The Rope

You know, it’s really hard to hang yourself.
It sounds so easy, doesn’t it? You take a rope, you make a noose, you tie it off to something. It’s a bit of a pain to find something that’ll support your weight, sure, but a nice rafter will do that. There’s plenty of rafters in here.
That’s the easy bit. Then you gotta find something to stand on. A chair is ideal, something that you can move away with a kick. I don’t have a chair.
Then you’re standing up there, on the edge of the pig trough because that’s the best thing you can find, a rope around your neck that tickles and scratches. It’s so quiet outside, too cold even for crickets. The only sound is the pigs breathing in their stalls. I’ve been here so long that even they’ve gone back to sleep.
And you just. Can’t. Do it.
You take a step off, let the pressure of the rope hit your neck, feel your face swell as the blood hits it. And then you panic, your feet claw their way back up onto the trough and you stand there, shaking, not realizing that you’re gripping that rope so hard that your hands are bleeding.
Then the thoughts come.
You’d kept them at bay, for a while, like a dike against a storm. But now all your focus is on staying alive, the one thing you don’t want to do, and they’ve taken that opportunity to thunder through and envelop you, drown you, carry you away on their dirty, battering waves. You can’t go back in the house. You can’t. Not with Mom there, no doubt sobbing in her room while Dad comforts her. Not with what she said she’d do to you.
You step off the trough again, both feet this time, and feel your Adam’s apple press hard against that rope.
Your eyes bulge. You claw at the horrible, choking thing. Panic is flooding your brain, as your breath starts to wheeze in and out. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe. Saliva fills your mouth, saliva that you can’t swallow, you can feel your face going red and then purple –
You can’t stop your feet finding their way back onto the trough.
You’re shaking so bad you can barely stand. Tears are rolling down your face. You don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve started crying.
You don’t want to die.
But you do want to die. You don’t want to live this life any longer, this life where they keep you locked in and use that name you hate and smile fake smiles and force you to smile back. You don’t want to spend another day in that house, a million miles from nowhere, knowing that they don’t care about you but will never, ever let you go.
But deep down, on the level that still swims along the seabed and twitches away from sharks up above, you cannot make yourself die.
The rope scratches so badly. Even with it slack, it feels hard to breathe.
You want to scream. You want to hurt yourself. You want to do something, make yourself feel something. But they would find you, if you do that. And even though, rationally, nothing they could do would be worse than death, that level that darts along the sand knows that they are the biggest sharks of all.
There are no good options. And that realization makes you break down and sob.
What do you want? What do you really want? Why did you come out here, if not to die?
The rope creaks against the rafter, a half-sound in the dust circling in the flashlight beam. One of the pigs snorts in its sleep.
You wanted to be rescued.
How stupid is that? What a childish thing to think. What kind of rescue do you want? A party to tell you how wonderful you are? Perhaps a princess to tell you you’re her long-lost sister, the true heir to her throne?
Or maybe you want them to care about you for once. Feel bad for you. See you as more than a freeloader in their house, who deserves to be worked to the bone to “earn his keep”.
But they will never do that. Ever. And that thought hurts far more than the rope ever could.
You force yourself to try again. You step off the trough, feel your feet dangle in the air, feel the horrible closeness of that rope around your neck. It’s getting harder to see. You’re feeling lightheaded. Every single thread of rough hemp pierces your neck like a splinter, your fat horrible body dragging you down and down and down against that rope that feels like a horrible, perverted lifeline.
And then the need to breathe is too much, and you step back up onto the trough.
A sound outside brings everything to a stop – shaking, crying, and all. You’ve taken too long. Someone’s here. Someone’s here. Someone’s going to find you, and they’re going to scream and strike and deadname and break you down until you don’t even dare cry yourself to sleep for fear they’ll hear you.
There’s a trail of light, under the edge of the barn door. How easy must it have been, to follow your footprints through the snow?
You know, deep down, that you’re going to regret this. There will be a thousand times in the future that you’ll berate yourself for being a coward, that you’ll suffer and know that you could have ended it if you had only dared. But that little primeval fish will not be ignored.
As the door creaks open and a blinding light floods your face, you slip the noose off your neck, and collapse in tears to the filth-covered floor.
Category:StalkerShrike
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Disappearances