Suicide thursday, p.1
Suicide Thursday, page 1
Eli Hagin can’t finish anything.
He hates his job, but can’t seem to quit. He doesn’t want to be with his girlfriend, but doesn’t know how to end things with her, either. Eli wants to write a novel, but he’s never taken a story beyond the first chapter.
Eli also has trouble separating reality from fiction.
When his best friend kills himself, Eli is motivated, for the first time in his life, to finally end something himself, just as Mike did…
Except sessions with his therapist suggest that Eli’s most recent ‘first chapters’ are not as fictitious as he had intended … and a series of text messages that Mike received before his death point to something much, much darker…
SUICIDE THURSDAY
WILL CARVER
This one’s for me.
‘Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.’
—Jessamyn West
‘The only cure for grief is action.’
—George Henry Lewes
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
EPIGRAPH
PROLOGUE
WEEK ONE
MONDAY
TEXTS
MONDAY
SUICIDE THURSDAY
MONDAY
JACKIE
TEXTS
JACKIE
SUICIDE THURSDAY
TUESDAY
JACKIE
TEXTS
FAKE THERAPY
MIKE
TEXTS
TUESDAY
SUICIDE THURSDAY
TUESDAY
FAKE THERAPIST
SUICIDE THURSDAY
WEDNESDAY
MIKE
JACKIE
TEXTS
WEDNESDAY
MIKE
TEXTS
JACKIE
WEDNESDAY
JACKIE
TEXTS
WEDNESDAY
MIKE AND JACKIE
WEDNESDAY
JACKIE
WEDNESDAY
MIKE
TEXTS
SUICIDE THURSDAY
MIKE
FAKE THERAPY
FRIDAY
JACKIE
FRIDAY
JACKIE
FRIDAY
JACKIE
FRIDAY
MIKE
JACKIE
FRIDAY
JACKIE
FRIDAY
WEEK TWO
THE NOTE
FUNERAL FRIDAY
JACKIE
MONDAY
JACKIE
MONDAY
RALPH
MONDAY
THE TEDS
FUNERAL FRIDAY
TUESDAY
JACKIE
TUESDAY
FUNERAL FRIDAY
TUESDAY
JACKIE
TUESDAY
FUNERAL FRIDAY
RALPH
TUESDAY
FAKE THERAPIST
THE TEDS
RALPH
JACKIE
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
RALPH
JACKIE
KATE
THURSDAY
KATE
THURSDAY
JACKIE
THURSDAY
FUNERAL FRIDAY
THURSDAY
KATE
THURSDAY
KATE
JACKIE
FUNERAL FRIDAY
SATURDAY
JACKIE
SATURDAY
JACKIE
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY WILL CARVER AND AVAILABLE FROM ORENDA BOOKS:
COPYRIGHT
PROLOGUE
I type:
Mike is dead. From behind, it looks as though he is sitting on his living-room floor with his hands in his lap, staring into the mirror.
And maybe that is true.
His eyes are open. But Mike is definitely dead.
Two cuts. One across the top of each thigh. There’s more blood on the floor than left inside his body. And some of that blood has been mixed with Jackie’s tears. She found him like this.
And the look on his face is one of relief, and the look on hers is mourning and sorrow and all her Catholic guilt. He is gone. She is lost. I’m somewhere in between.
Suicide is a beginning for those left behind.
This was not a cry for help. This was serious and thought out and deliberate. Mike wanted to die. But a look at the scene from the front – a different angle – and his hands are not resting on his lap. They’re in his legs.
He tried to stop it.
They’re both sitting on the floor. Broken. My best friend and my girlfriend. Blood on their hands.
Too dark, maybe. Gruesome. In this situation, you don’t know what is going on, how events transpired, the reasons behind the decision to end a life. It’s easy to focus on the wrong thing, miss what’s important, what’s right in front of you.
Again:
Apparently, the triangle is the strongest shape. The three sides push against each other perfectly so that a great force is required to misshape or break the bond between them.
That’s how we work. Mike. Jackie. And Me.
How we worked.
Mike cut his legs open and bled out on his newly polished floor. Whatever he was secretly feeling, it warped our triangle and made us weak. Our compassion must not have been equal to his self-loathing. Our love was not enough to cancel out his despair. Understanding is often outweighed by self-interest, benevolence by guilt.
Now all that is left is a line. A faint line between myself and my girlfriend, Jackie. A continuum, where one end is her and one end is me.
One side is fact and the other is fiction.
And somewhere in the middle is the truth.
Too bleak. Nobody wants to read about decaying social values and humankind’s growing disconnection with one another. It’s abstract. Obscuring what the story is really about.
In my mind, it plays out like a film.
Once more:
INT. MIKE’S FLAT – NIGHT
(Mike is sitting on the floor, opposite a mirror, in a puddle of his own blood. Jackie cries opposite him.)
ELI (V.O.)
Someone once said, ‘Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way that things turn out.’ I got a phone call a moment ago telling me that my best friend has just killed himself and, in a way, it has filled me with hope.
Maybe one day I will be able to put an end to something.
CUT TO BLACK.
WEEK ONE
MONDAY
(THREE DAYS BEFORE SUICIDE THURSDAY)
118, 117, 116…
It’s far too quiet in the office on Monday, which gives me more time with my own thoughts than is healthy.
I need a distraction: the radio perhaps, or kids screaming in the streets, or maybe even some actual work to do – anything, just to prevent my own nauseating voice from whizzing around inside my head, splitting and overlapping and altering into a maddening crescendo in the key of G, which resonates through my very being like the antithesis of orgasm. But I’m thankful: it’s nearly the end of the day now.
94, 93, 92…
With my hands poised, middle finger of my left hand on Ctrl, index finger on Alt, I count down the seconds of my last two to three minutes at work, the index finger of my right hand hovering trigger-happily over the Delete button, ready to log off.
It’s been yet another gut-wrenching, soul-destroying, waste-of-time day in which I feel as though I have offered the world nothing and achieved even less.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not depressed. It’s not depression, it’s not frustration either; it’s not even annoyance. It’s an amalgamation of all these sentiments playing off each other like some kind of sick, satanic, symbiotic mess of emotion. I get annoyed because I don’t believe in depression; thus, I get frustrated with myself. The fact that I am constantly frustrated, well, that is just depressing.
Fruproyance. That’s my word for it, the neologism that best expresses my combination of frustration, depression and annoyance. As you can see, I have kept depression’s involvement to a minimum but that is probably a result of something my therapist would call ‘fruproyance anxiety’. Of course I’m anxious; it’s a relatively unknown condition.
It’s not that I want to bring down the mood of those around me, but how can I help it? It’s come to the point where stagnation is seen as a compliment. At least my mind is still active, even if my enthusiasm is on life support. I’m constantly thinking of new ideas, of sex with Jackie, of Mum’s cooking, of Nick Drake lyrics, of money, of getting out of work, getting out of work to go and meet Mike.
I should be thinking more about Mike but I’m not, I’m too self-involved for that. I should be spending as much time with him as possible because in three days’ time it will be Thursday; in three days, none of this will matter to me because in one, two, three days, Mike will be dead.
47, 46, 45…
So where does that put me?
Here, I suppose. 17:29 on a Monday afternoon, drowning in the monotony of another laborious day in the marketing department of DoTrue. That’s right, DoTrue, capital D, capital T. A little-known computer manufacturer that opened an office in the UK two years ago. It’s my job to publicise their presence. Can you think of a more pointless occupation?
I have a degree in English language and phonetics from King’s College. Three years slogging it out with future leaders and Nobel Prize winners to end up here trying to think of interesting ways to market a new RoHS-compliant chassis, which conforms to the latest BTX design parameters, promoting smoother air flow over the mainboard and processor. It’s not the kind of creative writing that I am pursuing.
22, 21, 20…
I can see my boss pacing.
That’s never a good sign at this time. It means that he is mulling over an inspirational end-of-day speech.
He is insipid. An infant straight out of university who landed a highly paid position of power after earning a first-class degree in ‘How to Convert People into Numbers’ combined with a course in ‘Advanced Fear and Misery in the Third Reich’.
His look reduces me to a barcode in an ever-growing population of corporate whores. But the thing that really annoys me, the thing that I hate most, is the way he tries to instil a semblance of confidence and encouragement by punctuating his lectures with the phrase, ‘Okay, now let’s do some good.’
‘…So, in conclusion, our forecasting has to be spot on as we move into Q3, when we can certainly expect a ramp in the notebook market. Okay … now let’s do some good.’ As if anything we do makes the slightest difference to the world.
9, 8, 7…
Oh shit, he’s coming out.
5, 4, 3…
‘Ring, ring, ring,’ a woman’s voice sings.
And I’m saved.
‘Ring, ring, ring.’ There it is again. Pick up the phone. Please, just pick up your bloody phone. My fingers are still poised over the keyboard but in my mind they are pressed together in prayer.
‘Riiiiiii-iiii-ii-ii-iii-iii-iiing.’ The trilling vibrato that I usually hate to hear has just prevented a further twenty to thirty minutes of a Danny Elwes harangue about teamwork and targets and forecasts and e-shots and sell-out and sell-in and price lists and percentages and on and on and ‘let’s do some good’ and on and on again and, finally, he answers his phone.
I remember the day he got the ring tone for his mobile of that fucking woman singing ring, ring fucking ring. He was so proud. He let everyone know how much it cost him. Loser. I laughed to myself thinking it probably wasn’t the first woman he had ever paid money for. But that doesn’t matter now, he is back in his office and I resume the countdown.
2, 1…
Delete.
I’m logged out, standing up, jacket on, bag in hand, walking, walking, past the boss, walking, out the door and onto the bus. The number eighteen bus which takes me sixteen minutes and drops me right outside The Scam – my local pub – which is sixty-four steps from where I live.
TEXTS
Are you there?
I haven’t heard from you all weekend.
Did you do it?
Oh, my God. You did it.
Did you do it?
Please answer me.
I’m messaging a dead man.
Fuck. You did it.
I didn’t do it.
Jesus Christ. You’re alive.
Unfortunately.
Sorry to make you worry.
I was going to do it.
What happened?
I needed to see my family.
Before I leave them.
That’s still your plan?
I have to. I know that.
I’ve seen them. They have no idea about how I feel.
I don’t even know what I’m waiting for.
You have to stop putting off and putting off.
There’s never a right time. You could do it right now.
Do it.
MONDAY
(THREE DAYS BEFORE SUICIDE THURSDAY)
The sixteen-minute bus ride isn’t the toughest commute, and the sixty-four-step journey to my front door isn’t particularly arduous, either. I suppose this minuscule portion, this fraction of my everyday life, could be considered easy; I have an easy life in this respect. I start to enjoy myself; I even gain pleasure from the routine of it.
This is where my day really begins.
Almost everyone on here can be pigeonholed as a ‘young professional’. They all look relieved to be out of the office, they all look uncomfortable in a suit or sensible blouse, and they all have a mobile phone in their hands, even though they’ve been glued to some kind of screen all day.
We just want to block out the din of the world around, separate ourselves from reality for a moment.
Nothing online is real.
Yes, it’s surprisingly peaceful on the bus.
It has always interested me why people do not talk on public transport but this bus journey is a particularly anomalous phenomenon: it is silent except for the tinny treble sound coming from the cheaper earphones, but that eventually fades into white noise. The few elderly ladies aren’t even talking. It’s too late for school kids to be on here but there is one girl in school uniform who I assume has been in a detention until now, maybe for being disruptive in class, but even she is quiet, in contemplation.
I use the tranquillity of my environment to relax, read the paper or a book; but usually I spend the time scribbling ideas into my pocket notebook; ideas that I can work on when I get home; ideas for my latest masterpiece.
I hang at the back of the bus and jump off while it is still moving, slowing down before it pulls into the stop. The world seems so loud outside. I lift my headphones from around my neck, place them over my ears and select a song. Kirsty McColl, ‘Days’. It’s the soundtrack to my life for the next sixty-four steps or so. At this moment of every weekday, I am always thankful.
I stand still for eight seconds until the first time she sings the word ‘days’. It feels like the right moment to start walking to the beat, to begin my journey.
My first smile of the week.
I walk.
Sixty-four steps doesn’t necessarily constitute a journey. Sixty-four steps. Twelve after I turn left again, which is the back of The Scam, then I hit a shop called Furry’s, which only sells vinyl records and eight-tracks, my next eight steps. A butcher’s, sixteen steps. He always waves even though we have never exchanged a word. An alley that leads to the back of the butcher’s, two steps; a newsagents, ten steps; an off-licence, twelve; and a quaint coffee shop run by two war veterans who always waffle on about conflicts that nobody has ever even heard about, but they are harmless, eight steps. Then you arrive at my house.
I noticed the place about four years ago during a time I was spending most mornings at Gaucho’s, drinking coffee and etching musings into my slowly biodegrading notebook. I was unemployed and scrounging £43 per week off the state, which barely covered my coffee bill, but I was more determined than ever to finish a novel that particular year.
The truth is, I have never managed to write anything beyond a first chapter; 733 first chapters, in actual fact. Mum had read and kept them all, every last one, boxed and stored in her attic chronologically according to time written.
Why would I ever need 733 first chapters?
It acts as a constant reminder of a key issue in my life, I suppose.
I can’t finish anything.
By the summer of that year I was no nearer to completing my novel than I was at the start. Slowly running out of options, fate intervened and took my mother, leaving me with a pile of cash, three months of sequestered living, elevated fruproyance and a level of suspended animation that would rival even the most indolent of catatonic ticks.
But the money gave me something that I didn’t have before.
Choice.
So I bought up the lease on the old place next to Gaucho’s that has been closed since the mid-seventies; a place called Pretzel Logic. It was brown and damp, and the windows had been boarded up and covered in graffiti. It was mainly the obvious ‘Ben 4 Charlie 4 Eva’ kind of graffiti, with a few call-girl flyers and cards pinned to it, plus an old poster for a band named Turquoise Indigo, who looked like a Latino Supremes tribute group; also part of an unfinished poem or song that I copied down in the hope that maybe I could complete it for the person who started it. ‘So, What Now?’ A simple title and I’m not sure why I seem to love it so much. Maybe it’s because I relate to the fragmentation of the piece. I keep it with me all the time; I even kept the wooden panel it was written on.
