Copyright © 2017 by The Thought & Expression Co.
All rights reserved. Cover photography by © photo_arena
Published by Thought Catalog Books, a division of The Thought & Expression Co., Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Founded in 2010, Thought Catalog is a website and imprint dedicated to your ideas and stories. We publish fiction and non-fiction from emerging and established writers across all genres. For general information and submissions: [email protected].
First edition, 2017
ISBN: 978-1945796500
Printed and bound in the United States.
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This one is for all six of my brothers and baby sister.
I love you all and miss you every day.
Thanks also to my good pals Matt and Dave for providing constant feedback as I crafted this story. You guys kept me sane in more ways than one.
And I’d like to offer a massive thanks to you, the reader.
I’ll keep writing for as long as you let me.
One last thing:
This story is not for the faint of heart
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Five Months Later
About the Author
1
I exhaled slowly, my eyes trained up at the night sky. Stars twinkled down at me like curious crystals and I felt my chest heave. They looked so beautiful. They looked hopeful. They looked like happiness, dragging me towards them, millions of light years away.
A warm wind rustled through my hair and I closed my eyes, breathing in the soft serenity. Crickets chirped around me, filling the darkness with unseen life.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered to the sky, opening my bloodshot eyes to stare at a cool sliver of moon. “God help me, I just can’t.”
I was standing in the front yard of my small house. The countryside rolled with untainted darkness and I took it all in for the last time. I could hear my girlfriend crying from inside. Her sorrow drifted out through the open door behind me and settled around my shoulders like a heavy cape.
“God,” I whispered, feeling my eyes well up, “If you’re out there…tell me I shouldn’t do this. Please…” My voice cracked and I dragged the back of my hand across my face. The weight of my life pressed down on me and I felt like I would be crushed beneath it.
“Life wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I sobbed. I listened to the quiet and gritted my teeth.
“How did things get so bad?” I prayed. “If you can hear me…please…help me…” I didn’t even believe in the existence of God, but if he was out there…I needed him.
The empty hills before me offered no answer and I listened to the grass rustle in the wind.
I thought I liked isolation. I thought I liked being away from everyone. Maybe things wouldn’t have gotten so bleak if I had been around more people.
But it was too late to think about that.
Too late to think about all the bad luck and poor choices I had made over the course of my thirty years on this earth.
I heard Jess continue to sob from inside and it killed me. I had done this to her. I had moved us out here. She hated the country, but I had insisted on getting the house. She loved me; I was her life, her everything. Of course, she followed me here. We were supposed to start a family. We were supposed to grow old together.
I put my hands over my face and fought back the sorrow threatening to overwhelm me. It was the baby that had put us into this situation. Our unborn son.
“But we couldn’t even have that,” I hissed to no one, my voice a muted croak.
Jess had been devastated by the miscarriage, an onslaught of crushing misery that swept her away in its violent arms. She hadn’t spoken for a month and even when she finally did, it was clear that something had shattered inside of her that would never heal.
I dealt with the loss in my own way. Drinking, pondering, just trying to make sense of it all. When things got too heavy, I would slip out into the night and walk through the sprawling fields surrounding our house. I would stare up at the sky, tears running down my face, and weep for what my life was becoming.
That was a year ago. They say time heals all, but not for us. I kept waiting for things to get easier, kept waiting for life to show its beautiful color again. But it hadn’t. Each day took us one step closer to where we found ourselves now.
Three months after the miscarriage my father had died in a drunk driving accident. Two months later I lost my job. Three months later I got an eviction notice. Our lives were crumbling before our very eyes and events seemed to be spiraling out of control to an extent where I thought I was going mad.
Jess was a ghost of her older self during all of this. Her job at the local jewelry store wasn’t nearly enough to keep us afloat. Our state of living declined at a rapid pace and I couldn’t find work anywhere.
And then a month ago, Jess’s younger sister had been diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of twenty-four. Any progress Jess had made since the miscarriage vanished. Her skin grew pale and sickly, she barely ate, and she spent most of her time just sitting in the living room staring at the TV.
I scrubbed my face and let out a long, tired breath. It was all just too much, each tragedy like the drop of a hammer on our miserable lives. My mind couldn’t function anymore, my head in a constant state of strained anxiety. My days were filled with worry, my nights with sleepless despair. I had sunk down to the bottom and now the mud was sucking me deeper.
I was exhausted. The thought of facing another day terrified me. I couldn’t keep this up. Everything just compounded in my chest and boiled up into my screaming mind like a poison. The loss of our son, the death of my father, the cancer, the upcoming eviction, Jess’s decline…
“No more,” I whispered into the wind. I realized I was crying. I brushed my cheek and turned to go inside.
I closed the front door behind me and went into the living room. Jess was on the couch, a ball of pale flesh curled into herself. Her hair was dirty and her eyes dilated as they rose to meet mine. On the coffee table before her were an array of pills scattered across the wood top.
Easily enough to kill us both.
Wordlessly, I went and sat beside her, pulling her cold body into mine. She rested her cheek against my shoulder and I felt dampness begin to spread across my arm. I stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked, breaking the silence.
Without looking at me, she answered in a soft voice, “Yes. Nick, I just can’t do this anymore. Any of it. It’s too much. I am in pain…” She shifted and looked up at me, her eyes watering, “I’m in pain all the time.”
My lip trembled, my heart breaking to see her like this.
“Me, too,” I said gently.
“I’m sorry,” Jess sobbed, still looking at me, “I’m so sorry about our son.”
I gripped her shoulders, feeling my own tears streak down my face. “Hey, you don’t have anything to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault. We did everything we were supposed to. I love you.”
She collapsed in my chest, shaking. “I love you, too.”
We sat like that for some time, both of us staring at the death before us. My eyes ran over the pills again. I shifted Jess in my arms and I felt her sigh.
“You don’t have to do this with me,” she said without looking
at me. “I want you to be happy. I want your life to get better.”
I rubbed her arm. “You’re my life. And you’re my death. I can’t survive without you. I want to…” I paused. “I want to just drift off to sleep, right here, with you in my arms and never wake up. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Jess nodded, sliding down to rest her head on my lap. “It does.”
“What do you think our families are going to say?”
“Who cares…”
I didn’t respond to that, letting the words die in the air. She was right. Who cares? No one understood the day-to-day hell we were living. The worry, the stress, the constant state of panic. It was just too much with no hope in sight. Hope…I had given up on that notion a long time ago.
The muted night bugs echoed outside and I let their dark song fill my head. It seemed like a peaceful melody to die to.
“Are you ready?” Jess asked suddenly.
The question filled my chest with warmth and the sudden confrontation of choice loomed before me. I licked my dry lips and exhaled. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of. The monsters were all on this side of life. What awaited us was blissful nothing, an unaware existence of absolute emptiness. No more worries…no more stress…everything would float away like sticks in a river. I could close my eyes and slowly submerge myself under death’s eternal current.
“I’m ready,” I said, heart racing despite myself.
Jess leaned forward and scooped up a handful of pills. She dumped them into my palm and then gathered her own. She didn’t move, her head still resting on my lap.
“Baby?” Jess said, turning her eyes to me. I smiled down at her a sad, loving smile. She was so beautiful even in this ruined state. Her blue eyes, her blond hair, the smattering of freckles across her nose. She was everything to me.
“Yes, love?” I whispered, a weight in my chest and grief in my eyes.
“If there is an afterlife…will you come find me?”
I leaned down and kissed her cold lips. “Of course I will. Existence is meaningless unless you’re with me, no matter where that is.”
She crumpled a little at that, her blue eyes brimming with fresh tears, “I’m so sorry, Nick. I’m sorry this is where our lives have led us. I love you so much.”
“I love you, Jess.”
Jess grabbed the glass of water from the coffee table and looked up at me, “Is it ok if I go first?”
I sniffled, realizing I was openly crying now. “Of course.”
My heart ripped in two as I watched the woman I loved fill her mouth with pills. She tipped the glass to her lips and began to ingest them. She paused and then poured the remaining pills into her mouth. When she was done, she held the glass up to me.
My heart hammered in my chest as I took the glass from her. My hand holding the collection of pills was sweaty and shook slightly. I let out a long breath, clearing my mind of everything.
I raised my hand and shoved the pills down my throat.
Shaking, I drank deeply from the glass.
It was over. The decision had been made and the task was finished. I suddenly felt peace wash over me, an acceptance of what we had done. It was the relief that comes with making a hard choice and realizing you did the right thing.
“Hold me,” Jess said, taking the empty glass from me and placing it on the floor.
I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her close. I stroked her hair gently and rested my head against the back of the couch. I closed my eyes, listening to the midnight bugs beyond the walls. I smiled, swimming in the dark behind my eyelids, and losing myself in the gentle chorus.
Who knew death could be so gentle?
We were silent for a while, the gravity of our actions weighing on us. I focused on the crickets outside and the minutes stretched out before us as we waited.
“We never gave him a name.”
I looked down at Jess and saw tears budding in her eyes. I ran my hands over her arms, trying to comfort her in our final moments.
“It hurt too much to think about,” I whispered, “but now that we’re here…at the end…I think we should give him one.”
Jess smiled sadly, staring off into the distance, “Michael. He was always Michael to me. I think he would have had your smile. I know he would have.” She turned to look up at me. “Slightly crooked and totally adorable.”
I was starting to feel sleepy, a deep pull in my head and body. “Michael is a great name.”
Jess’s eyes were starting to droop, “Yeah…”
“He would have had your beautiful blue eyes,” I said quietly. “And your sense of humor.”
A tear quietly rolled down her cheek, “My poor sweet boy. Maybe it was for the best. There’s nothing good left in the world for him. It’s all evil and sadness.”
I said nothing, a sharp pain developing in my stomach as my head swam and sank. I didn’t know how to respond. She was right. Nothing but bad out there. Nothing but disappointment and misery. I didn’t want to watch my child get ripped apart by life. I didn’t want to watch him drown in sadness like his parents.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut as a jolt of searing fire ripped through my gut and then vanished. I noticed Jess was clenching her middle as well.
I almost welcomed the uncomfortable sensation. It was a reminder of why I was leaving this earth. My thoughts began to swim together and images rose and vanished like patches of morning fog. Memories bled through the swarm of shifting color, still-shots of when I first met Jess. Our first date. Our first kiss. The brief couple of months we were happy before life started destroying us, one tragedy at a time. I gritted my teeth, feeling my eyes slide shut.
Jess was motionless on my lap and I heard her breath begin to slow. I rested my hand on her chest and felt her weakly grasp it. Another bout of pain rocketed through my stomach, but I found I didn’t have the energy to cry out.
Hot darkness pressed down into my skull and I was dimly aware that I felt like I was going to throw up. The crickets outside were muted and seemed very far away, like I was driving down a long tunnel away from them. Warmth dripped down my chin, but I paid it no attention. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. Nothing.
Just the warmth…and the darkness…
I shuddered suddenly…and then died.
2
Darkness. So much…darkness. I was falling through it…no…that wasn’t quite right. I was sliding in it, its strange chill pressing in around my body like a wet coffin. I shivered as its cool walls coated me, pulling me deeper through the threshold of death. I was vaguely aware of something dripping onto my head, something colder than the darkness.
I coughed in the black and tried to focus my thoughts. That’s when the first bolt of unease shot up my spine like lightning.
I wasn’t supposed to have thoughts. I wasn’t supposed to be aware of anything. I was dead; I should feel…nothing. Why could I think? Why could I feel?
I coughed again as the darkness slid across my skin like frozen paste. It coated me, slid around me, engulfed me. I shivered and my mind began to realign. I let out a breath and concentrated, begging my senses to come to life.
My mouth tasted like stale bile and I groggily scraped my tongue along my teeth. I tried to spit but found my lips weren’t functioning quite yet. Something wet was dripping on my head…no…not just my head, but everywhere. It felt like…rain?
I slid through the darkness again and I hacked, realizing my throat was in pain. It felt like sharp claws were throttling me, choking me. What the hell was happening?
Eyes. I needed to open my eyes.
I searched my mind, desperately trying to remember how I did that but found I couldn’t. It was like all motor functions had been scrambled and I couldn’t find the controls to work my body.
Sound. I could hear something in the distance, but it was muted, muffled. After a moment I realized I felt pressure in my ears, something clogging them and compressing my head. Panic began to dance across
my fractured consciousness as the darkness slid around me once again. Agony briefly seared my throat and I gagged.
You have got to get your shit together, I thought, forcing myself to calm, what is happening to me!? Eyes…you have got to open your eyes, Nick. Just do it. Do it!
Ever so slowly, I found my eyelids in the chaos and pulled them open. It was like cranking open two rusty garage doors.
The darkness edged itself out of my vision and was instead filled with dull gray. At first it was just a blur, but after blinking a few times, shapes began to take form. As the gray sharpened, my other senses began to come back to me.
Cold…pain…thirst…
And then I realized what was happening.
Something massive was dragging me through mud by a chain coiled around my throat. The cold darkness I felt was the soaked earth sliding across my skin as I was pulled. Heavy rain fell from an overcast sky that was blanketed by impossibly dark clouds.
I suddenly retched as the chain tightened around my throat and I was pulled further through the mud. Through bloodshot eyes I craned my head and saw that a huge shirtless man held the chain in his hands, his back turned to me. He was fat, his bloated stomach bulging over the waist of a dirty pair of ragged pants. His back was a series of cuts and scars and his soaking black hair hung down past his shoulders and stuck to his skin like greasy leeches.
Where the fuck am I?! My mind screamed as I took all of this in with horrifying clarity.
The Black Farm Page 1
