About a year ago, I tried to kill myself six times.
I lost my girlfriend, Jules, in a car accident my senior year of high school. I was the one who was driving. We were coming home late from a party. I was tired, and a little bit drunk. I didn’t even realize I had fallen asleep until we had hit the broadside of a brick building. I woke up with the airbag in my face.
It hurt. My legs felt like they were twisted in fifteen different directions. The steering wheel was embedded in my chest and I knew I had shattered my ribs. I could feel them poking out of the skin like sharp sticks. I felt the glass from the windows hanging from my cheeks by flaps of skin. Blood leaked from everywhere with each heartbeat.
But I didn’t know true pain until I saw my girlfriend’s head bashed in against the dashboard.
The paramedics said the first thing they heard when they arrived was someone yelling. They found me staring at her body, screaming so hard that I burst blood vessels in my lungs.
I don’t remember that part. After seeing what had happened, the next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital three days later. They told me that I had survived fifteen different surgeries to reconstruct my body, and that I was going to be okay.
In return, I asked where Jules was.
A week later, I tried to kill myself for the first time.
My life was in shambles. I stopped going to high school. I didn’t want to face my friends. I didn’t want to face Jules' friends. I knew they would hate me. I hated myself. In the end, it was way easier than I thought to swallow down that bottle of Tylenol. Luckily, my mom found me on the bathroom floor after coming home from work early. It wasn’t a premonition or anything. She just wanted to get to the gym early that day. Lucky me.
After my third attempt, my parents checked me into a mental hospital.
Being in the hospital was okay. I had a therapist, Doctor Gardelli, who, to be fair, was nice. He kept telling me that my life was worth living, that Jules wouldn’t want me to throw my life away, that kind of stuff.
I knew the truth. I was a piece of shit.
Attempts four and five happened in the hospital, but each time they were barely able to resuscitate me. Lucky them.
I figured that with two failed suicides under my belt, they weren’t going to let me have a moments peace until I actually pretended to get better, so I started to get to know the people around me.
There was Pete who believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus. Honestly, not a bad dude. They let him speak sometimes on Sunday. His sermons were always interesting to listen to, even if he would go off on crazy tangents that no one but him would understand.
There was Silent Dale. He didn’t speak. But he’d smile if you slipped him an extra pudding at meal times. I never learned what he was in for, but they let him go only a month into my stay.
Then there was Stephen.
Stephen was odd. More correctly, Stephen was odd because he didn’t seem odd. With characters like Pete and Dale, Stephen stuck out like a sore thumb. He was charismatic, always chatting with someone. He was also coherent, and didn’t really seem to be taking any kind of meds. And he was kind. He always made a point to sit next to me at meal times, and we’d talk about everything and anything. Well, everything except why I was trying to kill myself, but that was a given. No one talked about that kind of stuff with other in-patients
Stephen was the one normal guy there. So when I thought the coast was clear and I tried to kill myself again, I guess it made sense he was the only one who seemed to care.
He visited me in the hospital. I had tried to hang myself with a bedsheet, but I hadn’t gotten a big enough drop. They had me on morphine for the pain. When he arrived, his easy-going face looked more concerned than I had ever seen it. It kind of freaked me out.
We got to talking, and before I knew it I was telling him everything. I told him about Jules, about why I wanted to die. I started crying, the first time I had cried since Jules’ funeral. I lamented about how God, or the universe, or whatever wouldn’t let me die. I just wanted it to end. I wanted to pay for what I did. Why couldn’t I do that one thing right?
After sobbing for a while, I remember Stephen looking at me funny. It wasn’t a look of pity like I was used to from Gardelli. It was something…deeper. Like he was making his mind up about something.
I got out of the medical ward two days later. That night, Stephen came to my room.
He asked me a simple question:
“Do you want to talk to God?”
I had figured it was only a matter of time before Stephen exhibited his crazy. I considered calling a nurse, but Stephen was so calm. He didn’t seem like he was going to flip out, or declare that he was God. It seemed an earnest question, the kind you would hear from a close family member if they wanted to help you.
I asked what he meant.
Stephen explained that in ancient days, before Moses led his people out of Egypt, before Abraham raised the knife over Isaac, the heavens and the earth were so close, they almost overlapped. Men wrestled with angels, and God spoke to man to declare his will. There were rituals from this time that could be performed. Rituals that closed the gap between heaven and earth, and brought one into the presence of God.
It sounds weird even to me as I write this, but hearing Stephen say these things in the moment…it felt right. It felt true. For the first time since Jules died, something was distracting me from the constant thought of ending my existence.
I asked Stephen how he knew about all this. He told me he knew a priest from his younger days who had shared this ritual with him. Stephen understood a bit of what I was going through, he had struggled in a similar way when he was a teenager. He had been so desperate, he had tried out the ritual himself.
“Did it work?” I asked.
Stephen didn’t answer. He just looked out the window, through the bars and into the black winter sky.
He asked me again if I wanted to talk to God.
I said yes.
He gave me a small, folded piece of paper. It was old paper, thick and yellow, covered in grease and fingerprints. Handwritten on it were instructions. I could barely understand them, the print was so shaky. Everything about it felt older than it should.
Stephen stood up. He turned for the door, then stopped like he was going to say something.
But instead, he closed his mouth, shook his head, and went out.
It took another week before I even began making plans to follow the instructions Stephen had given me. Something about the paper, and what was written on it, unnerved me. I hid away the thing, telling myself that I was crazy, but I wasn’t that crazy.
But the feeling faded after a day or two, and curiosity got the better of me. I read the instructions from top to bottom.
It was like something out of the Old Testament. Strange phrases, strange ingredients. It called for the sacrifice of an animal, an infant without blemish. The entrails were to be prepared in a specific manner, and parts of the creature were to be burned with certain words said, and other parts eaten.
To be honest, reading it gave me a weird, burning, sunken feeling in my stomach. It freaked me out.
But it was all I had to hold onto. It was the one thing that stood between me and the nothingness I thought death was.
So I started to gather what I needed.
Most of the supplies were easy. I got most of what I needed from the kitchen, hiding the materials under my bed. The hospital had a chicken coop set up that the patients tended to as a form of therapy. I snuck some fertilized eggs and hatched chicks in my room. I had to do it three times until a chick hatched that was as near to perfect as I could tell. I tried not to get attached, as I knew that this relationship was only going to end badly for the chicken.
I needed fire and a knife. I managed to get some contraband matches smuggled in by my brother, and I snagged a plastic knife from one of the guards lunches. I sharpened it until I was certain it could cut flesh. I reasoned that if this ritual thing didn’t end up panning out, I could always use it to slit my wrists. Little glimmers of hope.
I waited until the moon was in the proper phase, then knelt at the side of my bed in front of my do-it-yourself ritual. I got to work.
It was hard to kill the chick. It took a few tries, but eventually it lay still and bleeding on my bedspread. I butchered it the way the paper told me. I double-checked every step. I burned what needed to be burned, making sure the fumes went out the window. I couldn’t get the batteries out of the smoke detector, and I didn’t want anyone barging in on my little sacrifice.
I took the parts it said to eat, and swallowed them down raw. I almost threw up, but thinking about Jules, I stomached them.
I said the words. My tongue felt strange as I spoke them, weird, thick and twisted.
After completing the last phrase, I waited.
A minute passed. My heart raced. My knees grew sore. I could smell smoke and I briefly hoped the smoke alarm wouldn’t pick it up.
Then God entered my room.
I am not a very religious person. I was raised to go to church, but I wasn’t the praying type–still not, in fact. But I had an expectation of what being near God would feel like. People at church used to say that they would feel a warm fuzzy feeling when they were close to God during prayer, like a hug or something. A feeling of kindness, comfort, or peace.
God didn’t feel like that.
It was a presence. A presence that filled the entire space, and struck it’s way through me like a wall of dark frigid water. It was heavy, and powerful. It felt like all around me was full of fire, and yet also full of dark. It was everything, and nothing at the same time. It was overpowering, and I could barely sit up straight. I felt compelled to lay on the floor prostrate before it, unsure if it was because of how much the feelings overcame me, or if it was in recognition of the power that had deigned to recognize my pitiful existence. My whole body shook like I was having an epileptic fit, and my vision flickered with strange shapes that felt familiar, yet foreign. Everything hurt with a strange panic, like my body was being torn apart on a cellular level. I wondered if I was about to die.
It was quiet for a moment. And then God asked me a question.
It was not with words, but a sense of curiosity that came into me and made my teeth chatter. I couldn’t even say now what the question was exactly, but I understood it. My thoughts turned to Jules, how she had looked when she died, her head smashed beyond all recognition. I thought about my stay here at the hospital. I thought about my suicide attempts. I thought about how worthless and painful my life was.
The presence took it all in. Every last drop of feeling.
I blinked, and I was somewhere else.
The presence was gone. God was gone. There was no light. All that remained was a black expanse before me. I thought that I had gone blind. I reached out with my hands and felt a smooth, cold floor, like concrete. I began to panic, and my breathing echoed around me so loudly that I put a hand over my mouth. The quiet felt like a dangerous thing to disrupt.
I tried to control my breathing. It took the better part of an hour. Right when I would start to calm down, I would remember where I was and my heart would beat so hard I thought it would come out of my chest.
Once I calmed down completely, I took stock of my surroundings.
I was alone, in the dark.
I thought my eyes would adjust, but they didn’t. The world stayed black and impenetrable. But in my new calm state, my brain started to go off in strange directions. I thought I heard running footsteps. On further examination, it was just the beating of my heart.
The dark itself felt heavy, like it wasn’t just space around me. It felt like something physical, something pressing on me on all sides.
I didn’t know if this was a vision, or if I had been physically transported somewhere else. I touched the floor again. For a vision, it felt exquisitely real. I began to feel around with my hands outstretched before me. All I felt was open air. I put them back on the ground. I needed to remind myself that there was something solid beneath me, that I wasn’t falling through the air, that there was something other than myself that was real.
An hour passed, then another.
Then another.
Then a day.
Then a week.
My sense of time was more of an estimation. I had no way of knowing how long I was actually there. But no matter how long I waited, the blackness continued. I began to hope I would starve to death. Then it might be over. But even though my hunger grew to the point that it felt like my my stomach was dissolving into my own acids, my arms never grew thinner. My throat dried out from lack of water and I began to cough so much I worried my lungs would emerge from my mouth. I felt the skin crack in the back of my mouth and I tasted blood on my tongue. I thought hopefully that I would bleed to death. Maybe that would be a way out. But even though I felt pain at my injury, I never grew woozy or faint.
I stayed painfully aware of every second, of every minute, and of how alone I was.
Another month passed.
I couldn’t sleep in the dark. I felt tired, but every time I closed my eyes, sleep would never come.
Another month.
I wished it would end. I tried to choke myself with my own hands, but it wouldn’t work. I tried to break my own neck, but my consciousness remained. I bit off my fingers, hoping to bleed to death, but I always found the digits reattached in a few hours, as if they had never been separated.
Fear subsided into boredom, and then into fear again. I stopped trying to struggle.
But then one day, I heard a noise.
It made my entire body still. I strained my ears. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I tried to listen more closely, holding my breath. After a few seconds, I was able to place it.
It was another heartbeat.
It was faint, but I could tell it was close. I shuffled along the floor towards it, straining my eyes though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see.
Soon, my fingers touched cold and clammy flesh.
I spoke. “Hello?”
A voice answered. It was dry, and barely audible above the sounds of our collective bodies' inner processes. “Yes?”
I almost cried. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed hearing the voice of another human being. I asked who they were.
The voice took a moment to respond. “I’m not sure anymore.”
I asked what they were doing here. “Waiting,” they said.
“Waiting for what?”
The voice didn’t answer.
“Waiting for what?”
I suddenly felt cold, wet flesh touch my hands, trembling fingers scraping at my shirt and arms. I pulled away instinctively.
“You’re real.” The voice was almost incredulous.
“How long have you been down here?”
“...Years.”
I felt my stomach sink. “Years?”
“I think…”
We sat in silence for a long time. I didn’t want to believe that this could continue on for years. Maybe I was dead. It certainly felt like it. It had been months since I had completed the ritual in my small mental hospital bedroom. Was this my punishment?
“It’s always dark here.” The voice made me jump. I had forgotten it was there.
“Is there a way out?” My voice trembled. I didn’t realize how frail I sounded until this moment.
I could not see past the dark, but I felt the eyes of the voice on me. They seemed to burn a cold fire on my skin and it made me shiver. Whatever I was talking to stared at me for a long moment.
Then, they spoke softly. “What price are you willing to pay?”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew. Anything. I was willing to give anything. I wanted it to be done. But I couldn’t gather the courage to say the words. I think the voice knew what I was thinking, because I felt the clammy hands brush against my cheeks. They slid down to my arms and pointed them in a direction
“Pay the price, and you will be free.”
For a long moment, we breathed together, the sounds of our hearts intermingling.
I began to crawl.
The heartbeat and breathing of my strange companion grew fainter and fainter, as I got further and further away. Soon, I couldn’t hear it anymore. It felt lonely in the dark without them, in a strange sort of way.
My knees and hands became sore and bloody as I crawled what must have been fifty miles. Only a distant hope that there might be a way out kept me going. At times I would run into hard walls that felt like concrete, and I would have to move my way around them by touch. I heard noises in the dark, great snufflings and the creak of enormous limbs. I felt things move next to and over me. I heard other heartbeats, and felt hands on my body when I stopped to rest. After a point, I stopped resisting their touch. It became strangely comforting to know others were in the void.
Then one day, I heard the screams.
They were distant at first, but they made me grit my teeth. They were gut-wrenching noises, a pure expression of pain.
I made my way to the sound. It felt like the right way.
The screams grew louder, and above the animalistic cries I began to hear words. Pleadings, groanings, offers of every kind. But they always ended in unadulterated, raw-throated, blasts of noise.
I was so focused on the noise, I didn’t notice the line until I ran headfirst into it.
It took a moment to regain my bearings. Once I had returned to myself, I discerned what I had hit with my hands. It was a line of bodies, people on their hands and knees lined up in the direction of the noise. Every so often, there would be a pause in the keening, and the line would move forward.
This was the place.
I felt my way to the back of the line. It must have been a mile long. I took my spot.
The line moved quickly. The screams never stopped, but I began to hear sobbing from ahead, and eventually behind me. I heard people crawl away from the line, leaving their place. I heard the soft slap of their bloodied knees and hands as they paced away. I knew they were bloodied, because as I moved forward, I could feel the congealed puddles of the stuff. It was sticky, full of lumps, and the ground was raised in two lines like speed bumps by all the dried fluids that had accumulated underneath their donors.
With every move forward, the screams became louder.
After about a month of enduring, I reached the front.
The person in front of me disappeared. They crawled into what felt like a solid wall when I felt it with my hands. Then their screams began. Every word, every moment, so explicitly unrestrained. Hearing such things at a distance, I had been able to convince myself that the pain was not as bad as I assumed. Hearing it up close and personal, I almost left my place. Would it be worth it when it was my turn?
Two hours, then the screams stopped.
Something changed.
In front of me was a hole. It was rough, and felt like it had been worn through the wall by scrabbling hands. It was just wide enough for me to squeeze through. I swallowed, feeling the dry burn of spittle in my throat as it traced along the broken skin. I pressed through, dropping to my belly and wriggling.
Inch by inch, I made my way through the hole.
As my feet passed the entrance, there was a moment of silence. I couldn’t hear the noise of those who waited behind me in line, breathing ragged gasps and occasionally sobbing.
Then I felt the hands.
They grabbed my wrists, my ankles. They were rough, as if they were covered in calluses and strange bony protrusions. Their nails were long and sharp. They turned me on my back and held me down. Their skin burned my own as if they were white hot, and I cried out in pain.
“Will you pay the price?”
The voice startled me. It was not the voice of a human. It felt vaster. Like the presence I had felt years ago kneeling in my hospital ward. The hands continued to burn, and I cried out again.
“Will you pay?” The voice asked more insistently.
I screamed yes.
The hands did not release me. Instead, I felt new ones upon my skin. They touched me tenderly at first, tracing over my body, feeling the joints, the sensitive parts. All over my body until it seemed they had a proper picture.
Then, they began to tear at me.
It started with my clothes. They roughly tore off any semblance of clothing until I was naked. I shivered–the dark was cold–and I couldn’t stop the whimpers that escaped at my vulnerability. Then their nails found my skin and they began to rip. I felt great stinging sheets pulled away from my arms and legs like cloth, blood dripping as they held them over me, and me screaming as I had never screamed before. Once my skin was gone, they started on my muscles. Each individual fiber, pulled with expert precision. My organs, extracted throbbing from my torso, then bursting like small explosions. My penis erected, then broken off like a carrot. Fingers plunged into my skull to remove my eyes like grapes from a bowl. My tongue was grasped like a handle and torn still wriggling from my throat. My cries were cut off when my lungs were pulled out of my chest. Still I felt it all, every last moment.
Right until my very bones were removed from where I lay, and shattered into dust.
And for a moment, I was nothing.
And in that nothingness, I remained awake.
I blinked, and was back in my hospital room.
I took in great breaths of air. I had forgotten what my room looked like. I had to squint, the light was so blinding after the dark.
I felt the Presence.
It lingered for a moment. I was so weak, I felt I would dissolve into the very air.
From the Presence, I felt a sense of finality.
Then it left.
The room was empty again. I took in a great breath, like I was coming off the bottom of the ocean. I wept uncontrollably. It took hours until I could open my eyes fully. I was no longer in pain, but I could remember it. All the exquisite nature of it. I rejoiced again in the wholeness of my body. And with my pillow wet with tears of joy, I slept for the first time in what felt like years.
I was checked out of the hospital a month later, given a clear bill of health.
I never talked with Stephen about what I experienced. He never asked about it. We pretended that the late night conversation we had shared never occurred. Occasionally we would share a look across a crowded room, and I knew he understood at least part of what I had experienced. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
As far as I know, he’s still in the hospital.
I no longer have a desire to kill myself. I had a lot of time to think about what I experienced in that dark place. One conclusion keeps coming to the surface: death is no escape. If I wanted to make up for my mistakes, there were other ways. I would need to keep living. Face up to my actions. Face up to the memory of Jules.
And I’ve tried. Truly I have. It never seems to be enough.
I still dream of the dark place. The noises, the hands, the vast unending nature of it. It always ends with me waking in a cold sweat, the feeling of fingernails still on my skin. I worry it’s waiting for me, that in the end I’ll give my final breath, close my eyes…and then return to that wakeful nothingness.
I kept the paper Stephen gave me. He never asked for it back. Currently it sits at the bottom of my dresser. I’ve wanted to burn it on more than one occasion, but I always stopped myself. It feels wrong to destroy it.
After all, someone might need it.
But not me.
One conversation is enough for a lifetime.
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