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LA FIN

It’s three am.  The Devil’s hour.  It’s meant to be a made mockery of its parallel three in the afternoon when Christ supposedly died.
I’m driving.  Fast.  Probably too fast.  Ninety in a sixty-five zone.
It doesn’t matter.  The cops can’t stop me.  Neither can the doctors.  My friends, my parents, my siblings.  The man I love.  The man I loved.  And certainly not God, nor his bastard son.
No one can stop me from doing what I want to.  Scratch that.  What I need to.  I’d like to see them  try.
I slam the pedal down.  That’s right, you self-righteous Savior.  Stop me from doing this.  Stop me from dying.  Stop me from killing myself.
I fucking dare you.
The music is loud, metal, a different language I don’t understand.  But that’s not the point.  I hear the singer’s voice; hear everything in the singer’s voice.
The bridge is calling to me.  I think my heart skips when I see the tall blue arcs that mark it.  I remove one hand from the steering-wheel and put it to my chest.
My heart is racing.
Is this what it feels like to be alive?  I’ve forgotten.  Once you die, it’s hard to ever feel alive anymore.  Eighty-six seconds in what most people would call hell changes how ‘valuable’ life is.
God, Satan, or even the devils themselves didn’t want me.  Well, they better keep me this time.  I’ve been trying real hard to keep up with their expectations.  Hell, look at what I’m doing.  Suicide.

T.h.e  u.l.t.i.m.a.t.e  s.i.n.

The bad angel himself had better find no justice in that.
I’m on the bridge now.  Just a bit farther.  The East Green Bay bridge is arced.  I want to fly from the highest point.  It’s warm outside as I roll down all of my windows and, for once, fasten my seatbelt.
Can’t have myself floating back up to the surface if the crash doesn’t kill me.
I almost hesitate.
Almost.
And jerk suddenly to my right.
Metal on metal.  Vehicle on railing.  It’s jarring.  It hurts.  I laugh.  I’m airborne.  Everything looks so strange.  It’s nearly like I’m…

Flying.

Hitting the water hurts just as much as hitting the railing.  I didn’t expect that.  But it’s like smacking into a sheen of glass, the glass shattering as Daddy Dearest’s car gets sucked slowly under.
I slam hard against the seatbelt.  It feels like my ribs shatter.  It’s so shocking; I suck in a sharp breath.
It’s almost all water.
Tastes like shit.
Doesn’t anyone ever clean this bay?  If I could, I would have laughed.  They’ll have to clean it now.  That is, when they search for my body.
If they care to, I suppose.
I try to breathe; all I can taste is fish shit.  I can hear my pulse in my head, oh Christ, I need oxygen.
I open my eyes, claw at my seatbelt.  It’s not that I don’t want to die; it’s my body’s survival instincts kicking in.
I gaze up.  It’s all dead dark.
Stop, I tell myself.  It’s almost over.  The pounding is slower now, like the slow beating of a dutiful husband chopping firewood.
I let my hands free.  Now I’m floating just above the seat, but the safetybelt restricts me inside my metal prison.
I open my eyes again.  Christ, it’s such an effort.  I can barely believe what I’m seeing, right outside the windshield.
The message in a bottle me and my friend Karleigh wrote a few months ago.  We had expected it to float away.  Who knew I would be seeing it now, God knows how many yards under the surface.
I don’t remember what mine said, except for the ending lines.  Song lyrics.  ‘Santa Monica’, Theory of a Deadman.

My bones will break
and my heart would give
oh it hurts to live

Silence.  No air.  No thoughts.  No sounds at all.  This is it.  This is the end.  I can almost imagine feeling my heart slow to its last.  I swear I suddenly see a bright light appear above me.
Here I come Lucifer.
Then strong, steely slick hands travel swiftly down my wrist…

Un Autre Commencement