Excerpt: The Art of Suicide

It wasn't that he didn't enjoy living, he just enjoyed dying a whole lot more. Life had too many restrictions, too many fatal rules, and reality was full of the type of people who should only exist in horror stories, people who liked to kill and maim, rape and torture. Sure, parts of life were fun, like getting everything you want on your birthday and being attended to like royalty, and then there was... actually, no. Birthdays were the only good thing Gage Sonata could think of.

“So anyway, like I was saying; if you behave yourself for a little while, y'know, don't shit around and cause problems, they go slack with ya. Then ya can get away with all kinds of cool shit, y'know.” Bloated lips explained from an even fatter face. Henry Crescendo; violent, unstable, intolerable, foul mouthed and ugly, and they were his best traits when he was off the medication. Gage watched him for a moment, his gaze dull and uninterested, but he figured that Henry might be going some place interesting with this rant. “Like, when they give me my pills, I used to be a real cunt about it and say 'hell no, I ain't takin' that crap', but now, I'm all like 'suuure, sure thing, I'll take them', only I only make it seem like I'm taking them, you know what I'm saying?” His fat face brightened then, eyes keen and expectant, as though he were a dog waiting for its master to pet it.

Gage mulled over what his bulbous 'friend' had said; 'I only make it seem like I'm taking them...' He wondered, if somebody with such a violent past record as Henry could get away with fooling the staff in this place, maybe there was hope for his own cause yet. It had been damn near impossible of late to find anything dangerous that he could use on himself.

And he so wanted to die... There were people waiting for him on the other side. And everything was so bright and pretty and neat, not like this place; a huge building bleached in white. He felt blind and lost, unable to recognize genuine sincerity from professionalism. He didn't belong here.

“Yo, hey, Gage, you listenin' to me, aren't you? I don't like it when people don't listen to me.” said Henry, voice becoming low and dangerous at the end. Maybe he really was a dog, a dog wearing a fat kid's skin.

“Yes, I'm listening to you.” came Gage's reply. His throat was tender, its walls bruised and sore and the surrounding flesh swollen. He remembered all too well how much Henry liked people to pay attention to him when he was speaking; he still had a broken arm and severely bruised throat to prove it. It really was a shame that he had been put through all of that pain for no death to come at the end of it. Was Henry just as useless as a bully as he was at everything else he attempted?

“So yeah, I'm just trying to help you out and shit. Just behave yourself for a little while, make sure Kaufmann sees that you're being a good boy, and then they'll be a little less uptight around you. Then, you might get an opportunity.” The way the word 'opportunity' slushed out of Henry's mouth, it sounded more like 'opootunity', it was an insult to the English language. Gage cringed; he wondered when the brute would grow bored of this sudden Samaritan routine and leave him alone.

“Oh shi', speak of the fuckin' devil. Look who it is.” To make his point, Henry pointed a fat finger in the direction of the dorms, past several angry and annoyed looking young men who made up a little less than a third of Section Bs patients, and toward a handsome man with a look of thunder spreading out across his face.

Kaufmann Cello was the type of man who rarely found anything to smile about; he was all about the business, he was not one to mess around and nor did he like those that did. He wasn't the youngest of the staff here at Mellowbleak Asylum, but he had a face that might look like an Angel's if it ever broke into a grin. And his eyes, well, they were out of this world really; green as the meadows in the height of Spring.

But as he stalked past the dorms, meaning obvious business, he looked nothing like an Angel and everything like a Demon.