Falling Through the Cracks
by Aimme,
with touches by My Note Book
Summary: His mask was flawless. His walls were perfectly structured. Protection and cautionary containment at its finest. Even a perfect pretend held fractures, though, and no matter how strong his glue, under the right circumstances, glue cracked and had to be gutted and filled in again.
Author's Note: I have been waiting so many weeks and chapters to get to this one! (That is going to sound so bad when you get to reading it...) I had trouble (again) with this chapter; I could not seem to write it. I was writing, but I did not feel like it was taking off. Monday a flash of brilliance about how to write it came to me. I had to rewrite what I had already, but at least it got the chapter done, right? I knew what I wanted in it, but I could not seem to get it until I decided to try it this way. Also, I have a Rube Goldberg machine in this chapter (one of the harder parts to write, let me tell you), and Zack uses a form of a Rube Goldberg machine in A London Carol. Does anyone know what a Rube Goldberg machine is? Does anyone know without looking it up? If it is a "no" at this moment, you probably will not be able to say that again... (Well, that is, if you look it up, but hopefully I have gotten you curious enough to do that so you can recognise it in the chapter...)
First warning: I have never written in this form before! So if there are mistakes, please excuse them. If it seems choppy, I think it is because of the mindset behind the thoughts (narrative)—I do not blame choppiness here on the writing itself...
Tiger002, I took your suggestion and gave it a whirl.
BlackKeys96, thank you so much! That meant a lot that you thought the chapter was still amazing! Zack continuing to try to keep up his act after she has seen through is interesting. I would say it is definitely second-nature to him, and at this point, he is so far in he has too much trouble distinguishing his truth(s) from his lies, he is too weak, tired to refute things and say (as Wyntirsno put it), "No, that's not me." And it is very plausible it is much like a scape-goat for him (you meant scape-goat, right—not "escape goat"?). To have brought you from disgust with or -at least- apathy for Nurse Hatchet to respect for her bespeaks very highly of the writing. That is very complimenting, so I thank you. Will she tell Cody or hint to him? I do not know entirely; we shall see! His Voices are indeed, always trying to make him see the worst in himself. It keeps him down, keeps him within that dark power. What other place would it be required of him to be? Ah, it is very dangerous, indeed. I am sorry to hear you were sick! I trust you are better now. Be well, friend, and I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as the previous ones even though it is...well, you shall see.
(Chapter) Warning: This chapter is dark. Or, at least, I fear it has the potential to be. Thus, to be on the safe side, for this chapter only, the rating shall be a T+ or, more likely, an M. For younger readers or the weak in heart, proceed with caution (or skip this chapter all together if you feel you should not read it or you get into it and you realise it would not be a good idea to continue reading it), but do not say I did not warn you! It is an M for dark themes, not for any other reason. Please see further notes at the bottom...
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Chapter Twelve - Suicide, Suicide
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"Suicide, suicide
Your presence is near
Suicide, suicide
I wish you were here
Suicide, suicide
Take me away
Suicide, suicide
Please make it today
Suicide, suicide
An answer, for me
Suicide, suicide
I need to escape, be free"
-(Suicide) Lisa French
'Bless her, but she is a hag, isn't she? Like those ones from that story Daddy once read? Nah, you probably don't remember all that well…then again, one might have to suppose you do. You do, after all, have a record of sentimental hogwash stored, deeply buried, in that useless head of yours, right?'
It may seem outwardly strange, but he will definitely give that Voice a frown, like he did when others insinuate something negative against him. Then again, anyone who may see him would have to assume his look will direct its displeasure at the nurse and her ominous announcement, one which will set him back on edge. She has reiterated herself as a horror in his mind when she spoke those words, and he will wish with every ounce of his energies to bolt.
'Well, what are you waiting for? Coward…'
The jab, the taunt, will end with the specific insult dropping into a whisper, to rustle softly at the edges of his attention.
He will shake himself, trying to dislodge the webs in his mind. He will reach for his control, his concentration, in an attempt to get back in command of himself, and as he does so, he will forcibly will away all that has been plaguing him—his shock, fear, the recently-arrived panic attack, and how he feels overwhelmed. He wants to peel away the memories, to silence the noise, and to put the brakes on his rushing free fall before he hits rock bottom and every last part of him shatters upon impact along with bringing his instantaneous death.
He has to get back into the control seat. He needs to. The only time he is really—really allowed to lose control is when he is in that secret, hiding place of his. Hidden at the back of his closet, behind walls and doors and a lock if he is lucky, where he finds release from the pressures of still breathing and walking this heliocentric-orbiting terrestrial body. However, as soon as the torture he puts himself through has passed, he takes the control back from his pain.
And now, he will want to take a moment to allow himself to breathe again, because the pressure of not having a breath, steady and secure, wears at him as his bounce-back swings to the opposite extreme. He would think about everything that has happened; and that voice which taunts him will take on a new form. It will echo a memory as it skitters around outside of his grasp, his control, recalling loudly enough to ring in his ears.
He will close his eyes, and he will endure. His ears will ring as the memory will echo.
"You could have killed yourself!"
While the terror and horror in the voice of his brother did not then and does not now leave much room for his reactive heart to disregard the way it calls him into account for the pain dealt to his younger counterpart, the voice of his resentment and exasperation scoffs at the insinuation.
For his twin -despite being that- is absolutely and utterly wrong, uninformed, and blind. With a wool over his eyes, how could he know any different? Yet, the implication that he knows what his older brother knows he cannot is there and the silent inferring that a dull mind had not grasped that there was such a fatal "could" looming grates and would stir a bitter, jaded jeer from his lips if he were so inclined to release such a spurious version of laughter.
His brother, for all of his flying colours, his flawless grades and nearly-perfect attendance record (a trip to the mall, anyone?), his numerous awards and being on track to graduate with every honour one could possibly receive—for all of these under his belt, his brother does not know anything.
He has been at this long enough—he has learned enough—he knows what would be a cut and what would be a fatal cut. He has been in this vicious cycle so long, but he is not in it without knowledge.
A horizontal cut -unless deep enough to slit a vein open and then left untended to drain his life away- would not so easily make his life over and done with. A vertical cut, however, along the length of the veins, those pale blue lines in the soft underbelly of his wrist, would blossom with deep, deep red pain which is determined to make him first light-headed with blood loss before he falls unconscious as his body shuts down his systems in an attempt to compensate, until at last he has bled his life out. That would be an effective manner of ending his pathetic existence.
He could lock his door, lest anyone happen by at the most inopportune moment for his ('…dastardly…') plans, and then he could slit his wrists proper and let his life-force flow out, gushing maroon and lighter red where it traced in little rabbit-trail chases over his skin, which would grow paler as he began to disappear from life. Let his consciousness fade away, as the pain recedes and his will diminishes and a ('…spurious?…') peace steals over him. He would weep his last tears at first, then as his strength wanes, he would wipe them away and smile at their travesty with a sick grin.
He could bleed to death in his bathtub -slit his wrists, slice open the vital arteries in his thighs, slash open the vulnerable veins cradled in the tender creases of his elbows- and let that be the end of it all. His perfectly healthy blood would stain the porcelain-white of the bath, which was meant to wash away filth—and the last duty it would serve him would be to wash away the last of his filth from this life, let it flow down the drain in red which would lighten to a pale pink as the last vestiges of him were cleaned away after the death had at last registered to the foolish with their fortunate blinders.
If he would take his life, he could go into his closet and hang himself up by his shoelaces, until his last breath has choked out from his ravaged throat and his lungs still, his head lolls and his skin turns to blue as the required oxygen fails him. What a surprise to whoever opens that blasted door to look into a place where he has nearly always kept his secrets.
There, and the bathroom. How appropriate then that his last secret would play out within the confines of their walls as he finalizes his suicide?
If he wants to shake things up, instead, he could always fling himself off the side of the ship when no one was looking -'Like they always aren't…'- and sink beneath the waves with leaden arms and legs because he has released every fight he has ever had. His body will disappear into the depths and his soul to who-knew-where, but he will be undone from all of this at last.
He could slit himself open first, and then do so. Sharks may feast on his flesh, but he would be dead and he will not care. Let the blind people he leaves behind deal with it. Nothing will be his problem anymore, and he will not be anyone's problem ever again. Would that not be fitting?
Sneaking into the ship's laundry room, he could easily lift a container of borax soap. He would have the option of being anywhere to die; simply ingest enough of it to be fatal and let it work. It will be a painful death, but does he not have that coming?
For a slow death, he could always use the walk-in freezer. He knows how to override the locking system, releasing the latch and shutting off the lasers. (He has heard the rumour of a polar bear guarding the entrance, but he also knows his brother was being facetious—poking fun at the extremes Mr. Moseby tends to exhibit to keep his version of order intact.) While there were safeties in place to prevent the door from closing and trapping someone in there, he also knows how to trick that.
Once inside, with the door locked behind him, he will sink into a corner, draw his legs up to his chest and wait for his demise. It will come slowly, but his blood will freeze and his skin will turn blue, icy to the touch and fragile as icicles, and he will die, with his ghostly breath still lingering tenaciously upon the still atmosphere of his frozen deathbed. And then like the rest of his life, he will match it—stagnant and stiffly unmoving in the frozen landscape of his shattered dreams.
There are stashes of pills in certain areas of the infirmary -prescription painkillers (like vicodin, OxyContin, etc.), various sedatives and sleep aids, antidepressants which are there for some students and staff who require them, and so on- and while they would always be monitored during the day, at night there is only an emergency line for the nurse on call and no one is in the infirmary. He can pick the lock, sneak in and take whatever method he wants.
He could take prescription painkillers and lift a bottle of liqueur from the bar on Deck 3, mixing the two until his danger is set into finality and he overloads his system sufficiently. He could mix either one or both with a sleep aid, stopping his heart effectively after he has drifted peacefully off to sleep—his eternal sleep, as the Ancient Greeks called death (See? He pays attention). Taking two or more different painkillers, sedatives, and antidepressants in conjunction would work, as well.
Or he could keep things simple and take a bottle -or two- of vicodin and simply overdose on one drug. Imagine Cody's reaction as his brother's health steadily declines throughout the day. First, he would become weak, confused, and dizzy. His eyes will be pinpoint pupils as he dazedly, lethargically disregards everything. He will be cold and clammy to the touch, his breathing shallow and slow -pushing it if he takes even ten breaths a minute- and so tired he will start to nod off or possibly even pass out.
A sadistic grin will turn his lips as he thinks about it—for what if one of his symptoms is not only being nauseous and vomiting, but that he also has seizures? Perhaps that would be the best part, because that would be a symptom Cody could not explain away with the explanation of drunkenness -for he would believe that of his older brother without a second's hesitation, without a second's doubt or a second thought- and the terrorizing debilitation of being unable to come up with a satisfactory answer anymore will freeze his blood.
Cody will be terrified, but do you know what will be even sweeter than the seizures? The fact that, for once, he will not give one wit about it as the apathy will have stolen away his sensitivity to that weakness of his which is his little brother.
That is, if Cody has not abandoned him long before to sleep it off. In which case he will go to sleep and never wake up, and their last interaction would have been a dismissal for sleep after -supposedly- having had too much drink. If Cody has not done so and he has seizures, they would be on their way to an infirmary that could no longer help him…he will not let them, because he will have already have given up on having a will to survive.
He has stood out in the pouring rain, eyes unfocused as he folds his arms and drenches himself in the downpour. His mind wanders down paths as dark as the stormy black above him, the lightning throwing the world, with all of its harsh outlines and sharp edges, into stark perspective. The drench is so heavy that any tears that may track down his face are indistinguishable from the sorrow of the night—but there is not a soul around. Here, he ponders how easy it would be for him to use these storms for suicide.
It would not take much for him to come by a fake I.D., that he may sign his own health waiver, allowing him to parasail. And then he will do it in a storm as lightning-brilliant and danger-tossed as the ones he has stood in and pondered this darkness. It will save on funeral expenses, and that means he will not have found one more way to annoy or inconvenience his family even from beyond the grave. They would like that, right?
He has pondered the other variations of death from the mighty smiting of a storm or the fatality from harmful electric shocks. He could climb to the crow's nest to stand amidst the lightning and hope he is struck; he could use electricity -something everybody else thinks he is too empty-headed to know how to do- to his advantage and remove his pathetic life from the face of the planet by using electronics in water or sticking something metal into a live outlet. Let him be roasted to a crisp, until his skin turns leathery and the smell of burning is strong on him as the black and brown spots pockmark his body and make him look an awful sight—like his heart.
As a lovely gift to his family for Christmas, he could have hurled himself from the top of the Tipton. His blood would have stained the ground as his whole body became mangled from the fall, and the pallor of his skin against his green sweater would have blended with the red spreading across the white all around and his death would have matched the season befittingly. He would have looked like some kind of sick imitation of the holidays, but at least he could not be accused of being cheap in regards to his Christmas gifts—he would have given them the ultimate gift: his life no longer burdening theirs.
His mind has wandered many paths, and he knows how easy he can take himself out. With a fail-safe in some cases and thoroughly detailing his plan, all he would have to do is pick one and see it through.
Pandering his creative side, on a windy night, he would start by attaching a piece of string to the flag snapping on its pole outside Captain Lunceford's cabin on Deck 1. Around midnight, when the captain grows tired of listening to metal on metal as the flag swayed (for some reason, the captain keeps trying to sleep through it, even though he knows it will never work no matter how many nights he makes the attempt), he will stumble out of his cabin to lower the flag. This will pull a string, which will be attached at the other raised end to a lever which he has rigged so the string will bend it over to press the speed-dial on his phone to call his brother's cell.
The string will do its job and then come loose, allowing the captain to be none the wiser, while his brother's cell will begin ringing on the nightstand beside him. Jerking awake at the shrill ringtone it has been changed to without his knowledge, he will pick it up to see the display, and in exasperation see the caller id and give an aggravated groan at some perceived practical joke, while in reality lifting the phone had been a serious grievance.
Lifting the phone, from where it really rested against a miniature scale-size see-saw, unbalances the differing weights and the rounded, indented end in the air will fall, allowing the marble resting in it to fall out onto the nightstand, where two parallel lines of glued pencils will direct its path directly off the side and into the awaiting Mouse Trap basket. The weight of the marble -a deep blue shot through with a brilliant light blue in a myriad of swirls, a relic of a childhood gone by- will unbalance the plastic playing piece, dumping its contents onto the floor—the marble will knock over the first domino and set off the pattern he has led all around the room and then out the door.
The sleepily confused look on his brother's face might be priceless, but he will not be anywhere near to see it. Because, when the last domino is hit, it will be down the hall, across the walkway and over to the railing of the ship—it will be knocked over the edge and will land into a balancing scale hanging beneath. The domino will tip it, and the other end will raise, loosening the taut string attached to that side.
Several decks above, the other end of the string is attached to his ridiculously sharp pocket-knife. Another string is attached to it, pulled taut so that when the bottom side loosens, it will direct the knife down to neatly slice through another tightly-pulled string.
He will not be near his brother, because he will be laying on the Sky Deck beneath the anchor swinging precariously above him. When that string his knife cuts through is loosened, it drops the counterweight he has rigged to a rope attached to the anchor. The counterweight will drop, snap its own worn rope, and the anchor will be released.
In those last few seconds, his heart rate will accelerate and his breathing will be short and rapid, but he will not be able to move because he has tied his right wrist to a length of rope that runs over to the barstools at the Easy Squeezy and he has handcuffed his left wrist to a loop in another length of rope that is tied to the stairs.
The anchor will rush down towards him, and for one terrifying moment he will be filled with horror and then…blessed black; absolutely nothing. His body will have been crushed beyond recognition -blood splattered and flowing everywhere and his body is a boneless goo beneath the method of his suicide- but he will know no more.
If he wants something less involved, he can eat handfuls of straight soybeans, to which he is highly allergic and in high enough quantities (and without medical care) are fatal for him. He will assure it will be too late for anyone to do anything when someone finds out.
He could drown himself in the hot-tub by managing to get himself locked in it. He will be trapped under the water when the lock is engaged on the lid, and he will be long dead before anyone finds out the next morning.
It is all so simple.
They say that you know someone is serious about suicide if they have a plan. He has plan after plan, with fail-safes and thorough details. All are within his realm of accomplishing.
"You could have killed yourself!"
No. No, his brother didn't know anything. If he had wanted to kill himself, he would have done it a long time ago.
'Maybe you should.'
"Suicide, suicide
I've had too much
Suicide, suicide
Take me, do your touch
Suicide, suicide
Leave the rest behind
Suicide, suicide
You're all over my mind
Suicide, suicide
Let me pass in peace
Suicide, suicide
I need to release"
-(Suicide) Lisa French
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Author's Note: None of this is to encourage suicide. Suicide is never the answer. It only creates a more complicated problem; it only worsens things. Seriously, reader, if you suffer from suicidal tendencies or thoughts, do not wallow in that. There are some fantastic places to get help—Mercy Ministries, To Write Love on Her Arms, or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If you are desperate enough to take your life, why can you not be desperate enough to talk to someone?
And that question could be a premise for an upcoming story. What do you think? Perhaps give a background to one of the above methods Zack has planned out? Perhaps not? Should I ponder that premise for a story?
And on that note, back to the chapter... I know there was a delicate topic, it was dark, and perhaps could make one squeamish in places, but what did you think? Are you all on pins and needles about next week's chapter? -smirk- Ah, next week's chapter... -zips lips about that- I tried a new form this time; I have never written in future tense, and I have hardly ever seen it done—so I could not research how to do it. Did it create a surreal feeling to the chapter? Perhaps in the beginning where it was more prominent, before it got into all the things he could do to kill himself? I want your thoughts!
Also, my birthday is this weekend so that may or may not (probably will) effect my writing, thus I am not sure how much I will get done this week. I am not necessarily asking for permission to post a little later next week rather than on Wednesday... I am just throwing that into the mix, as, like I said, I am not sure how that will effect my writing and how much I will get done. I will strive my best to make sure I finish it on time, though!
(Some of these vocabulary words have been used before and explained, but they are here again so there is no confusion.)
Vocabulary:
hogwash - (1) nonsense: worthless stuff or nonsense
spurious - (1) not genuine: different from what it is claimed to be, not authentic, or not valid or well-founded
travesty - (1) false representation: a distorted or debased version of something
smiting - present participle of smite—smite - (1) hit somebody or something hard: to hit somebody or something with a hard blow (archaic or literary); (2) affect or afflict somebody: to affect somebody strongly or disastrously, or afflict somebody with something (literary) (often passive)