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  But, that idea was no good. If I waited till the next day I might lose my edge, my determination. The semi-prominent amount of alcohol I had consumed earlier was still playing some role in my decision, I thought, and if I let that wear off then I was pretty sure that I’d just go on like usual, being miserable and hating life one second at a time for all eternity. Suicide looked great compared to that. I was scared. I won’t lie and tell you otherwise. But, I got over this by telling myself that everybody who is about to take his or her own life feels exactly the same way, any other reaction wouldn’t be human.

  After my non-fortuitous gun search, I stopped in the living room and sat in the recliner that Ralph had sat while we played chess earlier that day. I rocked back and forth slowly, and thought about my next method. It was less gruesome, that was for sure, but at the same time I had my doubts. I’d always heard about people killing themselves by overdosing on medication, hell half the time it was accidental, and given Ralph and Minnie’s age their medicine cabinet would probably look like the stockroom of a mail-order pharmaceutical company trying to steal some business from CVS and Walgreens. But, alas, I feared the uncertainty of it. How would I know when I had taken enough? Was I just supposed to keep swallowing Tylenol PM and Ralph’s blood pressure pills until I just fell over? And what if it didn’t kill me? What if I went down, passed out, but didn’t end the game, just went to sit on the bench for a while? Ralph or Minnie might find me, get me to the hospital where they’d pump my stomach and work some medical magic. Then I’d definitely be sent to go see Mr. Porsche. I couldn’t have that. Overdosing was out.

  Hanging myself is what the suicide roulette wheel in my mind landed on next. I immediately thought of the high support rafters of the barn out back. They were definitely high enough. Plus, it would keep me from killing myself inside Ralph and Minnie’ home, whatever bit of comfort that offered. So, I slipped out the back door, trying my best to not make much noise, and walked the short distance to the barn. The doors were huge and made a loud SCREEEEECH sound when I opened the left one and I quickly turned to look back towards the house, waiting for a light to snap on in Ralph and Minnie’s bedroom. When I was certain they had not heard the noise, I stepped inside the barn.

  It was dark inside, but with the door open the moon cast just enough light for me to see well enough once my eyes adjusted. I looked around and didn’t see any rope, but I did find a decent length, industrial looking extension cord hanging on a hook on the wall that would be more than adequate to get the job done. It was bright orange, which seemed incredibly colorful given the gloom-and-doom situation at hand. I picked it up off the hook and then turned, looking back up to the rafters. That’s when the hanging plan hit its snag. I realized I had no way of getting up to where the beams actually were. They were too high. I looked around for a ladder and did in fact find one, but at its highest point it was still too short to get me high enough to tie the extension cord around one of the beams. I looked around desperately for another way up and found none. Calmly, I put the cord back on the hook and left, secretly thankful. Hanging myself scared me more than the gun or overdosing. It seemed too barbaric, too seventeenth century, and again I had my doubts of its success. There were too many factors to weigh in, too many causes of failure. I closed the barn door, again with its loud SCREEEEECH. When back in the house I went to the kitchen.

  Only one option was left that I could think of, and it was by far the most violent and scared the shit out of me. I didn’t even know if I had the guts to do it, but I was determined to make myself. I was tired of playing games and the frustration was growing as I kept eliminating ways to die. People killed themselves all the time, why the hell was it so hard for me?

  I pulled open drawer after drawer along the kitchen counters, sifting through forks and spoons, spatulas and ladles, cutting boards, rolls of aluminum foil and wax paper, and then finally saw what I was looking for on top of the counter next to the stove. A set of knifes consisting of six different sizes. I drew them each out examining them carefully trying to apply some logic as to which one would be best suited for slicing my wrists. Their length ranged from three inches to seven, and width varied as well, the biggest being close to two and half inches wide in its center. Which one would I be able to apply pressure with, get the right angle with, the easiest? If the knife was too long, I might have a hard time in such close proximity. I decided on the shortest knife, one probably meant for peeling potatoes, after remembering that I had read where people had managed to successfully slit their wrists with nothing but a chunk of broken glass. The peeling knife would work.

  I sat down at the kitchen table, and my head swam. I saw myself gouging the knife into the thin skin of my wrist slicing away at veins and arteries, being sure to saw through them all causing the blood to spew hard enough and fast enough to guarantee my death. I almost threw up, right there on the table. Breathing heavily and with shaking hands I put the tip of the knife to my left wrist and applied only a small amount of pressure. The steel was cold and that first touch caused my breath to hitch, pulling the knife away. I got myself under control, and pushed the knife to my wrist again, harder this time, with just the tip and when it broke through the skin, causing the first tiny drop of blood to poke out, I panicked and threw the knife down to the ground. There was no fucking way I could do it. Kill myself, sure, I thought. But not like that. Not by carving myself up.

  Shaking and feeling defeated by the fact that I was out of options, I walked on wobbly legs over to the sink and washed the knife, drying it and putting it back with the others.

  It was then that I saw it. Sitting there on the counter a little ways down from the knives, looking innocent and harmless. It all clicked then and I had another Ah-Ha moment. I actually smiled a bit, it seemed only right, as if all my other suicide plans were destined to fail, all leading me to stumble upon this. It made complete sense. As I said many pages ago, if it hadn’t been for this item then who knows how things might have ended up.

  I walked back up the stairs carrying Ralph and Minnie’s toaster under my arm. This is where the bad got much, much worse.

  Chapter 20

  I went into my room and sat the toaster down on the floor at the foot of the bed, its cord laying coiled beside it. For the next few minutes I sat on the edge of the bed looking at it, seeing bits of my distorted reflection in its silver finish, and finding no small amount of astonishment that the old, outdated, kitchen appliance before me would be the item that put me to my death. Minnie had made me toast with it only hours ago, never even imagining that the young man she was serving would be dead in her house before she ate breakfast again. Plus, she’d have to buy a new toaster.

  The minutes kept ticking away and I moved down on the floor, legs crossed in front of me, staring at the toaster and trying to figure out how I’d been so stupid to let things get to where they were. For the most part I’d always been a pretty intelligent person. Not always the best student, or test taker, but when it came to life and important things, decisions and options, I prided myself on being quite the level-headed guy. I could spot a scam from a mile away, could negotiate prices when I thought they were too high, and could stand up for myself at all times. I had never been suckered in to anything I didn’t want to do. I was too strong for that, too confident. I had married the girl of dreams, become not only a published author, but a successful one, and felt like life couldn’t get any better. I was even warming up to the idea of having a child. With the book deal the financial burden was no more, and little Dillon--God rest his soul--had unknowingly convinced me that I could handle being a Dad, would actually enjoy it I felt. And then, going against everything I knew and practiced, I had let go of all of it, let it all slip away with a naked, intoxicated woman spreading her legs and telling me that the water was warm, dive right in.

  My mind hurt, along with the rest of the inside of me, and I got tired of rethinking everything over and over again, contemplating and shaking my head at the past. Because
it was exactly that--the past--and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. So, it was time to stop thinking, stop analyzing, and stop with the fucking pity-party. It was time.

  I got up off the floor and stood there for a second letting my legs, which had fallen asleep, get the blood back in them, and then picked up the toaster and headed down the hall to the bathroom. I walked slowly, suddenly aware that this was it, my time on earth was approaching its final moments. I was ready to die, I was sure of that, but the reality of it was suddenly staring me in the face and my heartbeat quickened the closer I got to the bathroom door.

  Once inside I turned and closed the door, locking it, and sat the toaster on the vanity. I gripped the counter with both hands tightly and looked at my face in the mirror above the sink. Somewhere along the way I had started crying, and dried tears were streaking my cheeks. I stared at my face for a long time, then at last shook my head in disgust with myself and went over to the bathtub.

  At first I was concerned with the noise of the running water, that it might bring Ralph or Minnie to the door to wonder what I was doing. I checked the time on my watch and saw that it wasn’t as late as I thought it was. Late for old-timers like Ralph and Minnie maybe, but they probably wouldn’t pay any mind to a young guy like me deciding he wanted to wash up after a long day. On top of that, maybe they were heavy sleepers.

  The tub had an old-fashioned stopper, one of the kinds that hung from a chain from the faucet and that you had to plug into the drain. I did this, and then turned on the cold water full blast, letting it fill the tub up to the edge. With the tub full I stood back and looked at it. An image of me lying inside it, dead with my head resting against the porcelain side and my lifeless eyes staring into nothing sent a shiver down my spine and my heart quickened again.

  Slowly I started to get undressed. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my body, that my arms and legs were moving on their own accord and I was nothing but an unseen outsider looking on from a perch along the wall. I still think it’s a bit strange that I took the time to fold my clothes neatly and set them on top of the closed toilet lid in an orderly pile; Shorts and boxers on the bottom, next the t-shirt, lastly the socks. It wasn’t as if I was going to have to pick them up later and I was making things easier on myself. But alas, human nature is nothing but a set of unexplainable functions that we try to dissect with reasoning and protocols.

  Naked and shivering, heart still pounding in my chest, I got down on my knees in front of the tub, closed my eyes, and rested my forehead against the cold porcelain. It had been a while since I had prayed, and somewhere along my Christian upbringing I thought I remembered something about taking your own life being an unforgiveable sin, but still, praying felt like the only appropriate thing to do. I stayed there, eyes squeezed tightly shut, keeping the tears from spilling out, and thought of so many different things I wanted to say. Each time I opened my mouth to speak I closed it again, not quite satisfied at the words. They would be the last words I ever spoke and I wanted to get them right. After several stopped attempts I settled with, "God, if you’re listening I just want you to know that I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to be on this earth any longer feeling the way that I do. I don’t care if you understand that or not, but that’s the way it is. Tell Amy I love her, and that I miss her, and that I’m so…" The tears burst through my closed eyes and I cried out loud, sobbing onto the tiled floor of the bathroom. "Tell her that I’m so, so sorry. Tell her that she was perfect."

  I curled up on the floor and cried to myself until I couldn’t cry any more. All the emotions that I had been trying so hard to ignore and hide over the past weeks came flooding out of me in a violent wave, and when I finally was able to stop and get a hold of myself a little, I felt drained and weak.

  I got up off of the tiled floor and stood on wobbling legs. I grabbed the toaster and sat it on top of my stack of clothes, plugging it into a wall outlet just above the floor in between the toilet and bathtub. With it in place, I quickly lifted one leg up and over the edge of the tub, submerging it in the ice-cold water. I stood there, one leg in and one leg out of the tub for only a second and then with a sigh--was it relief?--I put the other leg into the tub and then sat down hard, splashing water over the tub edge and onto the floor. The water was freezing but I hardly noticed. My breathing had become staccato and my heartbeat was so explosive I for a second feared it would give out before I managed to complete the task at hand. I was ok with that.

  I took in a deep breath and reached over and pushed down the lever on the toaster, instantly creating the flow of electricity and heating the coils inside. Then I picked it up carefully, slowly, and holding it tightly in between my two shaking hands, I closed my eyes, took yet another deep breath--presumably my last--and actually had my right hand three-fourths of the way off the toaster, about to let it fall away completely and let the toaster splash into the water, when my cell phone started to ring.

  My cell phone had been in my suitcase for almost my entire trip, right up until that morning when I had decided it was time to start slowly wading back into the social pool and had turned my phone back on and stuck it into the pocket of my shorts. Call it fate, call it chance, call it what you like. But based on the events that took place after that night in Ralph and Minnie’s bathroom, the only thing I’d call it is bad luck. Bad luck for everyone.

  The sound of my phone ringing into the mostly silent bathroom startled me, and I almost dropped the toaster anyway. But, my eyes shot open, I sucked in air and managed to get my fingers wrapped around the toaster again, ripping its cord from the wall and let it tumble over the side of the tub with a crash.

  Jesus, what am I doin? I thought. I jumped up so that I was standing again in the tub. The phone continued to ring and my eyes darted to my shorts sitting just where I left them, neatly on the toilet lid. Not five minutes before I had told God that I didn’t care what he thought, but now, standing naked in a bathtub, hundreds of miles from home and ready to kill myself by way of electrocution, the phone call coming in and ringing in my shorts pocket seemed like it could be nothing else but a message from above. My mind was exhausted, and I started to think ridiculous thoughts. I started to become disillusioned.

  Amy! It was Amy calling. Amy was calling me to tell me that everything was ok, that she forgave me and that she was ready for me to come home. Come home to her and hold her tight.

  I believed that, I really did. I was experiencing a state of being that crossed right over the line of insanity. Standing in that tub, I was certain that my dead wife was the caller on the other end of the phone call. The thought of this caused my body to spring into action, I was revitalized.

  I took a small step forward in the tub and then reached over, snatching my shorts from the toilet lid. I dug through the pockets, one by one, searching for my phone frantically. I had to find it before it…

  It stopped ringing just as my fingers found it in the lower side pocket on the left leg. I gripped it hard in my hand, willing it to ring again. It didn’t.

  I stayed motionless like that, one hand thrust into the pocket of my shorts, standing in a bathtub full of water for what seemed like a long time until my phone gave off one single BEEP! signifying that the caller had left a voicemail. Acting quickly, I yanked the phone from the pocket and flipped it open.

  The tiny LCD screen showed one missed call and the awaiting voicemail. I held the button that dialed my voicemail and entered in my four-digit code when prompted, then pressed the phone to my ear.

  A female voice spoke. "Um… Hi, Dan, it’s your agent, Jenna."

  Jenna. Jenna Slutbag McMurray. I couldn’t believe she had the gonads to be calling me. After all she did to ruin my life…

  I stepped out of the tub angrily, ready to throw the phone into the wall, and that’s when I slipped. My feet slid on the wet floor where I had splashed the water out of the tub, and then flew out from under me. I went airborne, probably looking like a stuntman in some slap-stick c
omedy flick, and then slammed onto the tiled floor, the back of my head striking the edge of the tub on the way down hard, causing my teeth to clack together and chipping one of my front teeth. The room went black at first and then started to fade in and out like a slow-paced slideshow. I felt something warm dripping down the back of my neck.

  In those last few seconds of consciousness I raised the phone to my ear and only caught what little bits of Jenna’s voicemail my fading brain could process.

  "Jenna………so sorry about………loved her………business…………… publishers………new book………deadline………Jackson Hugh……………call me."