Killersup has been extremely busy over the past few months. More than believable. However, during this time he wrote a short story. After submitting it to the Scholastic Writing contest he took gold in his region of the United States. Now it will be judged at a national level. Killersup feels as if the members of AG might be interested to read it as well. Without futher ado, Numb.
Numb
My name is Johnny. I am twenty-five years old, and today I am going to fade away. I’ve been preparing myself quite some time now for this glorious event . My room is tidy, and I’m wearing my nicest clothes. They say you want to look nice when you meet God. In a hazy grace, I start my journey to my bed. I’d like to die comfortably. Alas, I trip on a hollow pill bottle and crash into the crooked wooden floor mere steps from my start. I attempt to lift my shell of a body from the barren oak, but it’s too late. I have lost all of my strength. My eyes slip shut for the final time. The medicine has completed its task, for I have finally found my bliss. Numbness runs over my body, engulfing every feeling I’ve ever had. I assume someone will find my body within a few days. I manage to envision myself lying there, in frozen silence, waiting for someone. My cold flesh seemingly untouched by my surroundings. My hair still put to the side, so I can finally see everything clearly. The unevenness of my tie hanging from my neck. Even the red stains across my sleeves will seem captured in time. I almost feel complete, but one thing bothers me still, and that is my lack of completeness. My goals will never be achieved. I will never find happiness, but that has been known for what feels like an eternity.That is why I am doing this. That is why I’ve decided that I want to die. I’m not cut out for this world and it’s pleasure and happiness. I am a mistake, something that was never meant to be. In my final moments of consciousness, I open my mouth for a final time and let the memories flood forth from my body into my spacious surroundings.
When I was younger, I used to be happy. However, it was not fulfilling. A simple happiness can not occupy the void that every living being desires to fill. I found my happiness in a beautiful woman that took care of me, and loved me. I wish I could have found someone like my mother, someone who cared so deeply for a mistake. She used to sing me songs, and she would invite me to bake things with her. I wasn’t really doing much of the work, but it didn’t matter. She would always make me feel like I was special. I especially loved the fall with my mother, for we would often walk through the fallen leaves and have the grandest of times, running around and watching the gracious sun set over the barren trees. My mother taught me how to appreciate nature. I would wait for my mom to come home every Saturday with the weeks’ groceries. Her and I would make the meal schedule for the week when she would come home. It felt wonderful being included, even if it was small and simple. One afternoon though, my mother never came home. I waited hours for her to return. She had been in a fatal crash on her way home from getting the groceries. Apparently, a college student was still hungover from the night before, and he swerved into her lane. I never saw my mother again. This was only the beginning.
Throughout my teenage years, I often ran into trouble everywhere I went. Without my mother there, my father took his drunken rages out on me. He wasn’t the biggest man, but his drunken tantrums made his punishments all the worse. I couldn’t blame him. His drinking became so much worse after mom was taken. He only comes home now and tries to drown himself in self-pity and vodka. Occasionally, someone would get curious at school and ask, but I would only tell people that I had fallen, or ran into something. Eventually, I was just seen as clumsy and left alone to my own consciousness. One day, though, the school called my father, and told him that I was being beaten. A teacher must have noticed the newest bruises and contacted the office. My father went into the school and assured them that he would find a way to solve the problem. He finally realized what he was doing, and, that night, I watched my father bawl in the corner of our living room for hours. He choked on his old self-ridicule through the depressing night, stopping himself only to apologize through watered down lungs. That night I stopped my father from killing himself twice. This was only the beginning.
Weeks went by, and I believed that everything had settled down. My father wasn’t getting drunk anymore, and everyone had, once again, forgotten about me. However, I was horribly mistaken. I returned from school one day to find something blocking me from opening the door to my house. Determined to get through the obstruction, I dug my feet into the porch floor and repeatedly pushed against the door. I eventually pushed the door open far enough to see what was interrupting my passage. I peered through and managed to take a glimpse before my insides shattered. My father’s body had been blocking the door. He had a heart attack from the stress, and he died before he could even escape the house. He didn’t even have the strength to open the door to call for help. I puked and collapsed to the ground. It was my fault. It was all my fault.
That was the same year I learned what alcohol tasted like. That was the year that I was seduced by the sweet aroma of cigarettes. I didn’t particularly enjoy them, but I was infatuated at the thought that I was ending my life quicker. I couldn’t wait to end myself. Soon enough, the only way to sleep was through Valium and Ambien. It became my necessity.They became who I was. I stopped going out entirely. My skin became pale and malnourished. I would pick myself up off the kitchen floor every afternoon only to bandage myself together long enough to engulf my hollowed soul in more medicine. I would do anything to feel numb. I could only find salvation in feeling numb.
Two years later, I met someone that almost saved me. I met her by only a slim chance. One day when walking down the aisle of the pharmacy where I picked up my daily hallucinagins, I unknowingly bumped into a young woman. In my exasperated state, I merely stared blankly into her curious eyes. Suddenly, a force, equal to a truck, slammed into my mind. I felt as if I knew her. It was impossible though. I had long forgotten everyone from my past. Yet, here this stranger was, and she held the strangest arora to her. Unable to curb my anxiety for this woman, I quickly did my best to scramble together words that would amount to a sentence of some meaning. Surprisingly, she stayed and actually began talking back to me. Within thirty minutes, I was leaving the pharmacy with someone in my mind. There was something strange about her. She felt like someone that belonged in my life, someone that I knew had a purpose. I spoke with her often from that point on. She would calm me, even if only for a short time, I felt as if I had finally found someone who would help me, someone who would save me from myself.
Months went by and I continued talking to her. I believed that she could save me from myself. She brought back a side of me that I didn’t let show. She told me that I was gold under the dark cloak I had built around myself. Her words would cut through me in every sentence she spoke. Every syllable under her breath, I savored. She believed in me. Soon enough, I became addicted to the way that I felt. I would sit and wait hours upon hours for her to come home every night. Even if I could only speak to her for only a few moments, it was all worth it. It would calm my conscious long enough that I didn’t kill myself by the next morning. Eventually, the inevitable happened and I fell for her. After all, how could she not be the one? She was perfect in every image I imagined her in. I was told when I was younger to never let another person become my home, to never let someone else become the source of feeling safe. I know now that I had no choice.
After months of her therapy, I began to tell her everything. My past to how I envisioned my future. Previous loves to my current drug obsessions. I told her how I thought of her. I told her that she was going to save me, and that I believed that she could be the one. She told me that she loved another, and that I was too late. Defeated and torn, I eventually went back to my previous habits. It was far worse this time though. I began to cringe at the thought of being conscious. I saw her everywhere I went. The pain comparable only to being burnt alive. It didn’t stop me from telling her how everyday was though. She told me that she always wanted to know everything that I thought because she cared. Eventually, I began to tell her how she haunted me, preventing me from sleeping, even with the help from pills. Everywhere I went she was there. It was almost as if I was hallucinating. I would see her, but she wasn’t really there. I would depress her with what I said. She never meant to do this to me. Everyday, I only hurt her worse by telling her how badly she was destroying me. One day, she finally had enough. Unable to take it anymore, she left. She was gone. My final hope had disappeared. I was, once again, left alone to tear myself apart, piece by piece. Weeks went by with me in a horrible trance. I wanted to die. Then one day, I crawled to the couch as I always did and managed to turn on the television for the last time. There was her face once again, but this time it was real. She had jumped from a building. With her blood alcohol level at extremes and her mind ravaged, she decided that she would learn how to fly. Her mangled body was barely salvageable from the bloody cement. They say that she had written a letter, but it was signed to no one. In place of a name, she wrote “The Golden One.” This was the end.
I was doomed from the very start. I was never meant to live in this world. Nobody will notice I ever left, for in my lifetime, I was never bullied. I was ignored. I see her now, and my father and mother. They are there waiting for me in a place of happiness. Please, wait for me, for I am almost there. The paramedics will find my crumpled body on the floor, meer steps from my bed, which I would lie so often upon. I will appear in the paper under the obituary list. Finally, I will be put to rest in the dirt. Never again will I be thought of. I never found true happiness, but maybe this was the way it was supposed to be. For, in my death, I hope for only one thing. I will no longer feel this pain. I will be numb.
