I was one of the first to bear witness to the dead beckoning.
It was a February morning that began like any other.
I was on my way to work, already restless and yearning for the weekend to begin.
I followed the crowds to the underground, funneled towards my subway route.
The subway platform was active with commuters trying their best to avoid making eye contact with one another.
I stood at my transit point, waiting for the train to arrive.
Detached from the moment and in my own head. I would never have noticed the young woman standing next to me if she hadn’t begun bawling.
A stark sob broke through the steady stream of commuter conversations.
“Jason? Is that really you?”
Her focus of attention was directed at an empty space between the subway rails below. She spoke through sobs.
Her face was contorted with grief; more concerning through this was that her eyes bore a look of relief.
“This last year has been so hard without you. I’ve just felt empty.”
Now city life generally numbs you to this sort of behavior. After your first couple months of seeing the mentally unwell roaming the parks and alley, you develop a filter to ignore things like this.
But the pain of this girl’s voice was drawing attention from all around the platform.
Beneath the tears, her eyes had a concerning focus to them. She was staring at something between the rails.
Invisible to us, yet clearly defined to her.
There was a roar of the approaching subway train.
I saw its high beams glowing through the endless maw of the tunnel ahead.
“Is that really all it would take, Jay?” she gasped between tears. “I was too scared to do it on my own.”
And then, she smiled.
The smile grew wide.
Her sudden laughter pierced ears and even now weighs heavy on my heart.
“It’s so easy! We’ll be together again!”
Everyone knew what she was about to do.
Transfixed by her madness, no-one moved to stop her.
I did not move to stop her.
I didn’t go to work that day.
I went directly home.
In a daze, I rode our apartment’s elevator, ten stories up.
I opened our front door and silently embraced my husband, who was just getting ready to leave.
I could always count on Alan. He’s been the only person I could ever count on.
Growing up as a foster child didn’t afford me the opportunity to trust many.
There were so many cold nights before I met my man.
Alan tended to me until the evening as I processed what had happened.
Prior to this, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be so shaken from being a witness to someone taking their own life.
I thought I was “tough” enough to just carry on.
But the event stood so starkly in my mind.
A combination of dark curiosity and genuine empathy led me to look up the incident online.
Isabelle Fields.
Only 24. She had a genuine smile in the photo they used for the article.
Corrupted by the internet age and fueled by morbid obsession, it was easy for me to locate her social media.
Preserved forever online was a testament to the life she once lived.
Her profile image displayed her happy young face framed next to an equally happy young man. Love radiated out of this image.
The photo tagged was tagged to Jason Barnes.
Jay.
The name Isabelle cried out to at the subway tracks.
Further research and cyberstalking found that Jason Barnes was killed in a hit and run last October.
Isabelle called out to a dead man.
It sounds cold, but that scared me even more than seeing her corpse mashed into a red pulp by the oncoming subway.
From the look in her eyes, it was clear she saw someone standing before her on the tracks; even if it was just her brain misfiring.
Someone who encouraged her to take her own life, to which she willingly obliged.
All to escape her loneliness without him.
So I put it all out of my mind.
At least for a few weeks.
It was late April when the media began to give coverage to the considerable rise in the country’s suicide rate.
A 10% rise.
A meaningless quantification of a profound loss of life.
The employment rate and economy had seemed to be in good standing. No new wars on the horizon or conflict in the streets.
Before this, it had been a brief period of quiet peace.
Shattered by sadness manifest in unexpected self-harm.
Families were shattered; lost fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters who had never before shown history of contemplating such action.
An epidemic of suicide; a quiet, festering pain.
Information was consolidated.
Investigations found the victims had been experiencing “hallucinations of the deceased” prior to their act.
Now I’m not so sure they’re simply hallucinations.
There’s no indication as to what spreads this sickness, outside of having deceased loved ones.
Death begets more death. A cycle.
Without prompt
passed parents,
fallen friends,
and lost lovers
appear before their victims;
encouraging them to take a final, tragic step towards reunification.
Their appearance varies, from mutilated, rotted, to fresh as life; regardless of how or when they died.
It’s been difficult to get a valid consensus of these visions, as most people don’t last long after they begin.
Reactions prior to the act range from joy and elation to despair and hopelessness.
While some seem ecstatic to join the ones they cared about, others have been terrified.
—
Over the months, the illness itself self-propagated.
We are all connected.
Someone you don’t know passes,
but someone you do know cares for them.
Someone you know is visited by this spectre
and soon the one you love
joins them on the other side.
There they wait
for you.
—
When there was enough of a society left to take report on these events, our city was reporting over two hundred suicides a day.
I don’t know if that number has increased or decreased at this point. There might not be enough people around to sustain those types of stats.
For a time, Alan and I were surviving through it all.
We were introverts, who only needed each other.
We had never really sought to make bonds with anyone else.
Our solidarity proved to be our strength.
For a while.
But, last week, Alan’s brother killed himself.
Then his mother,
then his father,
one at a time.
—
I saw the change in the man I loved yesterday morning.
His eyes were glazed and hollow.
Our spacious apartment now felt as vacant as the world outside.
There was a distance between us that I had never felt.
Alan’s mind was clearly occupied.
I couldn’t do anything to shake him out of it.
I tried.
I plead.
I cried.
In the evening, we sat at the dinner table,
in silence before he looked up at me.
“I love you so much.”
He then walked into the kitchen, pulled a steak knife from the rack, and carved deep into his carotid artery.
Crimson sprayed across the white dining table sheet.
I rushed to Alan.
I pressed a dish rag to his throat and tried to stop the bleeding.
He was already gone.
But my love returned to me this morning.
I numbly stared at the wall all night.
I couldn’t sleep.
Of course I couldn’t sleep.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t feel.
There was a tapping at our balcony door,
which roused me from my trance.
And there, in this moment, Alan stands.
He’s glowing, bold and glorious like a classical depiction of an angel.
His sly half-grin shows off his crooked tooth. His stylishly disheveled hair catches the light just perfectly.
There’s a gleam in his eye, the one that always shone right before he led us into trouble.
I open the balcony door and just stand transfixed by him.
“Do you want to dance, handsome?”
He extends to me his hand. A loving smile on his face.
I grasp it, expecting it to be cold,
for my fingers to pass through
but am pleasantly surprised by his warmth.
We lean in close for a kiss
and in this moment everything is perfect.
He then floats up, above the balcony railing, beckoning me after him.
“Come on, darling, there’s so much for us to see together.”
Follow him I shall.
To the ends of the earth
or over the edge of this balcony.