TRIGGER WARNING: Death, suicide, blood, graphic.
It was a place like no other.
She could hear them—their screams and grief filling the empty void that had once been her loving home.
She could see herself. She looked small. She found it funny how small she looked.
At the time, everything had felt so big. Ironically, her very existence wasn’t as spatially significant.
It’s finished, she thought, I slit them. I slit them and I liked it. It’s all over now.
She could see them. The adults were crying. Their eyes were tired. They looked as though they’d been deprived of sleep for days. They looked like old sponges, dehydrated and free of substance.
She remembered how they’d once been. How happy everything had once looked. She thought about the family pictures and artifacts that surrounded their home. Their presence masking the dull misery that had taken over.
She saw the photograph of her and Sissy. They were really little, suited for some gathering.
Sissy was smiling. Her eyes were bright and full of joy. She looked at herself—and felt nothing.
Her mom was pale and her cheeks were puffy. Mom said over and over, “My baby, my poor baby. What have you done? What have you done?”
Eventually, the repetitiveness died out—they drowned in muffled tears. Her Dad remained solemn. It wasn’t until his wife passed out. Then, he began to scream.
“Why? How could you to this to us?!” he said. “How could you do this…”
Eventually, he too became silent. He held his daughter in his arms. Both his and his wife’s tears echoed in unison.
After a while, she smelled the blood. The metallic taste that accompanied it seemed to vibrate within the room. She saw the tiles, they were blood-smeared and ridden with shame.
She saw herself. She was floating. The water was filled with her. The water was free from clarity, free from reflection.
Her hair was a buoyant substance, dancing around like a thousand tiny ballerinas. She saw how pale she looked. She saw how the colour had gradually been drained out of her. She looked dead.
She was dead.
She tried to figure out how she’d gotten there. How she’d managed to end it. She sat in the corner, watching them find her. She saw them lose their stability, love, and familial trust. She sat there and she wondered: how she could be so selfish?
Were there warning signs? she thought. Was there anything I could’ve done? I wish things had turned out better, for Sissy’s sake.
When she’d been another moving body, she seemed like she had it all. She was smart and successful, and she had her whole life ahead of her.
However, amidst the echoes of potential, there was her boiler. Her furnace, her control centre. It was the fire in her loins, it fuelled her emotional core. When things got rough, it was activated. When the voices came, it began to heat up. She always felt it. She felt its barbarity deeply rooted in her temples.
Eventually, the headaches came. Those people, those white-coated rats always told her they were migraines.
“They can be controlled,” they said.
They always said it, but it never changed. Gradually, the boiler got angry. It manifested itself everywhere, encapsulating her every move.
Debilitating any sense of happiness.
She sat there thinking about it all. She sat and thought about how, about why.
She knew she had let them down. She knew it was over. The boiler had exploded. There was nothing. Nothing, but the aftermath it had left behind.
Graphic by Paloma Callo
