He wanted to end his life, so went to the only place he could think of to do it.
Just down the street.
Four doors down was a typical patrol of Arachnos. He had packed his paintgun – a realistic looking huge .45 – and left his dingy sublet room in St. Martial in the earlyafternoon. The heat would be unbearable; the Arachnos would be pissy, and they would shoot him, yes, indeed.
He was sweating by the time he got to the patrol. They were pointedly ignoring him. They continued to ignore him when he pulled out the gun. “Freeze,” he said, his voice not exactly full of command.
The spider turned around slowly to face him. He chuckled. “Go away kid, yer botherin’ me.”
“I’ll shoot you,” said the gun-weilding man. “I’ll shoot all of you.” He peeled off one shot, and got neon green paint on the spider’s torso.
There, he thought and closed his eyes. Now he’ll kill me, and it’ll be all over. Go into that good night…
He turned to the rest of the patrol. “Let’s go.”
He opened his eyes. “Go..?”
“You ain’t worth it, kid,” said the Fortunata, waving her hand at him and continuing on down the street a little more.
I’m not worth even killing?
He turned from them. He’d never been as depressed, as heavy of heart, as he had been at that moment. Even when he saw his mother dead, sprawled out at the bottom of the landing at their old apartment, having choked on her own vomit, he wasn’t sad at the age of five. Three years later, he wasn’t this sad when his siblings were separated from him into assorted foster homes. Four years after that, he wasn’t sad when he found out his sister was turning tricks in St. Martial and got beat up by her pimp within an inch of her life, and a year after that, lost her life after she got too high with one of her johns. At 15, he heard his brother was caught in a gunfight. The next year, his foster parents were taken by Arachnos and never seen again. And now, at 19, three years after the worst he thought could happen, he had no job, his boyfriend had broken up with him a month ago and he couldn’t get over it. He’d gotten to the point where there was nothing left to live for.
And the worst – it was fucking Valentine’s Day.
He aimed the paintgun at his own head. At close range, maybe it would be just enough to put a hole in his brain. No. What if he missed?
He kept walking, and found himself heading to the Giza. He kept on walking, climbing the stairs in the heat, panting, putting one foot in front of the other, pausing at a landing; and then continuing, not stopping, until he got to the top.
He looked out at St. Martial, the home to all his woes. He stood there at the top, and the worries were gone. Go gentle into that good night?
Not quite. He jumped.
He felt pain, and then…nothing. A deep, dark blackness came upon him, heavy but comforting at the same time. Where’s the light? Where’s my mother? Where’s an angel? Someone…anyone…
Nothing. He floated in nothingness. Where was he? Where was heaven? Hell? Anything? He opened his mouth to scream but even that was swallowed by the heavy blackness.
This wasn’t what he wanted, a black void. He wanted heaven, with angels and saints, and to even know the pearly gates were there; or maybe even hell, with fire and naked men with hooves with pitchforks constantly poking him with pitchforks and other things. Anything but this void.
He looked around, looked and looked and thought he saw something, but it could have been a mirage. He didn’t care. He tried to swim toward it – but that didn’t work. Then he thought toward it. In a flash, he zoomed through the blackness and found himself face to face with a snowy owl, perched on nothing. The owl’s small eyes stared at him. He made no sound as he took to wing, and he followed and heard:
“Time of death, 3:43 p.m.”
What? Wait! No! I don’t want to die. I changed my mind. I don’t want to stay here in this void for eternity!
“Good thing. He’d be in months of rehab.”
I don’t care, I don’t want to die! He looked to the owl. Please don’t let me die. I don’t want to stay here alone.
“Doctor…there’s a pulse…”
A disgusted sigh. “He’s going to have severe brain damage.”
“But he ain’t dead yet, Erik. You’re always too quick to fill those out. Do you get kickbacks from the coroner or something?”
Flurry of voices and strained laughter.
Brain damage? I’ll show you…
Six weeks later, he was sitting up in bed, drinking ginger ale from a straw. A miraculous recovery, they were calling him. A newspaper reporter had just left, and was going to write an article about him. He was kicked out of his apartment, his stuff scattered to the four winds, but he didn’t care anymore. Compared to that void, this constant pain was a welcome relief.
A doctor came in, a doctor he hadn’t seen before. He saw the man’s ID, Dr. Erik Benjamin. He stood at the door, watching him with a small smile on his face. “I almost signed your death certificate, kid,” he said, coming inside.
“Nice bedside manner,” the young man in the bed replied, slowly putting down the cup.
“I was there in the ER when you were brought in. You were a mess. You’re healing up nicely, though.” He stood at the side of the bed. “But I just have one question to ask you.”
“Yeah?”
“What did you see?”
“See?”
“You had an NDE. Near Death Experience. What did you see?”
He looked at the doctor steadily. “Nothing. Nothing but an owl.”
“An owl.”
He nodded.
“An owl is a harbinger of death.”
He shrugged.
“He brought you back for a reason.”
He shrugged again. The doctor studied him for a few minutes, saying nothing. “Yes, a reason.”
“Okay.”
All he could think about was the hospital bill, so he forced himself to try and get better. His bones in his legs were nearly shattered, but they had healed. He was still in pain, on a morphine drip, and they told him he wouldn’t walk again. He was able to move from the bed to the wheelchair.
They told him they were going to send him to a special rehab hospital for long-term care, and he went there around the end of July. This place was nothing like the hospital, and pretty much left him to rot. No physical therapy, a constant morphine drip, no changing of the channels.
Then they noticed that patients in the room next to him would suddenly die for no apparent reason. They could be young or old, but they would fall asleep one night and never wake up. They started calling that room “The Room of Death”.
One morning, he saw an owl at his window. The owl stared at him, as if accusing him of giving up again. This was another void, like the one he had just left a few months ago. Was he going to sit here and get bedsores and fade out of existence?
He shook himself out of the morphine haze and sat up in bed. The first thing he did was change the channel on the TV.
They took to calling him “John Doe” because he never gave them his name. He enjoyed watching the birds outside, and saw ravens. Then, once, he saw an owl come out of seemingly no where to attack a raven, and take something that the raven had. Good for you, buddy, he thought. A name then came, unbidden to his mind.
“My name,” he told the nurse, in a scratchy voice that he hadn’t used in months, “Is Corvus Bane.”
Words 1343. I hate Valentine’s day.