin plastered onto her face, she gives one last wink in my direction and leaps, descending out of sight.
Her scream is a loud one, a mixture of bubbly enthusiasm and dark fear, but that's not the final scream .
You always know when it's the final one when the enthusiasm is no longer present or felt in their voice, only horror. Right on cue the terror takes over and her scream is a bit sharper and seemingly more scared. There's no turning back then.
See you in your next life, my friend...
End of Part 1.