​

 

I slit one wrist, watching the blood pool on the bathroom floor as I cursed the pain. Zack heard me from the bedroom in his half-sleep and came to the closed door. I’d forgotten to lock it, damn me. I couldn’t even kill myself right.​​
“Chloe, are you all right?” he asked.​
“Yeah”, I tried to respond calmly, but the tremors in my voice must have made him suspicious enough to turn the knob and inch the door open to see the mess I’d made.

The foolish Zack stayed by my emergency room bed, but I wanted to run away from his woeful expression in green eyes that bore into my spirit.​​
He had to go to the bathroom sometime. That’s it; drink another soda.​
I was faking sleep when he got up to find the facilities. When he returned, he couldn’t find me. I was free from him, but still locked in a prison of my own.​
As soon as I was away from the hospital, I spun around looking for my next target. There it was--the Universal Bank building that looked tall enough to hold the universe.​
My charcoal hair tangled in the wind as I ran away from my thoughts and toward an end. If I could make myself fall, I wouldn’t be able to change my mind. I’d feel like I was  ​flying and maybe pass out before I hit the street. Even if I felt pain, it would only be for a second.​​
I’d just attracted way too much attention running through the streets in my bloody pajamas by the time I hit the elevators. Two policemen grabbed my arms as I repeatedly punched the call button.

This time, the policemen had me locked up on the third floor of the hospital, which I call the crazy wing. All I had to do was play nice for a while. I knew how to act; I had smiled all throughout high school while tormented by the ones with perfect skin, blond hair and blue eyes.​​
My obituary would be a “hmm” moment in their day. They would ask each other, “Do you remember Chloe whats-her-face?”​
Would they remember me? I hadn’t done anything to be remembered for, so I took up painting again in the crazy wing, pouring my feelings into the brush. Dr. Candler said painting would be a release that could help me get better.​​
I always pictured what they would look like hanging in a gallery room dedicated to my memory.

I soon passed my acting test at the funny farm and took thirty oil paintings home to my studio apartment.​​
When I closed the door, I could hear an echo. Zack had taken damn near everything.​
I still had a bed, and that’s where I stayed for days, not eating and not taking my ‘crazy pills, until I decided that kind of death would be too hard and take too long. I got up and padded over to the window, spotting the car I forgot I had.​
This time I remembered to get dressed in street clothes before I went outside and climbed into my VW bus. I followed the speed limits as I drove north out of the city to the long open roads with two-way traffic and semis that couldn’t be hurt much by a head-on collision.​
I looked into the eyes of some truckers as I slowed, but I never swerved. Damn me, I couldn’t take a chance at hurting someone else.​
I crossed a straight bridge over Big Franklin Creek, then pulled over to the side and studied how I might run over the edge in my VW bus. It seemed like a good idea at the time.​​
How was I to know my old seatbelt would snap and cause my body to float in an air bubble until a witness “rescued” me?

I was getting tired of missing the mark so I tried to buy a gun. My stint in the hospital showed up in the background check and I was turned down. I already knew a knife was out of the question—it would be too slow and painful.​​
My phone had long since been disconnected so I had to drive to my old friend Fiona’s dilapidated house to use hers. I needed to call my father in Michigan and pretend I was okay once a week. He’d relay the message to mother if she happened to be speaking to him that week.​
Fiona’s house was crawling with human maggots who fed off of what was left of her inheritance, but she was too drugged to notice. After I made nice with my father, I sat in a flea infested chair and watched the maggots kill themselves slowly with crack, their drug of choice.​
I realized I could speed that up if I did it right, so I reached for a rock on the table. A maggot whacked me in the face for my efforts and I ended up on the sticky floor.​​​
“Get your own!” the nasty woman screamed as I picked myself up and stumbled out.​
The first person I bought crack from was an undercover cop. I didn’t even use my phone call. Who was I going to call? My parents, who lived in constant disappointment with me, or the leech boyfriend who left me? No, I just waited to be released, this being my first offense.​
I’d thought life was too hard.​
Free again, walking down the steps of the courthouse, I decided that is was death that was just too hard, and I gave up on killing myself.​
The edges of my mouth turned up for the first time in months and I stepped off the curb.​
I didn’t even see the bus that hit me.

 

I know I’m dead, but I don’t know where I am yet. I see my parents argue over what to do with my thirty paintings. They decide to have a yard sale and I see people crook their tiny heads as they study my art and ask, “Chloe who?”​