At
first, there was nothing, nothing at all. Just a blank, a darkness...and
everything was silent.
So this is what death feels like.
People everywhere...fear for this moment.
The only certainty of life, and we fear for it intensely. We avoid thinking
about it whenever the minds steers towards that direction. We swerve away.
I've swerved away. But not on that day.
There was this last memory of me being
alive, when I was driving down the road, echoing through this blank
nothingness. A few hours before, I've decided that I had enough of that
nonsense. I got out from my empty apartment, and just drove away, heading due
somewhere, wherever. I just had to.
When I was almost running out of gas, I
stopped by this gas station in the middle of nowhere. I really didn't care
where the hell I was. I was close enough to just end it all...The winds were
freezing, the snow kept on falling and I've reached an area with "Deadly roads in winter" signs
everywhere. "Drive carefully", "Caution",
"Warning", these were the signs I was looking for.
The kind of signs I was expecting to find
here. The kind of signs I've found everywhere I looked at.
I sat at the cafeteria, wrote a few
parting words on a napkin, the napkin I was expecting the police to find
amongst my leftovers. Amongst the wreckage. Beside my mangled body. From yours
truly.
Whatever.
I sipped some more coffee and just
contemplated the few words I've written on the napkin. So few words. The résumé
of my life, now my application to the bitter end of it all.
I sighed.
Did I really want it to end that way?
Well, my life was over, anyway. I was dead
even before I've planned to take that final step that day. Dead. Alone.
So I paid for my coffee and sandwich,
filled my gas tank and drove away. Not before checking with the clerk the name
and location for the most dangerous road in the area.
Then, for the last time, I drove
away...And headed for such deadly road. It was snowing, but not too heavily,
and I was glad about that. I wanted to get to said road and fulfill my little
plan, not get stranded somewhere and freeze to death.
I didn't want a slow and painful death,
even though I knew I deserved one. Coward, coward.
Trying to put some sense in my nonsensical
head, I drove on and on. Almost an hour passed before I've reached my final
destination. The day was almost done, in more than one sense.
I spotted my target when the daylight was
almost fading. A nice, steep and deadly curve on said deadly road. There was no
one else around, no cars, no witnesses.
Just perfect.
I glanced through the snow-smeared
windshield and took a deep breath. Not the way I had planned to go...At least
not until my life was taken away from me months prior. Not the way I wanted to
die.
All of a sudden, that realization came
upon me, sending me back all those dreaded emotions I was trying to drown in
alcohol and drugs for the past few weeks. Anger. Sorrow.
Loneliness. Pain. So much pain.
"Oh no, you don't", I've told
myself, "you will not back away from this."
But the sorrow just got stronger. And the
pain was too great. Stifling back my tears, I reached for the glove compartment
and retrieved the bottle inside. Cheap bourbon. All I needed right now.
I chugged down a long one, and closed my
eyes.
"This ends tonight."
The fiery liquid was quite harsh. My
stomach almost revolted, making me gag. And the alcohol...I felt like was being
absorbed instantly. It made my head spin a bit.
I listened to the hum of the engine, and
tried to build up my courage.
"This...will...end...tonight."
I opened up my eyes and stared at the
windshield. The headlights made two cones of phosphorescent snowflakes in the
winter air. I took another swig of the bottle and sucked my breath, waiting for
a signal, anything.
My mind kept on wandering to all those
repressed events, all those things I did to try and bury all that pain. All the
stupid things I've done since that dreadful day.
"Stop. Stop. Right now."
My right hand almost refused to move, but
I forced it to position itself...upon the gear stick.
"I will end this...tonight."
I stepped on the gas, making the engine
roar a bit. Then I shifted the gear from neutral to first. Then my hand moved
to the hand brake.
The engine awaited. I felt my heart
racing, and noticed how much I was sweating, even in that forsaken cold. My
hands were shaking, so much I couldn't even hold the handbrake handle properly.
"Oh no, this will not stop me."
I mustered my strength and gripped on the
handle tightly. Then I stepped on the gas a bit more.
I reached for the bottle again and took
yet another long swig. The dreadful bourbon came down as a ball of fire, making
me gag once again. I closed my eyes forcefully and waited a few seconds for the
awful feeling to ease a bit.
I opened up my eyes and looked at myself
on the rearview mirror, wincing at the image that stared back at me. I felt my
right hand going numb on the handbrake handle, and came back to issue at hand.
I took another cold look into my dead-like
eyes, and said to myself in a menacing tone:
"You will not back down. Not this
time. There is no one around to stop you, so don't get me started."
Silence.
"Finish this."
I took one last swig and tossed the bottle
away. At that moment, I was so drunk that I didn't even noticed that I threw it
at the passenger's seat window, smashing the glass and letting that gelid wind
inside the car. That cold wind stole away my stupor for a while, and it seemed
enough for me to make up my mind.
"Let's go."
I did not close my eyes as I released the
handbrake, and I floored the accelerator pedal. The car darted towards the
nasty road, roaring loudly as the engine revved more and more.
The road was slippery as hell. It was hard
to keep the car from swerving out before it gathered enough speed to ensure my
ultimate goal. But somehow I managed to keep it from rolling over before I
reached my final destination.
That curve up ahead looked good enough for
me. The numbers on the speedometer looked all a bit too blurry for my drunken
brain to decipher, but I figured that it'd be enough for me.
I took one last look at my own eyes before
the impact and tried to smile, but it was already too late.
I felt something like a thud and heard a
loud noise, as loud as it gets when you're driving a car at who knows how many
miles per hour towards a guardrail on a winding mountain road.
And things went black.
So this is what it feels to die.
This is what death feels like.
If only.
