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time; lets the tears flow from him like a river, clearing him of pain, disgust and anger. His lips move in silent prayer, one final whisper to the god he’s wasted so many words on. You never showed me compassion, you never offered salvation. If there’s one thing you ever did for me, it was to guide me to this redemption.

  He scoops up the pills and puts them into his pocket. He leaves his room. In the kitchen he opens a cupboard and takes out a bottle of vodka. He has everything he needs. He leaves, as he closes the front door he hears his phone chime with a new message. He doesn’t care.

  His feet guide him towards the graveyard. A perfect place to end it all. Silent, peaceful. The dead can help guide him into their world. An abandoned soul released on consecrated ground. He smiles, he likes the beauty in that. There’s always a beauty in death.

  At his destination he finds a place and sits down. With his back against a tree at the heart of the graveyard he looks at the moss covered stone slab in front of him. He wonders what his will read. He takes another swig from the bottle he’d already started drinking on his way. One last time to think. One last moment to contemplate. His mind wandering within its own wilderness. What the fuck is there for me anymore but pain and this hollowness? Just going through the motions of living until the day nature decides I die. Why should my life be in anyone’s hands but my own?

  He’s lost. Lost his direction, lost his way. His mind can see no future, wants no future here on this Earth. He has dreams but none had been powerful enough to let him make that choice. Something had to end; rather than break the heart of the one he cares for through rejection, he has decided to be the something that dies. The end of every single dream, hope and love he has ever felt or known. It’s time for him to embrace the shadows and be reborn as someone else. Inside he is dying, losing. He feels the pills in his pocket weighing his mortal body down like an anchor. He prays that salvation will come through taking them. He swigs from the bottle. The first two are swallowed.

  Will they all forgive him when his candle fades? Will they understand? Could they? All he wants is freedom from all this pain; he wants peace, a mind freed from insecurities and self-loathing. All he had ever asked for was a simple answer, an acknowledgment that he had a reason to be here, that he was valued, not just humoured. All he wanted was to have found his place in the world. He swallows another pill.

  All he hears in his head is screaming. Voices upon voices screaming at him, putting him down, killing him. Rotting all his confidence and pride to nothing, causing him to self-destruct. Too many demons clawing at his back, too many painful memories. Too much anger and deceit. Can he blamed for wanting to end all that? He gulps the vodka; no pill this time.

  All he wants is to be someone else, someone different. Someone new. To be born again with new hopes, new situations, no memories to hold him back. When he looks at himself he sees a sickness, bitter thoughts and remembered words clinging to his soul like cancerous tumours. Eating away at everything, growing daily. Is it wrong to want to be free from pain? His world is killing him slowly, now he’s just taking control.

  His mouth opens. ‘Come on then,’ he screams into the dark. ‘You said you’d been waiting for this moment. Waiting to consume me. Well don’t miss the finale.’ He cries, sobs painfully. ‘This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. This is what I wanted.’ His voice breaks to a whisper. ‘Is this what I wanted?’

  His eyes close slowly. A single tear rolls down his cheek. Is this what I wanted? I’m nothing… I’m nothing… I’m nothing but worthless dirt.

  Laura:

  The Promises

  Three days ago I died, don’t worry it wasn’t painful, the dead don’t feel physical pain. Whilst my body screamed as the overdose swarmed through its system, trying to force everything out, my soul waited calmly to be freed from its mortal prison. Don’t judge me, suicide was only an option, only an exit. Not really the only exit, but still, an exit into what? The nothing, the dark. We are born from nothing and that is exactly where we return. No blinding light, no tunnel, no pearly gates. Just darkness extending for infinity. Death is the escape for the mortal body, but where do the dead escape to? Maybe my salvation just forgot about me, I mean I’ve spent my whole life being abandoned, so why should it be any different here? As you can tell, there’s so many questions yet no one to answer them. Maybe there are no answers. Who knows?

  If I focus hard enough I can see the outlines of a room, the room in which I died. I can see the furniture, the bed, my body. My phone keeps ringing, a distant echo from the realm of the living. I guess they haven’t found me then, but I guess that’s what I wanted. No time to save the lost soul. The more I concentrate, the more I see. Great, I’m trapped living in the shadows, locked in the room I died, these familiar walls my tomb. Shit. Fuck. If only I could answer that phone.

  Funny that, no one bothered to call whilst I was there, no one ever checked to see if I was okay in my moments of absence, but now they won’t stop fucking calling and there’s nothing more lonely than the mournful ring of the phone of a dead person. Click through to voicemail and hear the voice of a ghost. Strange how much we leave, yet how little comfort it brings to those left behind. Recorded moments of life. Memories are our legacies.

  Then the light came. A blinding light forcing the darkness to the edges. My eyes adjust and I see it all. The door to my tomb opened wide, the figure running to my lifeless form. The air filled with shouts, screams, panic and upset. Stood on a film set watching the actors go through their lines, unable to do anything. Everything played out according to plan.

  Standing alone, disconnected. Hearing the phone calls being made, seeing the tears, the pain caused by my one simple act of freedom. This isn’t how it’s meant to be, I was meant to be free from all this shit. Isn’t that part of the promise? Why is this happening? Another question with no one to answer.

  There’s something different about the room. Ignore the people rushing around, ignore all the noise, something isn’t right. There’s a shadow in the corner, tall and dark, just standing in contrast to the brightness of the room. I can see it out of the corner of my eye. Tendrils of smoke rising up from its feet. I turn to look, the growl hits my ears as, in a blink of an eye, the shape rushes forward, arm stretched to the light. I can sense anger, rage, an eternal loneliness pouring from it as it passes, then everything fades to black.

  The scene changes. I know this by the change in the air. Still surrounded by the darkness I feel lost, alone. All the emotions I thought I’d be free from attacking my soul, pure and at the core. I feel naked, no fleshy walls to protect the most sensitive part of us all. My essence, the controller that moved the machine stands naked for the shadows. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

  I try to focus again. Force my phantom eyes to see in the dark without their glassy orbs. The inky darkness swirls and fades slightly. The room is empty, plain, safe for the shrouded table as its centre. At least I’m not in the same place I guess.

  Movement, more of a sense than physical, but enough shift in the environment to make me aware of it. I’m not alone. I don’t feel alone. I’m drawn to the corners of the room again. I freeze. It’s still here with me. The tall shadow, black against the darkness. It moves, as it does so I can see its shape isn’t solid, made up of thousands of little particles like a cloud of flies. Thickly condensed and trapped obediently into this form. It continues to approach. The table prevents it from reaching me. We stand and stare at each other. My mouth opens. ‘Why?’ A simple enough question.

  ‘Why?’ The shadow’s voice a whisper. ‘Why? Such a simple word yet so hard to answer on its own. Why what? Why does it rain? Why does it feel so cold? Why are we here? Why are you still here? So many whys for poor little mankind.’

  I swallow, if a spirit can still technically make physical actions I don’t know but that’s what it feels like. ‘Why am
I still here? Why does all this pain go on and on inside my head? Why hasn’t it all stopped like I’d expected?’

  ‘Poor poor child, did you misunderstand the promise of death? You feel pain because the pain from which you ran wasn’t physical. Death can only heal you from the ills of your mortal decay. Your body rots around you but your soul never ages, it just gets beaten and bruised, torn and damaged. Collecting all the baggage of life in mortality. The journey of life is to learn from this pain, to grow and acknowledge it, to turn pain into understanding. Both life and death offer you a promise to help you through both existences.’

  ‘What, to live in pain for eternity?’ I feel cheated. ‘What stupid worthless promise is that?’

  The shadow roars. Explodes into its thousands of particles. The flies swarm around the room chaotically before they dissolve into the darkness. I’m alone again. I guess I’ll have to wait for my answer. I’m getting used to that anyway.

  The overhead lights flicker on. Bright, fluorescent. Clinical. Doors open and figures walk in. If I had a heart it would have stopped beating. One of them is an unknown, the second is my mother. The woman leads her to the