by Anthology
By returning, she’s given her consent for my next suicide. But she’s also bought a ring-side ticket for it. She doesn’t want me to do it, but she’ll watch it with joy. She hates it, and she loves it.
And I know—I know!—that now I can do anything. No matter what I do, she’s mine. No matter what I tell her to do, what I ask her, what I say. She’s mine. And that thought excites me more than anything.
I can ask for anything. I can say anything.
But I don’t. I shouldn’t.
I told you I shouldn’t—stop arguing!
25.
Sharon is stirring herself awake. There’s light outside. Time for her to get up. Time to go to work.
“Good morning,” she kisses me, then starts to climb out of bed.
“Don’t go,” I grab her hand.
“I’m only going to the shower.”
“Don’t go to work.”
She looks at me and crinkles her nose. “What?”
“Call in sick.” I hold her hand and pull her slightly towards me. She inches closer, letting herself be pulled.
“I can’t call in sick,” she’s now between both my legs. “I have a project due next week. I have to—”
“Call in sick,” I kiss her stomach.
“Joel, Joel, Joel,” she holds my head in her hands, neither pulling nor pushing, just touching. “I can’t.”
“Call in sick,” I say softly, my fingers slowly going down her back.
“They—” She shuts her eyes, unable to concentrate. It takes a few seconds. “They need me.”
“Call in sick,” I touch her elsewhere.
“Forget that,” she says. “I have a completely original idea.”
“What?”
“I think I’ll call in sick.”
26.
“Call in sick,” I tell her.
It’s been a week. In all three memories, we haven’t stopped touching. She hasn’t gone to work all that time. I don’t think we’ve put on our clothes more than once.
“I really have to go,” she says, reaching for the cellphone. “Or I won’t have a job to come home to.”
She’s about to dial, when I put my hand on her phone. “So you won’t have a job.”
She pulls back, surprised, suddenly distant. “What the hell does that mean?”
I look into her eyes and lean toward her. “I have money. Enough for the both of us. Stay. Forever.”
She blinks a thousand times. Then, “Joel, I have a career. A job.”
“Stuff the career. Stuff the job. Stuff the phone. Don’t even call them to tell you quit. Stay. Here. Forever.”
“I have a project due,” she says. I just look into her eyes. After a while, she says. “Do you know how hard I worked to get to where I am? Do you know how hard I work now?” But I just look into her eyes. “Besides, being dependent on someone else, that’s not me.”
I touch her cheek, not taking my eyes off hers. “Do whatever you want.”
It’s a long, long time before her fingers slowly let go of the phone. She closes her eyes, and practically plummets into my chest. I catch her. I hug her. “Forever,” I whisper into her hair. “Forever.”
27.
“I want to see it,” she tells me. We’re intertwined on the sofa in front of the TV. She shuts it off, her leg on the remote, and looks at me. “Next time you do it. Next time you take the pills. I want to be there. I want to see it.”
“Fine.”
I kiss her, and she shudders.
28.
She holds the pills in her hand. I’m holding the cup with the water. She’s trembling.
“Wait exactly fifteen minutes,” I tell her. “I’ll collapse. Count one minute. Then call the ambulance.”
“Okay,” she whispers, her voice almost inaudible.
“Ready?”
She doesn’t move, her eyes fixed on my face.
“Are you sure you’re up to watching this?”
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t say a word. I look into her eyes. Slowly, my eyes drift to her open hand.
I put my fingers on the pills, but I don’t take them. I give her a chance to close her fingers, to say in that way that she doesn’t want to witness this.
Her hand remains open. Its trembling gets worse.
I take the two pills. A loud intake of breath comes from Sharon. I look at her, but she’s still staring at me.
“I love you,” I say.
She doesn’t say anything. She’s transfixed and completely frozen.
I swallow the pills.
29.
My world is getting bleary.
Two tears fall down her cheeks.
I wipe them, and put my forehead to hers. I kiss her nose. She kisses my chin. I fall against her, and I feel her deep, quick breaths. Panic? I don’t know.
I want to tell her how much I—What?
What?!
She caresses my head, then my back. I try to do the same, but my hands aren’t under my control. I try to tell her, but all I hear is mumbling.
Her touch is ice-cold. Her touch is like fire. Her touch is like nothing else.
Her hands on my back, she lowers me down to the floor. I can still see her. I can still see.
She lies on top of me, feeling my breath with her chest, feeling my face with her fingers. She’s crying. She’s crying out loud. She buries her face behind mine, our cheeks touching.
I—
Ohhhhhh
30.
For once I have only one memory.
I was at home. I swallowed the pills. Sharon came in, just in time. Boom, black, bang, bye.
And there I was, back at school, watching myself humiliate Sam.
Suddenly my view shifted. It was me in the middle of the circle, with all my ‘friends’ cheering me on. Sam was looking up at me.
I looked around, what’s going on?
“Okay?” Sam looked up at me from where he was kneeling.
“Go,” I told him. “Get up. Go.”
The kids booed me, and for the first time I noticed that I was their size.
After recess, the bell rang. Everybody ran to class. Someone took me with him.
I spent an hour learning long division.
At recess, I went to stand by myself. The other kids realized I wasn’t as strong as the me that humiliated Sam. They beat me up. The bell rang, we went to class. The bell rang, I got beat up.
By the end of the day I got it: I’m not going to find myself suddenly in the hospital, revived, refreshed, and well. Something had gone wrong with the resuscitation effort. I’m going to stay dead. And this is Hell.
31.
It’s been weird. It’s been a while. It’s been weeks.
But for once I have only one memory. The problem is, I remember everything.
No, that’s not exactly true. I see everything.
I see my birth. I see my death.
I see.
Out of the corner of my eye. I see it. I will it. I make it. I live it. I am it.
I watch as my parents bring me back from the hospital—I’m three days old. I watch myself breast-feeding. I watch my parents sing me to sleep when I’m a year old. I watch them hugging me and kissing me. I watch their first fight over my crib when I’m six months old. I watch my first words being spoken. I watch the television shows I used to watch.
And I experience everything.
My ability to speak, to think through words, to rationalize is suddenly sucked away as I stare up at two familiar images I can’t even call ‘mother’ and ‘father’. A flood of powerful and familiar emotions I haven’t felt in decades goes through me. And suddenly the moment is past, and I’m outside the crib again, invisible to everybody, looking at my parents looking at the baby me.
And then I watch my death. A thousand different deaths from a thousand times in a thousand different ways. I get run over by a bus. I die of old age. I die of skin cancer. I die of AIDS. I bleed to death on a thousand different pavements. I drown in a
thousand different lakes. I commit suicide in a thousand different ways. I live to be a hundred years old. I live to be eighty. I live. I die.
And I feel each death. And I feel each afterdeath. And I feel ...
And then I look out of the corner of my eye, I imagine a different place, and I’m elsewhere.
I begin to watch things that had never been. I watch my father abuse my mother. I watch them get a divorce. I watch me killing them. I watch me growing up as an abused child. I watch me raping women. I watch myself a murderer. I watch as I become a policeman, a fireman, a lawyer.
And then I watch things which could never be. I watch a ten-year-old me bring up a five-year-old me. I watch two of me having a conversation together. Then four of me. Then a hundred.
I have seen so much, and I haven’t seen anything yet.
This place, although it isn’t a place, this thing is nothing, nowhere. And yet it’s infinite.
And somewhere, in a far corner I can’t access, a strong powerful voice that sounds like my own, is whispering over the infinite, “I’ll wait. He’ll come again. He can’t resist coming again.”
32.
I’ll wait. He’ll come again. He can’t resist coming again.
That last time, I took too much time. I had to be smart, I had to play dead on the floor while he thought he was a ghost or something. I took my time, and they brought him back to life before I could kill him and take his place.
Next time, I’ll kill him immediately. I just need him to commit suicide one more time.
I know him. He’ll come again. He can’t resist coming again.
33.
I have one memory, but many futures.
I can even go back and look at the time I came here.
I go back to the school, back in time. I watch the little kid that was/n’t me begin to humiliate Sam. Then I look aside, and watch my grown-up self, my past self from a couple of weeks ago, suddenly appear. I watch myself looking with horror at the scene, never realizing that the future me would be looking in on this exact moment. Then I watch what happened, how I got stuck here. The little kid and I suddenly changed places, then he was gone, gone elsewhere in this infinite maze. And me, I was stuck as the kid, had taken his place.
I can go further back in time, and look at myself taking the pill.
I can go even farther back and sideways. I don’t have to stick with me. I follow Sharon around, when she’s not with me. I look in on her job, I see her flourish. I see how she’s better and smarter than everyone else.
I follow her further. I follow her back in time. I watch the moment we met, at the Seven-Eleven—just one memory, now, just the Seven-Eleven. And then I go back, before she met me. I reverse time and instead of watching her shop, I watch her taking things out of her cart and putting them on the shelf. I watch as she leaves/enters the supermarket and enters/leaves her car empty-handed.
I speed things up. I watch her nights. I watch her days. I watch her sleep. I watch her dress. I watch her boyfriends. I watch them having sex. I watch her getting her first job in advertising. I watch her get her degree. I watch her dreams. I watch her joys. I watch her saddest moments. And one time, I suddenly appear to her and comfort her. But then I go back into the past.
Back to her Junior year, her Sophomore year, her Freshman year. I watch her Senior year in high school. How different she is. And yet everything that she is today had its seeds back then. But I don’t think I want to go further into her past .
I go someplace else.
34.
I go back to the moment I killed myself.
I watch as I hold the pills in my hand. I watch as I go to the notes stuck on the front door to see if I have the time right. I watch me take the pills at exactly a quarter to seven. I watch me wait.
From the outside, I already look wobbly at five to.
I wonder if I could step in, if I could stop this. I wonder whether if I do, it means I won’t have died. But for now, I watch. I want to see how I died.
It’s now exactly seven, and Sharon’s opening the door with the key. I—the me who took the pills—stumble forward toward her.
“Joel? What’s the matter?” she says.
“Awrrreewreeh,” I see myself say, as I collapse at her feet.
She half screams as she rushes forward and checks my cheek and checks my breath. And exactly as she does so, I breathe my last breath and collapse, dead, my head on her knees. Her breath is quick, but she’s in control. She checks my pulse. She puts me down softly on the floor, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her cell phone. She calls 911. I step closer, invisibly listening to every word. She tells them the situation. An ambulance is on the way, they tell her.
She throws the cell phone aside, and begins CPR.
I look at my dead body mesmerized. I watch as she breathes into my mouth, giving me a few more breaths of life. I watch as she presses on my chest, forcing the heart to distribute life to the dying body. I want to watch this forever. “Come on,” she says, every time she pushes on my chest. “Come on. Come on. Come on.”
After a while—I don’t know how much time has passed—the ambulance is heard outside. Paramedics rush into my apartment, taking charge. Sharon lets them shove her aside. She leans against the wall, her hand on her mouth, and her facade suddenly collapses. Within less than a second, she’s a wreck.
“Ohmygod,” she whispers. “ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod ... “
The paramedics put me on a stretcher, and run down the stairs, as one of them injects me with something, and another keeps on giving me CPR. Sharon follows them into the ambulance. Everybody’s frantic.
“He’s dead,” one of them say halfway to the hospital. His voice sounds matter-of-factly. “He’s clinically dead.” Sharon watches him, her eyes wide, seeming to be on the brink of sanity.
“Keep working,” the other says. “Keep working!”
They keep working. The ambulance gets to the hospital. They rush me on a gurney into the emergency room, and a doctor takes control of the situation. I wait for him to pronounce me dead, when suddenly he—the dead me—opens his eyes.
The doctor smiles. “He’ll be all right, now,” he says.
What?!
Sharon pushes everyone aside. “Are you all right? Is he all right?”
This can’t be! I will myself closer. I look at myself. I’m blinking. I’m smiling. This can’t be! I died in the hospital!
“You idiot!” she hits my arm. “You gave me such a scare! You were actually clinically dead for a few seconds!”
“Shh, leave him alone. Let him rest.”
“You were very lucky, sir,” the doctor says. “If your friend here had found you a minute later, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”
I’m alive?! I’m alive?!
But if I’m alive, why am I still dead?
35.
I keep watching, hypnotized by the events.
Sharon drives me home a few days later. She seats me down, confronts me, begs me not to do this again, and when I refuse, she leaves me. Oh, I’m glad I wasn’t there! I can read my mind just by watching my face. I know what I’m thinking. I’m hoping she hadn’t left. I’m hoping none of this occurred. But it had. She’d really left me. I’ve seen it. And for once I have only one memory, one reality.
I watch from the outside as I write a journal of the events that occurred. That moment in the schoolyard. He—the other me—remembers it, as well. I watch over my own shoulder, reading my own journals as I write down memories I—the one left behind—don’t have. Memories of a Russian roulette game in the future. Memories of him being a ghost and how his body tried to kill him.
And a few days later, he writes in his journal that he suddenly remembers things he hadn’t until now. He remembers incidents of cruelty in the schoolyard. Memories I know to be false.
He doesn’t realize it, but I can see it clearly from here. His memory is splitting up retroactively.
I think I’m beginning to unders
tand what happened.
We switched. Joel—the kid in the school—and Joel—the adult that committed suicide—switched places just as the doctors were pulling me back to life. And the kid in the school returned instead of me, feeding his own memories—false memories—to the live Joel. And I—I was left here, dead, able to watch all that could have been, all that would have been, all that could never be, and all that could never have been.
36.
I keep watching.
Sharon returns into my—his—life. Without a word, without explanation, she sits by me. And I—the me who’s watching this—have tears in my eyes. We make love that night, like I have never made love before. I am tempted to switch places with him. But I don’t. I don’t want to taint the events. I want to see what happened. I could come back to it later if I want. If I still remember. And I do remember. I remember everything.
After a few days, I get her to stay here, to stop going to work. On the one hand, it looks like I want her so much that I convinced her to stay. But I know me, I know my face. There’s something else there, a different thought, a different purpose.
I keep watching.
Weeks pass. Weeks of passion. Weeks of lust. Weeks of uncontrolled emotions.
And then she quits her job. Because of me. She’ll stay at my place forever. Because of me. She’ll abandon her life. Because I asked her to ...
Why did I do that? Why did I ask her something I’d never—?
I step into my own mind ... I recognize this place. It makes me feel good to have made her do it. And it makes me feel sick. And I don’t know which one of the two of me—the one watching or the one experiencing it—feels good, and which one feels sick. We are both, after all, the same person. We both love it. We are both sickened by it. We are corrupt. I am corrupt.
I can’t stand this. I can’t watch.
I can’t do anything but watch.
37.
I watch.
