Allen's Suicide

NOTE: This was posted to a now-defunct message board known as “The Bum’s Library”, a forum with the stated purpose of sharing anecdotes and personal stories. This post was made in mid-2009.
(OneAngryCowboy) (July 20th, 2009)
Hey guys. I've been pretty active in the Library for a couple years, and I finally mustered up the courage to share the weirdest thing that happened to me.
This occurred in Sarton, Arizona, my hometown. Don’t bother looking it up, because as of 2000, it doesn’t exist.
Sarton was a close-knit town. We had approximately 4,000 people, and everyone knew each other and helped each other out. It was a typical town in small America.
I was a pretty studious kid, graduated top of my class. Well, technically graduated. I’ll explain later. I wanted to pursue politics as an adult (yeah, I was an idiot), so I was active in my town’s local government and attended every city council meeting.
One day, September 1st, 1999, we had another council meeting. Just a normal meeting; I think we were discussing a new shopping plaza opening in a nearby town or something like that. I was 17 at the time, and was working as an assistant to the mayor.
So a good group of 70 or so people arrive in the town hall and take their seats. The first 15 minutes were normal, y’know, small town stuff.
In the middle of a discussion, a man rose from his seat. Let’s just call him “Allen”. He was a young man, maybe 5 years older than me. I never knew him personally, but everyone said he was a jolly guy, one of the stoner types.
Allen didn’t say a word, just pulled a revolver out of his jacket and shot himself in the head. I remember it vividly. The way he instantly fell to the floor, the blood leaking from his eyes and ears, the old lady next to him screaming, brain matter painted across the side of her face.
Naturally, the meeting was called off, and the town went into a period of mourning. Schools were closed for a week, and many parents took their kids out of town.
I was pretty shocked. That week was a blur, I think all I did was just watching TV and playing PlayStation.
Come Monday of next week, when school was going to reopen, nobody seemed to care. It's not like they'd moved on, they acted as if it had never happened.
I got the courage to ask some folks around town (I was a shy kid), and they said Allen was still alive. Even better, they said there was never a council meeting that day, as the mayor was sick with the flu.
I went to the mayor himself, and he confirmed that he had a bad case of the flu. I asked for the city records. He was a bit surprised, but trusted me and let me look. Sure enough, there was no meeting on September 1st.
Later, I visited Allen himself. He invited me in, and we played video games for a while. He was a really cool guy, just enjoying his life, almost like a modern hippie.
Regardless, I asked him about his "suicide". He thought I was playing a prank and laughed it off. He said he would never think of committing suicide, much less in a public place. He told me he was anti-gun, and didn't own a firearm.
Thoroughly creeped out, I left the house. I became obsessed with the incident, to the point my parents thought I was mentally ill. Even the weird conspiracy theory kids at school thought I was off my rocker.
Christmas time rolled around, and I decided to take a road trip. With my parent's blessing, I drove to Albuquerque to stay with my cousin (we were very close).
After getting hammered at a New Year's Party (kids, underage drinking is bad) I drunkenly told my cousin about the incident. To my shock, he believed me. He was always an out-there kind of guy, always telling me about UFOs he saw and stuff like that.
We discussed our thoughts for a while. He, of course, thought it was aliens. I toyed with the idea of a crazy hallucination, and maybe I was indeed crazy.
Nonetheless, I left back for Sarton shortly after New Year's.
I thought I got lost for a while. If you weren't alive in the 90s, GPS was really primitive and kinda crappy. It said there was no Sarton on the map. Whatever, I thought. GPS was unreliable.
I stopped at a gas station in a nearby town and picked up a map of the area. Imagine my surprise when Sarton was fucking gone. I asked the cashier, and he told me there was no Sarton, and where it would be was just a gravel road in a secluded path of desert.
I went to that area, and sure enough, it was a shitty gravel road with the only other living things being cacti.
I'm ashamed to admit this, but I got out of the car and threw up on the pavement. My hometown, my parents, were all gone.
I immediately returned to Albuquerque with my cousin. He lost his shit, but allowed me to live with him. He was a law student, so he was out of the house a lot.
One day, I used the house phone to call up my grandparents (they lived in Albuquerque). I asked for a copy of my birth certificate, saying I was "just curious."
When it arrived, I nearly shat myself. Same birthdate, same parents, same everything. Except for the fact it said I was born in Albuquerque.
I asked my grandparents about my parents, and they told me that my mom died in childbirth and my dad died of cancer when I was four. For all intents and purposes, I was raised by my grandparents.
I don't even remember the next year. I stopped talking about the incident, even to my cousin. In the outside world, I just played along with the new story of my life.
I graduated top of my class in 2000 without saying a single word about this to anyone. Me and my cousin had a pact to ignore the incident and just play along. Pretty soon, I think he started believing the story.
I'm 26 now, and just graduated with a doctorate from UNM. I have a loving girlfriend, and managed to break out of my shell and make some real friends. I've never spoken a word about the incident.
But it's been bothering me since it happened. The 10-year anniversary is coming up, so I decided to reopen this. If no one in my real life will believe me, then maybe the internet will.
If you lived in the Tucson area in the late 90's, do you remember Sarton, Arizona?
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:Disappearances
Category:Reality