She sat staring at her computer screen, finger hovering over the keyboard.
I’m ready whenever you are. I can come over tonight.
Making up her mind, she typed in:
Yes. I’m ready tonight. Death with dignity.
A couple seconds later the response came back in:
Death with dignity.
And with that her hitman left the chatroom leaving Tiffany to slump back in her chair in a mixture of relief and shock at the surrealism of the situation. As she did, her stomach gave her a sharp stab of pain so intense it nearly made her pass out. Of all the cancers to have, why did it have to be pancreatic cancer? She remembered that thought passing through her mind as her doctor told her the low chances of survival even with the best treatment.
She had tried chemotherapy once but the side effects from the first round were enough to make her wish for death. Even barring the nightmare of chemotherapy, Tiffany was terrified at the idea of dying from cancer. How it transformed healthy people into a shell of their former selves. She still looked healthy enough but she knew that it wouldn’t last. Cancer was like going down a snowy mountain; you start off slow but at some point you fall through the snow down a steep crevasse to your death.
Tiffany tried bringing up the idea to her family of hospice care, to just let nature take its course. However, her family was adamant that she keep fighting to the end; they wouldn’t even entertain the thought that she might just want to rest. Her father even went so far as to imply that she wouldn’t be buried in the family plot if it were evident she’d taken her own life. The plot had been in her family for generations; the thought of her cold, lifeless body being tossed in a ditch somewhere sparked Tiffany into desperate action.
She took it upon herself to go onto the dark web. It wasn’t so difficult as the internet videos made it out to be, not when you didn’t care whether you lived or died that is. After browsing some chat rooms mostly filled with some edgy teens pretending to be hitmen, she finally found her guy. His username was simply Mark and he offered empathy to her plight which made him stand out from the others on the chat. They spent many hours discussing her situation. How she wished she could live out her life, her hopes, her crushed dreams, how she just wanted the pain to stop.
All the while, Mark had done what everyone else refused to do, he listened to her. She soon found herself pouring her fears and vulnerabilities to him.
Now here she was pacing her small apartment waiting to die. Mark was already in the area so it would only take a couple of minutes. As she paced she tried revisiting over her life memories like she’d seen in those tacky Lifetime movies but all she could focus on was the pain. She wondered what Mark would look like; she’d never met a hitman before. Strangely she felt a sort of excitement in her stomach, the kind you feel when you meet an online date in person for the first time.
Her musings were cut short as there was a knock on the door. She took a step towards it but then stopped. The hell was she doing? Part of her was clinging to the fantastical hope that this whole situation was made up, that she wasn’t being forced to stage her own murder. Perhaps some divine providence would strike down or the doctor would call her to tell her they made a mistake she just had an ulcer or something. But the knocking brought her crashing down to uncaring reality. It continued as her pain reminded her what she was doing. She crossed her living room to the door and opened it.
At the doorstep was Mark. Tiffany didn’t know what image she had in her head when she thought of hitmen but it definitely wasn’t Mark. He looked barely out of his teens with thin limbs, pasty skin, and brown hair over his bay face that was cracked in a nervous smile. In his hand he had a briefcase.
“Uh, hi. I’m Mark…you know the hitman?” He said stretching out his hand. Taking it numbly she responded, “Uh, I’m Tiffany.”
They stood there awkwardly staring at each other until she asked if he wanted to come in. He nodded and went inside setting the briefcase on her end table by her chair. Opening it, she saw that there was a needle with a filled syringe inside. “Uh, is that what you’re gonna use to…?” She asked; it was her first time being killed after all.
He turned to face her looking more nervous than her, “Yes, I thought of using a gun but too messy, also I’m not old enough yet.” He gave a nervous laugh before continuing, “It will put you to sleep and then that’s that. Death with dignity. If you could please just sit down on the chair when you’re ready.”
Bewildered on the odd note her life would be ending on, she sat down in the chair with her arm outstretched. After a minute of tinkering, he looked to her, “Are you ready?” She nodded before thinking about it; she didn’t want time to have regrets. As he swabbed her arm, she remarked that she was thinking her final thoughts. As the needle pierced her veins, she tried to think of something profound. She didn’t realize she was falling asleep as the room turned black…