If Richard was going to commit suicide—and this time, he really was—he wasn’t about to make some elaborate production of it. He refused to leave behind a situation which needed cleaning up. That meant not hanging himself, not slitting his wrists, and definitely not shooting himself. Sleeping pills were the obvious choice, but Richard’s brother had died of an overdose, and he just couldn’t bring himself to go in a related fashion.
Which was why, today, he’d decided on carbon monoxide poisoning.
It’ll be painless, he told himself, flicking the light switch in the garage. Like falling asleep. He got into his ancient Nissan and turned the key for what he planned to be the last time. He hadn’t bothered to write a note; there was nobody to address it to. Breathing his vehicle’s exhaust, he took in his final surroundings. A dim, cluttered room. Stuff in boxes. Stuff in bags. Two fold-up chairs, a lawnmower, a spattering of camping gear, a neglected set of weights. The detritus of a life that filled Richard with dread each time he remembered having lived it.
He smiled to himself. (Who else would he be smiling for?) How unspectacular, to go out like this. Alone, in an old car he’d never liked, encircled by crap. How fitting. How perfectly Richard.
The tang of gas riled his nerves. It occurred to him: what if this didn’t work? What if he only succeeded in becoming mush for someone to take care of?
Detecting a headache—a sign the fumes were working—he turned on the radio. He was encouraged to find himself hallucinating when the radio referred to him by name.
“Hello? Richard?” An elderly woman’s voice crackled through the car’s antiquated sound-system. “I’m looking for Richard.”
“This is him,” Richard answered out of habit, immediately feeling ridiculous about it.
“I have bad news, Richard. You can’t die today.”
Choosing not to engage with the sputters of his dying brain, Richard didn’t reply.
“You’re straying from the authorized flow of events,” said the scratchy voice. “Normally I’d allow a deviation, but with the holidays…” A sigh through the speakers; a gust of static. “Richard, we’re simply overcrowded. You think the population crisis is bad on this material plane, where people only exist for the blink of an eye? Imagine eternity. So I’m sorry, I can’t make any exceptions—you’ll have to wait until your time, young man.”
“I’m not young.”
“You’re alive. That’s young.”
Richard shifted in the driver’s seat, unable to get comfortable. A numbness spread through him—a hollow feeling, like hunger cramps. He couldn’t piece together the logic behind what his car was telling him, but he supposed he shouldn’t expect a talking car to make sense. All a dream, anyway.
Falling asleep, painless…
“This isn’t a dream,” said the car radio, the old woman, the hallucination. “Snap out of it, sad guy.”
“Who are you, the grim reaper?”
“That’s one thing people call me. Listen, you’ll wake up from this. You just have to decide whether massive brain damage sounds appealing.”
“Because I’m not meant to kill myself?”
“Very few people are meant to kill themselves. And wouldn’t you know it, the few who are meant to, those are the ones who never get around to it. Anyway, you’re not one of those few.”
“Go away, Death.” He considered his words, and quickly added, “Just take me with you.”
“What if I said you had a child you didn’t know about?”
“I’d say you’re lying.” During those rare periods in Richard’s life when he’d been sexually active, he’d also been obsessively careful. “It’s no use. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t care.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t mind making a mess on your way out. You’d just shoot yourself and be done with it, Dick. Is it fine if I call you Dick?”
Richard sensed, far away, a note of anger inside him. “If you stop me, I’m just going to try again. If not today, tomorrow.”
But there was no response. The silence endured long enough that Richard wondered if Death was ever coming back. He began to miss that voice… and he felt a spark of warmth, deep down, when she finally returned: “Sorry, had someone on the other line. Look, Dick, I can tell you’re still wallowing, so listen. Finding fulfillment after life is even harder than during. That’s the pork in the pudding. Do they say that in this timeline? Point is, you’ll cure nothing by ending your stay in this realm. You’ll only make your misery permanent. Now, I’m afraid I can waste no more time on you. Since we’ve been talking, eight hundred other people are supposed to have died. So there’s eight hundred souls I need to claim somehow. See, this is how you get natural disasters.”
Richard gripped the steering wheel, as if he might go for one last drive. “Just take my soul. Please.”
“For crying out loud.” He could almost hear Death rolling her eyes. “If you want to become a vegetable, fine, but it’s not too late. Turn off the car.” With a clicking noise—like hearing someone putting down the receiver—the voice went away. The radio had turned itself off.
That click echoed in Richard’s mind. The flick of a switch. He wondered to himself, about himself: why did it matter that he didn’t leave a mess? But it mattered, with all the weight of common decency, the heaviest thing in the world; he would not leave bloodstains, even if nobody cared about him. Even if talking to Death had been his first conversation in years. Unless… who’d he really been talking to, after all? Who’d really tried to save him?
Perhaps there was a part of Richard, some small part, that might deserve the same decency he reserved for everyone else. Perhaps, if Death was a part of him, he deserved to live. Or perhaps…
Click.
The garage light stayed on for days. The old Nissan was eventually sold.
Jake Stein survives despite all odds in Portland, OR, where he concocts strange tales on his laptop and spends too much time at Powell’s Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at Lightspeed Magazine, Kaleidotrop, and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. You can occasionally find him stumbling around twitter @jakewritesagain and bluesky at jakeiswriting.bsky.social
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