God's Jester
Her form lingers before me like a keepsake, a reminder of my innocent past. The room is hot and dry with words that can’t find release. I try to coax them from my swollen throat, but images of two viscous hearts – beating as one – rise to the surface, choking me. I am overwhelmed by graying pictures of once-beautiful love, now strangled with fear and betrayal.
“I can’t live like this anymore.” She takes my hand in hers, her eyes still shining with teary hope. “I can’t hang in the balance forever.”
I shift my weight and rest my eyes on the bookshelf behind her. A radio on the top shelf is set to an oldies station airing a tribute to Southern rock. She releases my hand and leans in closer.
“I’m sorry things turned out this way,” she says. She stands on her tiptoes to wrap her petite frame around me. I feel small, soft hands on the curves of my face, followed by the touch of her lips on my cheek. “Take care of yourself. I’ll call you.”
Her moist eyes peer at me for a long time through the door. Soon it closes behind her with resounding finality, like the last words of a condemned man just before the switch is pulled.
I check my watch. Eleven-thirty. Almost midnight.
I unbutton my denim jacket and shuffle to the bookshelf on the far wall. I turn the music way up and take a blue aluminum pipe and silver lighter off a stack of magazines on the second shelf. Lying on the floor in the center of the room, I light the pipe and draw fragrant smoke into my lungs for several minutes.
The walls are like bare skin, blemished here and there with framed photographs of a smiling couple. A bloody word oozes down one side of the room like amateur graffiti. In human ink, recently drawn with a syringe from my own arm, I squirted it onto a bare wall in our living room. Now it looks like an ugly scar.
Empty.
In its emptiness the room is full of phantoms and whispered voices. My eyes are numb, suddenly too big for their sockets. Reality begins to shake and vibrate with the distortions of the radio as the first licks of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Susie Q fill the air. The walls twist and sway to the music as time trails off in a room now fogged with mota.
From the ceiling I observe my own form on the floor. Looking up at myself looking down, I take a long drag from the perfumed censor. Psychedelic drums and long-haired guitars mark the beat of slurred time. I tap my black Converse All-Stars to lyrics of a dead song from a dead style of music, certain of my own fate.
Oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q, baby, I love you
Susie Q…
On a whim, I named my .38 Smith & Wesson “Susie Q” after watching Full Metal Jacket years ago. The frame-rate of my mind is slow, like an internal strobe-light. I watch my hand retrieve the gun from my pocket and place it on the floor next to me.
The smiles in my life are plastic, and all talk is small. All names are pseudonyms, all feelings numbed. I know that each beautiful face masks a human soul, as a crypt conceals a worm-infested corpse. The past and the future have surrendered to the absurd present. The world is sterile, bereft of sensation and meaning. I am no longer a participant, but an observer. I am God’s jester, destined to dance and trample the flowers adorning the grave of my life, a lost sheep in the winter of humanity.
The pulse of my soul just walked into the night. And soon the clock will strike twelve.
Say that you’ll be true
Say that you’ll be true
Say that you’ll be true
and never leave me blue
Susie Q…
The walls are inching closer to where I lay tapping my foot to the beat of the drum. I turn toward the gun on the floor beside me. Weightless, I float, spiraling downward into its black mouth. Crashing cymbals and grinding guitars mark my descent as John Fogerty’s gritty voice fills my eardrums with words of devotion. I close my eyes, snap my fingers, and fall deeper into the tunnel.
I hover inside the gun, eyeing its internal workings. I watch as the hammer pulls itself back, resembling a lion crouching in the grass ready to pounce and tear its surprised prey. In slow-motion I watch it fall to meet the six-shot cylinder, releasing a hot charge that propels me forward on a bullet, which I casually ride into the depths of my own skull.
The song ends and the fog clears. I look down on the remains of my spattered self, the only sound a ticking watch on my dead wrist.
“I can’t live like this anymore.” She takes my hand in hers, her eyes still shining with teary hope. “I can’t hang in the balance forever.”
I shift my weight and rest my eyes on the bookshelf behind her. A radio on the top shelf is set to an oldies station airing a tribute to Southern rock. She releases my hand and leans in closer.
“I’m sorry things turned out this way,” she says. She stands on her tiptoes to wrap her petite frame around me. I feel small, soft hands on the curves of my face, followed by the touch of her lips on my cheek. “Take care of yourself. I’ll call you.”
Her moist eyes peer at me for a long time through the door. Soon it closes behind her with resounding finality, like the last words of a condemned man just before the switch is pulled.
I check my watch. Eleven-thirty. Almost midnight.
I unbutton my denim jacket and shuffle to the bookshelf on the far wall. I turn the music way up and take a blue aluminum pipe and silver lighter off a stack of magazines on the second shelf. Lying on the floor in the center of the room, I light the pipe and draw fragrant smoke into my lungs for several minutes.
The walls are like bare skin, blemished here and there with framed photographs of a smiling couple. A bloody word oozes down one side of the room like amateur graffiti. In human ink, recently drawn with a syringe from my own arm, I squirted it onto a bare wall in our living room. Now it looks like an ugly scar.
Empty.
In its emptiness the room is full of phantoms and whispered voices. My eyes are numb, suddenly too big for their sockets. Reality begins to shake and vibrate with the distortions of the radio as the first licks of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Susie Q fill the air. The walls twist and sway to the music as time trails off in a room now fogged with mota.
From the ceiling I observe my own form on the floor. Looking up at myself looking down, I take a long drag from the perfumed censor. Psychedelic drums and long-haired guitars mark the beat of slurred time. I tap my black Converse All-Stars to lyrics of a dead song from a dead style of music, certain of my own fate.
Oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q
Oh Susie Q, baby, I love you
Susie Q…
On a whim, I named my .38 Smith & Wesson “Susie Q” after watching Full Metal Jacket years ago. The frame-rate of my mind is slow, like an internal strobe-light. I watch my hand retrieve the gun from my pocket and place it on the floor next to me.
The smiles in my life are plastic, and all talk is small. All names are pseudonyms, all feelings numbed. I know that each beautiful face masks a human soul, as a crypt conceals a worm-infested corpse. The past and the future have surrendered to the absurd present. The world is sterile, bereft of sensation and meaning. I am no longer a participant, but an observer. I am God’s jester, destined to dance and trample the flowers adorning the grave of my life, a lost sheep in the winter of humanity.
The pulse of my soul just walked into the night. And soon the clock will strike twelve.
Say that you’ll be true
Say that you’ll be true
Say that you’ll be true
and never leave me blue
Susie Q…
The walls are inching closer to where I lay tapping my foot to the beat of the drum. I turn toward the gun on the floor beside me. Weightless, I float, spiraling downward into its black mouth. Crashing cymbals and grinding guitars mark my descent as John Fogerty’s gritty voice fills my eardrums with words of devotion. I close my eyes, snap my fingers, and fall deeper into the tunnel.
I hover inside the gun, eyeing its internal workings. I watch as the hammer pulls itself back, resembling a lion crouching in the grass ready to pounce and tear its surprised prey. In slow-motion I watch it fall to meet the six-shot cylinder, releasing a hot charge that propels me forward on a bullet, which I casually ride into the depths of my own skull.
The song ends and the fog clears. I look down on the remains of my spattered self, the only sound a ticking watch on my dead wrist.
posted by Wittenberg95 | 11:26 am
clearly suicide involving a shot to the head is overdone. why can't people stab themselves with daggers anymore? let it hurt. really hurt.
nice piece though.
That's the statistical difference between men and women when it comes to suicide, PF. Women choose ineffectual, slipshod means such as swallowing pills, hanging, and cutting themselves. They don't succeed as often as men because they don't rely on foolproof, violent methods. A bullet to the brain is still the surest way.
Whilst I enjoyed yet another shot of Witt's eloquence, on the idea of commiting suicide post-heartbreak I must say all of this.
I do think the idea of suicide can seem romantic, though; but best left as something to muse on rather than actually insert into your face via a long, steel icepick.
Sigh. Listen, folks. I'm not "romanticising suicide" or advocating for your self-inflicted deaths, here. But I'm not the first writer to link suicide with heartbreak. Ever read a little tome by Shakespeare called "Romeo and Juliet?"
obviously i have, hence the reference to using a dagger.
your entry is nice, as i stated, i'm just bothered by the blowing off the head suicide. it's just now that hunter s. thompson blew off his head, you read it everywhere. why can't people stop trying to be hemingway?
There's a nice summary of suicide facts from the Centers for Disease Control here:
CDC.gov FactsSome suicide facts about men in particular:
# Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men (Anderson and Smith 2003).
# Males are four times more likely to die from suicide than females (CDC 2004).
# Of the 24,672 suicide deaths reported among men in 2001, 60% involved the use of a firearm (Anderson and Smith 2003).
Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway were in the statistical majority, as is my unnamed character. But for the record, I don't think Thompson or Hemingway were crazy or depressed. I think their suicides were calculated.
I think mental illness would have to be a prerequisite for suicide, for the simple fact that our base instincts dictate survival. To take one's own life is utterly against nature.
Or, perhaps, the ability to commit suicide or self-harm is precisely what separates us and our higher thinking from animals, which (as far as I know) never hurt themselves on purpose.
So maybe suicide is a defining part of what makes us human - full freedom of choice - and people that lop their own heads off are transcending their primal urges in the most final and dramatic way possible.
This would suggest the suicidal have utterly overcome their will to survive, because of passion for such-and-such, which has given them a new, overriding willpower, one quite separate from the base instincts of survival and such. They have willingly and sublimely replaced their set of mortal traits with a set which is based on – for instance – love. With loss of love, comes death.
That's the romantic view of it. The Shakespearean drama. It's lovely.
But personally, I think that when it happens in reality, it's not a case of overcoming the will to survive, but losing it. Not a case of fashioning a new set of rules which transcend mortality, but more a case of wanting to break free of all rules in the simplest way possible. Like the alcoholic trying to drown his sorrows, but more final and without the hangover. Something far more pathetic and, in fact, inhuman.
That's all I meant by my comment re: suicide can seem romantic, but isn't really. It was an off-the-cuff, general remark.
I didn't think you were romanticising suicide at all – rather, your piece was trying to highlight the reality; the loss of necessary, normal human traits. But I do think that such realities stem from a much larger mental illness within a person, rather than a transient event in one’s romantic life (which is what I talked about in the post I linked to).
I take your point re: you need some sort of willpower to pull the trigger, but I stand by my thinking that the reasoning behind most suicides is a lazy release, to do with people that have no will to recover.
A bit like the astonishingly lazy bastards that will go well out of their way to book a whole week off work - the week's worth of laziness is worth the bother of sucking off their doctor for an illicit sick note. Just like the momentary drive to kill oneself might seem worth the eternity of not having to deal with anything.
I find it's barely ever romantic, outside of fairy tales.
They're not lazy, depressed assholes, but they come to some awareness of the cycle of shit they're in.That's a perfect way to describe why I think Thompson and Hemingway and lots of others have killed themselves. You could call their suicides "the thinking man's exclamation point."
The truth is that if people could think more clearly and logically in their (very rare) introspections, the suicide rate would skyrocket.
Also, I just realized that the CDC Facts page I linked to earlier has this to say about women:
# Women report attempting suicide during their lifetime about three times as often as men (Krug et al. 2002).
Yet males are four times more likely to die from suicide than women. So the evidence is in, certified by the United States government's top health agency:
Women are flaming attention whores.
The fact that I have never owned a firearm actually has saved my life on more than one occasion. Those "I can't live anymore" moments were sucky, but I thought it would be even MORE sucky to live through a suicide attempt. So maybe I'm in the minority of women there? Wouldn't be the first time.