Psychomania: Killer Stories

by Stephen Jones

  ~ * ~

  Who gave you the right to not be happy, anyway? Where did you get the idea that it was okay to throw all that back in the face of a loving, benevolent universe? It’s your birthright, for god’s sake. It’s inscribed right there in the constitution of this great land of opportunity we live in: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So if you squander your liberty by refusing to pursue anything of positive worth, then really, haven’t you forfeited your right to life?

  And remember: according to you, that’s what you’ve wanted for a long time.

  Well, just wait, because I’m on my way.

  I mean, what kind of attention whore are you, that you would do what you did? Starve yourself to death and blog about the experience so the entire world can share in your sickness - who thinks of a thing like that? If you want to be dead, you just do it, you don’t throw a party and invite the world to watch.

  And not to belabour the obvious, but if you want to be dead, there are a lot faster ways than starving yourself. Starvation takes a long, long time. As I’m sure you realized. As I’m sure you knew damn’ well before you ever decided that you’d had your last bite of food and now it was showtime.

  Dehydration, now that’s a lot quicker. Three or four bad days, then you’re done. But obviously that didn’t suit your timetable. Obviously you didn’t feel inclined to call water and power, and tell them to turn off the taps, nope, won’t be needing those any more.

  So I don’t know whether or not you’re genuinely suicidal. For sure, I believe you’re miserable. You don’t have to convince me on that account. But more than anything, you’re an exhibitionist. You want the attention. You wanted to be found out, and then just found, period, before it was too late, because you picked the slowest way possible to kill yourself and gave the world plenty of time to catch up to you. Just sitting in your apartment there in Portland not eating, oh, poor me, poor pitiful me, waiting for the cavalry to ride in and save you, take control of the situation and remove your choice in the matter.

  Goddamn sociopath.

  Photo updates too. That was a nice touch. One a day, so the world could see your ribs and hipbones standing out a little farther each morning. Like anorexia porn. Just so you could convince the pictures-or-it-didn’t-happen sceptics who were calling bullshit on your little experiment. Like, okay, maybe I’m suicidal and masochistic, but don’t anyone dare call me a liar.

  And they found you. Of course. Well played, applause all around. Hiding your online account behind proxy servers during those first three weeks, so they couldn’t trace your identity ... until you weren’t. Until you mysteriously “forgot”. Because all that hard work of not eating made you loopy and forgetful. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t, but you sure sounded plenty cogent in those last few blog posts.

  What a difference three weeks makes, huh? You went from complete anonymity to international celebrity in three weeks. Everybody wondering what was going to happen to HungryGirl234. Everybody loves to watch a good train wreck. You turned viral in the worst sense of the word.

  I said three weeks? Less time, actually. Your audience was huge before the plug got pulled. Or maybe it was the other way around. The plug got jacked back in. No more worries about life support for you. The main thing I wondered was how the hoping was split. What percentage of people was hoping that someone would get to you in time, and what percentage wanted you to follow this thing to its logical conclusion.

  As to which side I came down on? Do you even have to ask?

  ~ * ~

  Wait, wait, don’t tell me - you were one of those girls who spent your high-school years writing poetry so embarrassingly awful that it would shame a soap-opera diva. Yeah, your blog posts had that whiff about them. I bet your favourite colour was black and your favourite mood was mope and your classmates voted you Most Likely to Cut Notches Up and Down Her Arms.

  Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being sensitive. Only when you gouge out your eyes to everything on the plus side of the meter, and dramatize and catastrophize everything on the minus side. You live to suffer, and that’s all, don’t you? You have no interest in dining from life’s rich bounty, the good along with the bad, right? All you want to do is revel in eating the shit. Just look up from your dinner table with your helpless sagging shoulders and a shit-eating sob-smile, like you’re asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?”, except you’re not the tiniest bit aware of the gigantic ladle waving around in your hand.

  You know what it is that I really can’t stand about people like you? It’s that you’re toxic and contagious and you don’t even care. You’re the runny-nosed moron who wanders up and sneezes on the salad bar. You’re the addict who shares the dirty needles even though you know what the test results said.

  Can your pathetic little pea-sized soul even begin to comprehend the magnitude of your callous indifference to the effect you’re having on the world? It can be hard enough for people to keep their spirits up even when all they have to contend with is the day-to-day mundanity of seeing their dreams end up on the deferred gratification plan. Then they see you, you, someone who would seem to have everything to live for, see you squander the most fundamental gifts you’ve been given and in the process tell them that they might as well not try either. You apparently can’t stand the idea of a world going on without you, never even noticing your absence, and now you’ve made it your mission to drag down as many people to your level as you can.

  Misery loves company, and you’re living proof. You’re a professional sufferer and you hung out your shingle years ago: Abandon hope all ye who encounter me.

  Converts, that’s what you want. You want followers. You want to be Queen of the Suicides, only you’ll never quite manage to get around to ending the suffering for yourself, will you? No, for you, it would be enough to hear about other people following your lead, only with more commitment. Every casualty you inspire just reinforces your negative worldview that much more.

  What a pity.

  What a waste.

  What a tragic perversion of priorities.

  I’d ask if you have no shame, but I’m afraid you’d only give me a blank stare and ask what the word means.

  I wish you could look up, just once, and see the sun the same way I do, and know its light rather than the shadows. I wish you could take in the first blue of the morning sky and see it as the wrapping paper around the gift of another beautiful day.

  ~ * ~

  And now you’re at again, aren’t you? HungryGirl234 rides again.

  But why use that, when I know your name now? Deborah. You probably hate it, though, don’t you? Such a wholesome name. Deborah. It’s a cheerleader’s name.

  Not that you’ve forced the world to put you back on suicide watch. You’ve chosen to use more subtlety this time. You have to know what resorting to the same old hunger strike routine might get you, now that you’re a known head-case. You no longer have the luxury of anonymity, the option of teasing the world along, rationing out only as much information as you want it to have about you. You’ve lost control of that much.

  People know who you are now. They know where to find you if they have to.

  So you’ve taken a more measured approach. Every day, another litany of woes. Every day, another dispatch from a world that to your eyes is as colourless and grey as ashes. Every day, further confirmation that life for you really must be a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  You’re good at it, I’ll give you that. You could do this for a living, if there was actually a paying market for it. You’re the Devil’s propagandist, and I don’t mean to natter you when I say that you’re dangerous. A person hardly has to get past the titles of your posts to fathom all they need to know about your agenda:

  10 Reasons I’m A Cosmic Joke and You May Be Too.

  Why Leaving Las Vegas Was Really a Comedy.

  Why This? Why Me? Why N
ow?

  I Still Resent Eating.

  You, Me, and Everybody We Know = God’s Chew-Toys.

  If your descent into nihilistic spectacle had just been that first time, I would’ve been willing to overlook it as a cry for help, one that finally ensured that you got what you needed, and once you were discharged, your thinking had been corrected to the point where you could see what a nut-job you really were: Hoo weee, am I ever glad that’s over!

  I would’ve been willing - deliriously happy, actually - to give you the benefit of the doubt that you were at least going to try. I would’ve been happy to wish you well, and a life of contentment, from the other side of our shared continent, and we’d each go on our way, and you would never even have to know that I exist.

  So remember: you’ve brought this on yourself.

  You have summoned me.

  What you’ve been doing all along is a kind of prayer. You’ve been petitioning the universe, and the universe is kind, so you shouldn’t be surprised when it responds via the only avenue you’ve left open for it. Over time, you have given it all the instructions it needs to see your final wish carried out.

  Do you see the beauty of this? Are you even capable of appreciating the wonder of the grand design? You lack the courage to act on your professed convictions, so the universe employs another route to see them carried out. Once again, you’re awaiting the arrival of someone who will show up and take control of the situation, and remove your choice in the matter. Only this time, you don’t realize it.

  It isn’t all about you, you know. It’s bigger than you, and always has been.

  ~ * ~

  I want to tell you a story, as long as I’m in transit and have nothing better to do than ignore the so-called in-flight entertainment. It’s supposed to be a comedy, but I can’t say I find it particularly amusing. It’s kind of mean-spirited.

  But there was this boy, you see, in the neighbourhood where I lived before. He was old enough that he probably should’ve been called a man but, for reasons of his own choosing, that label never seemed to fit. He appeared never to have graduated into manhood, or even to have considered that he should, so I call him a boy.

  You remind me very much of him. He was dismal, just like you. He was self-absorbed and sour, just like you.

  And every time he stepped outside the house, it was like the day suddenly got cloudy. By his demeanour alone, he could steal the sun from the sky and the moon from the night. You expected flowers to wilt in his wake, grass to die under his footsteps. His projection of negativity was so pronounced it was having an actual visceral effect on me.

  He was contagious. Just like you.

  I like to think I choose my neighbours carefully. The people you surround yourself with are important. I appreciate the kind of people who look forward to what each day is going to bring. I esteem the company of people who keep it cheerful and positive.

  But seeing this dismal, sour boy pollute my environment ... this disturbed me. It gnawed at me. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have missed this? How could this weed have sprouted in my garden? And you know that, before long, there’s never just one weed. They spread.

  I did try to help, I really did. I asked him why he never smiled. He had black hair that hung down over one eye, and kept flipping it out of the way, but it kept falling right back, and might as well have been stuffed in his mouth for all he managed to communicate.

  I really did try to think of something I could do for him. If he would’ve just made an effort to stand up straight, it might’ve made a difference. It might’ve demonstrated a willingness to try and get better. Posture has an enormous effect on mood. But he seemed perfectly resigned to letting his shoulders hang as steep as a couple of ski slopes. And he completely misunderstood my intentions. There’s no point in recounting what he called me.

  So it became obvious there wasn’t anything left to do but pull this noxious weed.

  They say it takes forty-three muscles to frown, and only four to smile.

  Anybody with a good knife can carve a smile into someone’s face before they lose their nerve.

  It takes real dedication to immortalize the frown.

  But I think you’ll find that keeping myself motivated is nothing I’ve ever had a problem with. Especially when I deeply believe in the outcome.

  ~ * ~

  Can you feel my eyes on you, now that I’m finally here? They say people can, sometimes. I’ve heard that army scouts, observers, snipers - the ones whose success and even lives depend on not giving their position and presence away - I’ve heard they’re trained to avoid letting their gaze linger directly on their enemy for very long. To the side is better. Because some people really can feel eyes on them, following them. The hair on the back of their neck prickles up and they just know.

  But I don’t think you do. You’d have to be a different kind of person. You’d have to be fully alive.

  Here in your neighbourhood, there must be a hundred ways to blend in and places to watch you from, and I’d be amazed if you’re aware of even a handful of them. It’s a busy place, full of life going on all around you, and if you’d just opened up to it and worked to make your disposition a little sunnier and meet the world halfway, we wouldn’t have to have this encounter we’re about to.

  As I watch you, it becomes clear to me that even though I tell myself I’m doing it to learn your habits and timetables, what I’m really doing is giving you one last chance to change my mind. So show me something. Give me a reason not to follow through. Reveal to me some heretofore unsuspected capacity for joy beyond your masochistic perversion of it.

  But you’re giving me nothing here. Nothing. If anything, you’re making this too easy. This shouldn’t be such a cut-and-dried decision. I should wrestle with this, for God’s sake. I should anguish over it.

  Instead, I can’t help but think it would be a kindness. When you left to go out for another coffee a few minutes ago, I almost expected you to melt under the onslaught of the rain. I’ve heard it can be like this in Portland. Which doesn’t bother me in the least - I love a good rainy day - but even if it did, I still would refuse to let it. But maybe that’s just not you. If weather has an influence on mood, and with some people it definitely does, then it may be that this goes some way toward explaining yours. So why have you never thought to just move away?

  Although it can’t be like this all the time. And you, if you’re anything at all, are consistent. So let’s just dismiss that right now. HungryGirl234 is not a foul-weather creation.

  Really, it’s unprecedented how much I’m bending over backward for you here. No one else would be giving you the kind of last-minute leeway that I am. It’s not very many people who would break cover into the rain, and hurry along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street to get ahead of you, to beat you to the coffee shop just in time to open the door for you.

  And do you offer me a smile for this kindness? No. But then, neither do you act as if you’re somehow owed it. You nod, okay, but it’s barely perceptible, and looks to be an effort, almost painful.

  In you go, just as I decide this has to be your final test. The very last chance to win your future. With the coffee house not two blocks from where you live, you’re obviously a regular here. They would know you here. They have to, all of them. So, one laugh with the barista ... come on, I’m pulling for you. I know you can do it.

  Except you don’t.

  You just stand there encased in your green rain slicker, the hood like a monk’s cowl dripping water to the floor, your head down as you count your change, then seem to decide as an aftermath to drop it all in the tip jar. A nice touch, close, but by itself it’s not enough to change anything. The condemned and the terminal often give away their worldly goods, although if you don’t realize that’s what’s actually going on here, that’s the least of your problems.

  And it’s a shame, really, that you don’t get to notice the look on the barista’s f
ace as you turn from the counter. She knows you, knows you better than you think, maybe even knows who you really are, that you’re an Internet celebrity of the sickest kind. She knows what matters, and wishes better for you.

  You really should’ve contributed more to her world, you know.

  And look at this! You’ve at least got one surprise tucked away inside. Your stop with your to-go cup at the spice island? All along I’ve had you figured for the no-frills, black coffee all the way type, but you’re a cinnamon girl. Who knew?

  And it’s an extra large for me, because I’ve got every reason to think it’s going to be a long night ahead for both of us, one that I trust we’ll both find purifying.

  But then you’re not even gone two minutes before everything goes wrong. I’m barely out the door and back on the sidewalk myself, so all I can do is watch. Watch, and can’t help but think that I’ve failed you. If I’d been closer, maybe I could’ve ...