Tag Archives: suicide

Fantasy, General Fiction

The Big Black Bird

I like to think that I was born in a faraway realm under some wicked curse. My parents loved me–as best as they could–and life was alright in that land–sometimes good, sometimes bad, but mostly fine–but my curse followed me wherever I went.

My curse was ever-present: its flapping black wings hovering over me, casting a long shadow that dogged my every movement, every moment, and every memory.

The Big Black Bird was my curse. Hidden by dark, ancient magic, I could not see it but I could feel its dark presence. Like an intangible weight, pressing down, sucking the warmth out of the room and the joy from my heart; I believe that although no one could see the Big Black Bird, everywhere I went and everyone I spoke to could feel its taint around me.

***

At first, I tried to run from the Big Black Bird.

I left late one night and ran. I ran through wild forests where dangerous animals stalked, but none of them dared come near me and my Big Black Bird. I crossed wild rivers over bridges where trolls hid, but none of them dared stop me and face my Big Black Bird. I drank witches’ foul potions to banish it or forget it or find joy elsewhere, but to no avail and with no effect. And so I fled further across mountains and rugged wilderness where wild elementals and warlocks hurled fire and lightning, but all of them averted their eyes as I passed by.

Everywhere I went and everyone I spoke to could feel the Big Black Bird’s taint around me.

Despite all the running, the Big Black Bird was always there.

***

Exhausted, I collapsed late one night. It was pitch black and, at that moment, I could almost see the Big Black Bird. There was no Moon in the sky. No stars. There was no light in any direction I looked, and the Big Black Bird was so real I could feel it pressing down on me. Its cold feathers and intense, inhuman and uncaring eyes watching my every move…

I cried out to the Big Black Bird to finish it! End things! Stop stalking me and just end my suffering! Why! Why torture me like this!

But the only answer I got in that impenetrable darkness was silence. An uncaring and inhuman silence like only the wicked cosmos can deliver.

***

At this point, I like to think that I fell into a dark and magical sleep. I also like to think that in this faraway realm everyone had a Fairy that watched over them with unconditional love and caring.

She appeared to me in this dream and explained to me that the Big Black Bird–my Big Black Bird–was not a curse, it was destiny that I needed to face.

I awoke the next morning as rays of light pierced the sky. The Sun rose–as it had every day of my life without me noticing–and chased away the lingering darkness from that night.

I smiled grimly and stood up. I knew what I had to do.

***

I climbed the Great Mountain and, at the top where it pierces Heaven itself, I grabbed the Sword of Light from the selfish god hiding up there. I wrestled it from his ancient hold and leaped to earth where he fears to tread.

Wielding the Sword of Light, I carved my way through the darkest dungeons beneath the ruins of the oldest castles where the tombs of ancient knights lie. I found the greatest of them and donned their magical armour; it was light and hard, made from the very rays of the first sunrise itself and forged at the center of the world with unbreakable bonds.

And then, finally, holding the Sword of Light and wearing the Armour of Light, I returned home to where I was born and waited for the Dark Moon. It will appear in the night sky at the hour of my birth and it will summon the Big Black Bird home.

Then and there, I would fulfill my destiny. I would free myself from my curse. Then and there, I would slay the Big Black Bird.

Then everything would be alright, I like to think.

***

But then I remember that I am not cursed nor born in any faraway realm where magic and destiny matter and great acts of courage and kindness and love are rewarded. I am not in a realm where a Fairy loves me unconditionally and is always watching over me.

All that I am is a person lying in a bed and struggling to get out.

My alarm clock is ringing and another empty day is facing me. The dog is barking for me to move–she wants her morning walk–and I can hear an email or message ping on my phone, almost certainly work piling up.

Things need to be done and there is no one but me in my life to do them with no reward other than what I give myself.

And I pause just a moment more… I hover there as the dog is barking, my alarm is ringing, traffic sounds starting up, and sunlight piercing my curtains. Suspended in that moment, I realize that the one thing that remains from my thoughts and the one thing that does exist is my Big Black Bird.

I feel its dark presence. Always.

General Fiction

Another Name for Life

She raised her eyes to the mirror and saw the mascara running down her cheeks. For some reason, it made her smile. It might have been the wine or the day’s events, but she was done crying and ready to move on. However brief that future may be.

She walked back out to her table. She walked by the romantic couple and the noisy family. She squeezed by the big birthday table and arrived back at her own, quiet one. She was sitting at the back of her restaurant with a view of everything and everyone’s backs to her.

She liked it that way.

As she sat down, the waiter appeared like an apparition at her table and silently topped up her wine glass. She smiled at him and saw his eyes flicker briefly at her running mascara. She wondered what he thought of her, but, instead of asking her, he nodded and disappeared.

This was her restaurant, her table and her life. Even if she had cancer, she was going to enjoy the last bit of life before she chose to end it. At least, so she thought, she would take it on her own terms then and die with some dignity. Her mind was made up and it actually made the wine taste sweeter.

***

“Another round of drinks!” was announced, and some birthday orders were put in. He could feel he was starting to slip into the alcoholic fog, but it was his birthday so he tried to smile and lean into it.

Around him were his dearest friends and their better halves. In your twenties, you have wild birthday parties, in your thirties you celebrated the big ones, but in your forties you take everyone to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

The only difference is that you then order plenty of drinks with the food.

A slim, dark lady walked by their table. She had an air of tragedy about her that pierced his cocktail-haze. When she sat down at her table at the back of the restaurant, he caught a brief glimpse of her mascara-streaked face and red eyes, and his heart went out to her.

“Another round of drinks!” erupted from the merry crowd and it was met with a cheer from most, though he slouched back in his seat. Her tragic persona was bouncing around his mind now. He kept peeking at her, but all she did was sip her red wine, wave away the waiters that buzzed around her and stare into the distance.

Something about her reflected what he felt inside. At home, the empty pill bottle from last time still stood on the kitchen counter as a reminder of his failure. He had just woken up as a forty-year-old loser with a headache and each day was another chore on his road to oblivion.

No one here knew. Not even his therapist. None of his friends at this table knew and the drinks were flowing quick and fast. He smiled and he laughed in opposition to how he felt inside, but he kept sneaking glances at the lady who reflected what he felt. What he really felt.

***

Her husband was trying to stop the kids fighting, but they continued to gnaw into her skull like the ninth-level of Hell. She sat staring at her food with her still-water untouched. She had allowed herself to order a steak tonight–mostly it was salads, to get rid of three kids’ worth of pregnancy fat–but she was not hungry.

She felt the weight of gravity pulling on her. She had not slept in about three–or was it five?–years and her consciousness had melted away a long time ago. Sometimes she found herself slipping into the bathroom at home, closing the door and just staring into the mirror.

She did not recognize herself anymore. While she had given birth to three beautiful children, she had also buried all her hopes and dreams.

She no longer loved her husband. There was no hate there and he had done nothing wrong, but she just felt nothing for him. He was just a man that she lived with, did chores for and had children with. She loved the children too, but she had realized a while ago that she kept wondering what her life would have been like without them.

She saw the side of the dark, slim lady at the back of the restaurant. She saw her nursing her red wine and sitting peacefully at her table. She felt pangs of jealousy. How could this woman do that without screaming little monsters sucking the life out of her. Why was her life so easy?

She was so angry that she only realized halfway there that she had stood up and was walking to the dark, slim lady’s table…

***

“I am honoured to be with you now,” he said, holding her hand tightly. Their eyes never left each others’.

She smiled back at him. Their table was romantically lit with a candle and their plates cleaned of delicious food. It was a far cry from the dust, heat and military rations back in the desert where they had trained.

“We do this for each other, for our people and,” she said, squeezing his hand tightly, “always for God.”

He nodded.

Both of them jumped up, whipping out the grenades they had smuggled into this popular, packed restaurant.

“Allahu Akbar!” he shouted above the din in the restaurant, but a middle-aged, tired-looking woman stumbled into him just then. He almost fell and the grenade slipped out of his shaking hand before he could pull the pin. They both looked at each other in shock before she screamed and he ducked after the fallen explosive.

The restaurant was silent, and then it exploded into action.

He scrambled for the grenade, it had rolled to the next-door table where the slim, dark woman sat. He heard his wife scream as the birthday-man tackled her but he was on his hands and knees trying to grab the rolling grenade.

Suddenly, there was a gun in his face. The slim, dark lady had it. She had pulled it from her handbag and was looking at him strangely. She had red eyes and her face was streaked with mascara, but her eyes hardened and her hand stopped shaking.

“Don’t move,” she said coolly to him, “Don’t test me, I have nothing to lose anymore.” The grenade was just out of his reach. He heard his wife cry out in the struggle with the man, but she was not a man and, if she was going to detonate the grenade, it would have happened by now. It all rested on him now.

He narrowed his eyes and whispered a final, quick prayer, before jerking towards the grenade.

There was silence in the restaurant after the gunshot. Slowly, sirens began to waft into the place as they raced towards them. Someone had called the police.

***

The birthday man was shaken but had sobered enough to tell the cops his story. He had just reacted when he saw what the woman was carrying. He thought she had been distracted by the middle-aged woman stumbling into the other grenade-carrying man, and he had taken the gap. He kept saying how lucky they were. He kept saying that he was glad he was alive.

The middle-aged woman had been fed sufficient drugs by the medics to calm her down. She was still quite out of it and–with her husband and kids never leaving her side–she had a faint smile on her face as if she had actually enjoyed the night.

The owner of the restaurant was splattered with the blood of the man she had shot. He lay on the ground in front of her table. She was surprisingly calm about all of this and, as the cops bundled her into their van to take back to the precinct for questioning, she remarked that it was lucky that she had the gun.

She had never owned a firearm until yesterday, she kept saying, smiling sadly.

Science Fiction, Technomology

Suicide Note

I do not expect you to agree with this. I do not expect you to condone it. I only expect you to do the maths. And, after that, I hope you understand it and, perhaps, even consider it yourself.

Now, about the maths…

There at least two-hundred and fifty billion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is just one galaxy in around a hundred billion known or visible galaxies across all of space. If we took this as the number of stars in space and converted it to seconds in time, then this number of stars would add up to nearly eight-hundred thousand years.

In other words, if you counted these stars at a rate of one per second and never did anything else, it would still take you eight-hundred thousand years to count them. This about four times the length of time that humanity on planet Earth has been considered to be “civilized”.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale.

Ignoring the possibility of non-carbon-based life, carbon-based life needs to live within the Goldilocks Zone of a universe. This means that life needs a planet of sufficient size and with water and oxygen that has a stable rotation neither too far nor too close to a star. This makes it plentiful in the building blocks of life and neither too hot nor too cold for life to form.

If space has a hundred-billion multiplied by two-hundred-and-fifty-billion stars out there, then statistically some of these will have planets orbiting them within this Goldilocks Zone. Even if one in a billion of these stars has such a planet–this is 0.0000001% of these stars–then there would be literally billions of them out there.

Let us assume, once again, that only one in a billion–once again, 0.0000001%–of these planets in these infinitesimal rare Goldilocks Zones has actually evolved complex life. That would mean that there are over twenty-five thousand possible planets where complex life has actually evolved.

The Milky Way in which we reside is one of the older galaxies–but far from the oldest–so let’s assume that three-quarters of these planets that host life are younger than us. Thus, their lifeforms would probably be less evolved than us (or, potentially, still building up to creating life sometime in the future). Hence, we will ignore them as sentient, conscious beings for our purposes (though, they may well be so in the future). Hence, that would still leave over six thousand older planets that potentially hold life that is equally or more evolved than our life on Earth.

Do not forget that over long periods of time, the risks of extinction rise. It may be self-inflicted from weapons or wars, naturally driven by viruses, seismic events or weather patterns, or cosmically created by asteroids or other things hitting the planet before life has evolved technology to survive the said disaster. The point is, a large number of these older, life-holding planets would have seen extinctions that either would have reset their evolutionary clocks behind ours or completely wiped life out on these planets.

Let us assume that 99% of these older planets have had some such event–and that their life could not save itself from said mass extinction. Thus, these planets no longer factor into our calculation as these planets are now barren rocks floating out in space.

That still leaves just shy of a hundred planets were life has not just survived, but thrived. And, in so doing, is probably thousands to billions of years more evolved than we are on planet Earth floating our the Sun in the Milky Way. If you consider that planet Earth hosts a couple million life forms–almost nine million, per our last estimate–how many life forms would these rare, surviving and succeeding parent-planets hold? Perhaps approaching a billion collective types, shapes and forms of life with, at least one per planet, being more evolved and technologically advanced than we currently are.

Hence, cosmic maths dictates that it is not if alien life exists. With near certainty (per our maths above, we have given it less than one percent of a quarter chance in a billion-billionth of a percent, yet even that gives us plenty of alien life!), alien life does exist. The only variable is how much alien life exists. And, there is probably quite a lot of it too.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being life–or alive–and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction and, statistically, we are unlikely to survive.

But why would all this life exist? Why would it matter?

Perhaps the answer–once you strip out our typically human-centric view of things–is one of statistical odds.

If “God” exists, he would not be fighting some arch-enemy that is the root of evil. Evil is a human and moral invention. Cosmically, the two differentiating things that do exist is organic matter–life!–and inorganic matter, or everything else. Rather, this God would be fighting on the side of life against its very extinction in a harsh and hostile space where life–however rare–is also fragile and statistically doomed.

If this God was making a divine gamble that life–in whatever shape or form–would survive, the best way to do this would be to diversify its shape, form, placings and sensitivities. In other words, this God would cast the dice against the inhuman, inorganic universe with only two variables in his favour: diversification and adaption.

Make lots of life. Make life of all different types. And make life spread out all over the place. This increases the odds that at least some life survives.

In other words, humans would be little more than a venture capital investment on God’s portfolio of life as he tried to protect against complete bankruptcy in the harsh, risky space and time of reality.

From thermo-nuclear super novas wiping galaxies or black holes sucking everything in, from radiation or vacuums, from viruses to changing weather patterns, from the randomness of mating and DNA to the precision of evolution over long periods of time… We are minute data points in the most incredible series of numbers amidst the most magical of experiments in the largest of all portfolios that reach scales and quantum that our mortal minds cannot fathom.

And yet we worry about what clothing we should wear? We worry if people like us or if we are getting older? We are concerned about how many likes we get on Facebook or what our neighbours are doing? We spend time wondering what to eat, to watch on TV and to say to fill the silence, but we never look or around at the cosmos or space and time. We count our bank balances and Uber rides, not the stars in the sky nor the galaxies that hold them. We judge when mere minutes go by in a queue but we barely glance at the math of space and time, nor where or how we have arrived at where we have arrived, nor even where we are going.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being alive and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction, but we are petty in our immediate wants, desires, thoughts and actions. Our myopic consciousnesses fold in on themselves, hiding this maths from us either out of selfishness or to protect our fragile egos from its comprehension.

But is such a comprehension of this scale so terrifying? Is it so terrible that we are small data points in a grandest of statistics? Or, could this comprehension not be liberating?

We are small and insignificant, but therein lies our beauty. We can each follow our hearts and our dreams with little cosmic consequence. We need not worry about mundane things, as they really do not matter. We can carve our own meanings in this cosmic maths and find our own ways to weigh this grand scale across our lives. We need not feel guilty for going in any direction for life is both so plentiful and so scarce that we are both insignificant and a miracle. All at once.

Is it not liberating to comprehend this?

I do not expect you to understand this. I do not expect you to condone or agree with it. I only expect you to do the maths and realize the same thing I have realized: against all odds, I am alive and, against all cosmic scale, I still matter to myself. Beyond that, you are free. This appreciation is the suicide of our myopic human-centric consciousness and the birth of a beautiful, cosmically-scaled mind.

And, so, in the spirit of this planet-locked suicide, I invite you upon one of our colony starships. Earth is a few short generations from dying as is most of our solar system. Leaving our planet may be risky, but staying is riskier. Colonizing space may be risky, but not trying is riskier. Humans will likely be extinct soon, but life is plentiful out there. It will take thousands of years for us to reach the nearest galaxies, but our colony starships are self-sustaining and cryogenic stasis is now a reality. We can reach the furthest flung parts of deep space, eventually, and all the wonders that it brings with it.

All you have to do is buy a ticket. Buy a chance. Against all odds, you are alive and you still matter to us. So, do the math, and buy a ticket.

Kind regards,

Colony Recruitment Agency

2146 AD

Fantasy, General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Me, Myself and the Fae

As a child, I had a best friend. He was mischievous and funny. His smile sparkled and his eyes twinkled as we ran through the grass down the bottom of our garden. It was our secret time in our secret world, but he had to leave.

Or was it me that had to leave?

The fog of age clouds the memories of a child. The banality of modern life smothers us under its bills and bustle. All the noise, but none of the music. All of the colours, but none of them sparkle.

I grew up. I finished my studies and got a job in a big city. I moved there and fought through the traffic for eternity. I met a man. He was a good man, then. We married. We were content for a time. But, when the children came, eventually I could not even remember what my best friend looked like anymore.

One evening, after the children had grown up, the parties had finished and work had ended, I sat on our balcony overlooking the twinkling lights of the city below. My bones ached, or was it my heart? My hands looked so old that I did not recognise them anymore. How was I this person now? Suddenly, I remembered him. I suddenly remembered how real he made me feel in my secret world. Our secret world.

I stood on the edge of the balcony. Far below, I could feel the long, cool grass and all the mysteries it contained. My man was out with another woman. He was not my man anymore. My house was empty and my home was far, far away. The children had their own lives and I was not included. We were all strangers to each other. The people who called themselves friends all wanted to talk about men and money, and shoes and celebrities. They all wanted to stay young, but they had lost it too. They did not talk about it, but I knew that they could not see the colours anymore either.

Far, far below me, I could feel him. He was calling to me. The secret, magical world was still there. I just had to find it. He wanted me to come play. Come dance with him. Come home. He wanted me to see all the colours I had forgotten. He wanted me to touch the sky and breathe in the infinite air. I could see his pale, thin hand stretching out like a wispy twig from the old tree we used to climb.

“Just a step away. Just a step will take you home. Just a wee lil’ step, and you won’t be alone…”

And I stepped towards him. I stepped back to the long, cool, uncut grass at the shady, bottom of the garden. I could feel the infinite air rushing passed me with that single step… I was going home.

“It has been a long, long time, child,” he quietly chuckled, his musical voice sending sheer joy down my spine as his eyes sparkled green and all the colours exploded around me, “Welcome home, child, welcome home.“

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Kill Me

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Cars pass and lanes merge and diverge, buildings and billboards fly by as an eternity of fast moving metal, concrete and steel surround him...

I wonder if this will be the smoke that kills me, he thinks to himself as his lights up a cigarette. He pulls hard on it and the molten red tip glows brightly in the dingy bar. Far from illuminating the darkness, the small spot of red light at the tip of the cigarette actually emphasises the shadows and despair in the bar.

He nods at the barman and another cold beer appears before him.

I wonder if this will be the drink that kills me, he thinks to himself as he takes a long sip of the beer. The cold condensed water droplets on its outside slip between his rough hands as the crisp, cold liquid slides down his throat.

Time slips by and before he knows it, the cigarette is only ash and the beer is only an empty bottle. He is only slightly tipsy, if anything at all. It is actually disappointing, but he reminds himself that he is used to that feeling. He sighs and looks at the time. It getting late, so he decides to head home.

I wonder if this will be the man that kills me, he thinks to himself as he stumbles a bit up a step and bumps a tattooed figure playing darts.

The man turns around and checks that he is alright. He nods and smiles, and the tattooed man apologises before going back to the game of darts with a number of other tattooed characters of varying degrees of art.

In the parking lot outside the bar, he gets into his car. A soft frost covers his windscreen as the cold of the old leather seat bites into him through his pants. He turns the key and the engine roars to life with a guttural growl, the lights flare up, the heat comes on and the radio starts playing some song with a mournful lady’s voice droning into it.

I wonder if this will be the road that kills me, he thinks to himself as he pulls out of that parking lot into the slipstream and merges with the traffic on the way home. There are flowing lights all around him. Cars pass and lanes merge and diverge, buildings and billboards fly by as an eternity of fast moving metal, concrete and steel surround him in this moving movement.

But he gets home, safe and sound. He parks the car and walks up the stairs of the apartment into his flat.

He yawns and drops into his bed. Before long he begins drifting off to sleep. The day, some childhood memories and even more abstract, alluvial images begin fluttering through his mind.

I wonder if this will be the sleep where I–he begins wondering, but never finishes his internal dialogue. He drifts off to a deep, dreamless sleep filled with darkness, doubt and doom.

And it will only be the next day–after breakfast and during the rush hour in traffic–in the crowded subway that the terrorist’s bomb explodes next to him killing him. Ironically, he will not see it coming.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Click

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"This mugging-gone-wrong takes a dark turn..."

Panting, he collapses in a chair. Deep, ragged, gasping breaks the silence of the dimly lit room as he struggles to catch his breath. He rubs the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. Absentmindedly, he reaches out and grasps the TV remote.

Click.

“–and in other news tonight, you will not be–”

Click.

“–forgotten? They’re lost inside yooouur memoryyyy–”

Click.

“–where you killed them! Didn’t you? I know it was you–”

Click.

“And folks, we have a special announcement tonight. We have a wonderful–”

Click.

“–problem. Tough dirt, gritty slime and blood stains; no problem. We have the solution, because–”

Click.

“–the assailant appears to have fled the scene on foot taking his firearm with him. The victim is in a critical condition after what appears to have been a mugging gone wrong–no, wait, we’re just getting news in that the victim has died en route to the hospital. This mugging-gone-wrong takes a dark turn as the victim, a local hero and charity worker has died before reaching the hospital from an apparent shot to the chest during a struggle. Local police have noted that a witness from the nearby park has given a precursor identification of the perpetrator–”

Click, and the TV screen flickers off.

The room, briefly filled with the electric dancing lights of its screen returns to its dimly lit previous state.

He leans forward in the chair, heart pounding in his chest. His palms are sweaty. He lifts the gun from where he put it beside him on the table. The metal is cool to the touch. It still smells faintly like gunpowder and death. He slowly turns it around on himself and stares down the cold, dark barrel.

Click.