They’re all dead. For the fifth time, they’re all dead. The last one is in the ground. I’m all alone again. And next week I’ll be twenty-six again. I’m always twenty-six. I’ve been twenty-six nearly five-hundred times. And tomorrow I’ll kill myself again. It will be the twelfth time I have killed myself, no, the thirteenth. Isn’t that unlucky? And no, I do not say “try” because I do not “try” to kill myself. I always succeed, well, almost always. I die for a time before my bones and veins and synapses begin to mend.

How to do it this time? Maybe I’ll fall off that building again. That hurts less, well, until I hit the ground. It hurts less than the noose. The noose gives me rope burn, not to mention the choking. You’d think it’d be pills, but they just make me sick. Usually, they don’t even find me with the pills, and cutting takes too long. I don’t like to be that involved in it. I’d rather gravity do the actual killing. No, I like the rush of the wind, the terrified faces of the onlookers. Even the crunch of the bones as my body smacks into the pavement is a release. It feels like I did something, like I didn’t fail completely. Yes, I’ll fall off the building again.

There is one I’ve never tried. I’ve never tried the gun. I would, but I’m afraid. I’m terrified to die, and yet I so desperately want to. Everyone else gets to, so why don’t I? I’m afraid that the gun will work, or that it won’t work, or that it won’t work entirely. What if my brain cannot mend like my neck can? What if it just turns to mush and I’m stuck, like that? What if I am still aware, still sane, but I can’t breathe or move or see? What if I can only think, and am just trapped there, in my head, where no one can reach me? What if I can’t even think, but I don’t go anywhere either, and I’m just there, but not there all at once? I tried the gun once, but I chickened out. No, I won’t use the gun.

I might as well just skip it. It never works anyway. Plus, they always put me in that ward, that ward where they keep the crazies. And if I’m there too long, long like years, they figure it out. They get interested. If they get too interested, they might never let me go. I should just skip it and find someone else. I don’t want to, and maybe I won’t, for a while. But eventually I’ll have to. When I’m so desperately lonely and so tired of talking to the toaster about my day, then I’ll have to. I’ll have to start again, and again. And for the sixth time, they’ll all be dead, the last one in the ground. And I’ll be alone and twenty-six again. I think I’ll fall off that building again.