Hi. My name is Alex, and I’m dead.
This is a suicide note… I think. It’s kind of a story of my life. It’s my last words, and my last words are a story – that’s a decent way to explain this.
I killed my mom when I was a baby. By being born. My parents were high school sweethearts who married at nineteen just after graduating. Everyone said they weren’t going to last, that young couples never lasted – but they did. From what I’m told, my mom always loved kids, and always wanted a bunch of her own. Try as they might, my parents just had terrible luck – it was a string of failed attempts and miscarriages that lasted for almost ten years, until miraculously, they had me.
I’m told it wasn’t an easy pregnancy - my parents were terrified, the doctors were worried, and after my mom was laid down on the bed to give birth, she never got up again. When I learned, years later, how my mom had died, I blamed myself for it and cried for days, but my dad just put his arm around me, smiled sadly, and said not to worry – that mom was happy that she finally brought a healthy baby into the world.
I know it’s cliché, but my dad really was the best – attentive, cheerful, always at my games and shows when I was growing up. I had four grandparents who I saw all the time, either visiting their houses or acting as my babysitters while I grew up. All said and done, aside from sometimes wishing I had a mom, I had a great childhood and grew up happy.
Everyone has their flaws, their problems. For my dad, that was drinking. Now don’t get me wrong, he was never the stereotypical drunk dad who would yell and scream and hit me with a belt while stumbling around the house. No, my dad just drank – all the time. It never really seemed to affect him much except for putting him in a good mood. He’d come home from work, and before he even had his shoes off, he’d mix himself his first drink of the night and down it standing at the kitchen counter. Gin and ginger ale when it was hot out, and brandy with hot water when it was cold.
Dad would drink all night until he fell asleep around eleven or twelve and could go through the majority of a bottle in a single night. In the morning, he woke up, showered, had a coffee, and was good to go. The weekends were the time for wine and beer, which he drank from when the sun crossed the yardarm until late until the evening. It was kind of a blessing in disguise, because once I turned sixteen, dad would let me borrow the car almost any time I needed, since he was almost always too drunk to drive it.
I guess you’d call him a functional alcoholic. I only inherited the alcoholic part, and less of the functional aspect. Knowing what I know now though, I can’t really blame him for drinking all the time. Dad, being a dad, would let me have a beer or a glass of wine now and then, and told me he didn’t care about underage drinking as long as I never got into a car with a drunk driver - and always told him where I was going. Like I said, he was a great dad, who I trusted and loved.
On my eighteenth birthday, which was on a Friday, I had come home from school to find dad home early and grilling on the barbecue. He made the two of us an amazing steak dinner, and after he had cleared the plates away, he set a bottle of scotch down in the middle of the table and put a glass in front of each of us. It was my first time with scotch, and if you’ve ever had scotch before, you’ll know what the first time is like. I coughed and choked, dad laughed, and I got ice added to mine.
It was probably the greatest night I ever spent with dad. For the first time, he opened up and told me everything that he could remember about my mom – the way she laughed, how she acted, how she lived, and how she looked. I loved it, because other than pictures, I never really got to know much about my mom. I asked a thousand questions and dad answered a thousand, with the same sad smile on his face that he had worn after I learned my mom died because of me.
We got sick of the dinner table after a few hours, and lit a fire in the backyard, sitting side by side in two deck chairs, drinking and enjoying the fire. Dad shifted the conversation to me, asking me what I wanted in life – where I wanted to live, the job I wanted to have, where I planned on going for university, all of that. I drunkenly, excitedly opened up about my dreams for the future - I wanted a nice house, a family, a job I liked, and free time to make art, which wasn’t too much to ask for in my mind.
“You sound just like your mom and me when we were your age.” Dad said with a smile.
I smiled at the thought as I reached my hand out to the scotch bottle sat on the table between us, when dad grabbed my wrist – rather harshly, and looked me right in the eyes.
“There’s an old family tradition you need to know.” Dad said.
“What’s that?” I asked, growing concerned.
“The last two fingers – you never ever drink the last two fingers.” Dad said, holding his middle and index finger against the bottom of the bottle, where the remaining liquid came up no higher than his fingers.
“Why?”
“The last two fingers are for the dead – it’s bad luck to steal drinks from the dead.” Dad said, as he uncorked the bottle and poured the remaining few ounces onto the fire, making the flames hiss and dance angrily in response to the liquid.
“My dad told me you always leave the last two fingers, and the one time I didn’t listen? Next day this happened.” Dad said, holding up his right hand. Dad had two fingers missing from his right hand, which he had lost in a work accident when he was young. He was a carpenter, loved working with his hands, but after the accident took his fingers, had to give up the hands-on work and settle for desk work which he hated.
“Alright, will do.” I said. “I promise.”
“Good, it’s been a tradition for generations, you make sure your kids keep it someday too.” Dad smiled at me.
We talked around the fire for a bit while longer, until the whiskey and the hours started to drag my eyes down, and I turned in for bed. Dad decided to stay up a bit longer by the fire, but he turned to me as I was heading back inside.
“What’s the rule you’re never gonna’ forget?” he called.
“Always leave two fingers.” I said, yawning and holding up two fingers on my right hand, and dad nodded solemnly.
“Goodnight kid. I love you.”
“I love you too dad.”
Dad died the next day. He had driven in the morning to pick up some groceries, when he got slammed into by a truck, and died instantly. I won’t bother going through my whole grieving processes with you, but it’s safe to say I was a wreck – for two years I was a wreck. I inherited the house, and received a multi million-dollar payout both from an insurance company and the company that owned the truck that killed my dad.
At that point, my only family were my grandparents and a few distant aunts, uncles, and cousins, who tried to visit as frequently and help when possible around the house. It’s hard enough maintaining a whole house as an adult, try it when you’re eighteen and grieving, with millions of dollars in your bank account and your fresh high school diploma on the wall.
I wouldn’t really say I coped well. I didn’t blow all the money or get into drugs, nothing like that – I sort of just became a sullen shadow that lived in my house, aimlessly wandering around when I wasn’t sleeping, watching movies without paying attention, listening to music without hearing it, and spending time with my few friends while ignoring them.
They say genetics play a risk in alcoholism, which I guess I’m proof of. I slipped into my dad’s drinking habits over the course of the next two years, rarely spending a day completely sober unless I had to show my face at something. I always kept the family tradition though, it was the last thing my dad had left me after all. Two fingers, never the last two fingers.
I never knew the specifics – if it only applied to scotch or what, but I started doing it for every drinkable liquid. If someone offered me a drink from a can, it always had to go into a glass so I could measure the last two fingers. Water, soda, beer, wine, whiskey, didn’t matter – always saved the last two fingers, and poured it out on the ground if I had the chance. Even in restaurants, I never finished the last two fingers of my drink and wouldn’t let waitresses top off my glass of water – I’d make them take it away and get me a new glass. I know that last one makes me sound like an asshole, but I always tipped well, I promise.
Just before I turned twenty-one, I started taking anti-depressants, for obvious reasons. The doctor had told me not to drink too much while on them, so I took it easy and went sober for two weeks. A friend of mine took the same pills and told me that they say not to drink with everything just as a precaution, and that drinking on the pills was totally fine.
I made the stupid decision to trust my friend, and on my birthday, as I always did, I bought a bottle of the same scotch me and dad had shared on my eighteenth. I started drinking early in the afternoon and made the accidental discovery that the medication I was on made alcohol way stronger. I blacked out and woke up the next day sitting in my deck chair next to the warm coals of a fire from last night. The scotch bottle was empty on the side table, and I panicked for a moment, struggling to remember if I had kept the tradition or if, in my blacked-out state I had drank the last two fingers.
I felt more hungover than I had in years, and as I stumbled to the bathroom to relieve myself and get a glass of water, I had a panic attack for the first time in my life. If you’ve never had a panic attack, it’s hard to explain – but it’s something that I wouldn’t wish on anybody. First comes the strange disorientation in your head, something just seems to click wrong, and you can feel the adrenaline surge of your fear response burst into your bloodstream. For me at least, that’s when my shoulders begin to tighten, and I start to get antsy. I can’t sit still, I start trying to massage my shoulders. My head gets light, as my breathing gets shallower, and I start to fear I’m going to stop breathing. Then your chest gets tight, as if your rib cage is now beginning to squeeze your insides. Some people get paralyzed with the fear, I can’t stop myself moving.
Eventually it fades, and you’re left there exhausted. Then the fear of another one settles into the back of your head, and you begin to fear your fear itself. That was the first one, but it wasn’t the last one. I had them for three days in succession, before getting down to just maybe one a week. Drinking helped keep them away, but when I was sober, I could feel the sucking, cloying abyss of the unknown smiling darkly at me from the back of my consciousness.
That next year became a year of fear – replacing the years of depression that had preceded it. While depression made me want to hide in bed all day, anxiety drove me to my feet and forced me to move. If I wasn’t doing something, the terrible fear would return. It was hard to stomach being alone, so I started going out to bars multiple times a week, befriending bartenders and strangers alike. I started cleaning the house – frequently, far more frequently than need be. I started as many projects as I could think, fumbling with tools in the garage, painting, writing, playing music, I just did all I could to keep my hands busy for the entire day – I wasn’t necessarily good at any of these things, but it kept me busy.
Even though it made no sense, I always kind of chalked up my new-found panic disorder to the fact I had broke the family tradition. My therapist said that years of stressors and poor living can lead to a ‘break’ where an anxiety disorder just seems to manifest over the course of a night. She might be right in normal cases, but I know she’s wrong in mine.
It was a week before my birthday, and I was sat one night alone on my couch, watching a movie – ‘singing in the rain’. Dad had said that it was mom’s favourite movie, so I made a point to watch it every now and then just to feel a bit of connection to her. The scene where they sing ‘good morning’ was playing, and I was half paying attention while fiddling around on my phone. I looked up suddenly, noticing that the sound had stopped, and I wondered if the movie had frozen or something.
Instead, I looked up to see that in the scene, where normally Don, Kathy, and Cosmo are sitting on the tipped over couch laughing, they were all… looking at me. Not looking at the camera. Looking at ME.
“It’s coming for you.” Gene Kelly said to me, with a broad grin on his face.
The movie resumed as normal, while I sat there in stunned silence. That was NOT a scene from the movie, I had seen it over a dozen times and knew that for a fact. I looked into the drink that was sitting next to me on the coffee table, rubbed my eyes, pinched my arm – anything to check if I was drunk, drugged, or asleep. I went to the bathroom and examined myself in the mirror, but found nothing unusual. I went back into the living room, where the movie was still playing as usual – I turned the TV off and finished the drink I had left on the coffee table.
I went to the kitchen and began making something for dinner – calling one of my new friends and chatting mindlessly with them about life to try and take my mind off what had just happened. Ever since I started anti-depressants, I had been having very vivid dreams, which was usually cool, but sometimes led to me having bizarre dreams while half asleep that I thought were real. I assumed what I had seen was me having slightly dozed off on the couch while I was watching the movie and confusing a dream for reality. It had to be that.
I shrugged it off and drank myself to sleep as I usually did, and forgot about it after a day or two. The rest of the week passed without incident, and finally my birthday rolled around. I went and bought my usual bottle of scotch, along with a few cords of firewood, and prepared for the usual “festivities”. Unlike previous years, I had a decent number of friends and acquaintances now, so birthday texts and social media posts rolled in, which I smiled at slightly and replied to respectfully.
I piled up the wood and uncorked the scotch, pouring myself a glass. I lit a cigarette (a habit I’d picked up this past year) and then held the lighter to the kindling, watching the fire come to life. I spent the next hour or so flipping through some old photobooks my dad had left behind, smiling at pictures of my parents happy and young. It put a bitter taste in my mouth to know that my parents were way happier than me at my age – but the scotch washed that taste away.
My attention was drawn away from the photos as a chill wind blew across the yard – far too cold for this time of year, and the fire leapt to life at the extra oxygen. I shivered and pulled my chair a bit closer to the fire, rubbing my hands together and holding them over the flames. I can’t explain it very well, but as I warmed my hands and gazed at the fire, something seemed… off? The flames were twisting in ways that fire shouldn’t, and remained high even though the wind had subsided.
As I began to notice the oddness of the fire, I pushed my chair back a bit and took another drink before I lit another cigarette. I reached for my phone, planning on taking a picture of the fire acting weird, when a thin, rasping, weathered voice, gargling its vowels, cut the silence of the night.
“Be not afraid Alex…”
I jumped back from the fire, and stared at it, as it twisted and crackled and moved in unnatural ways, casting a pure white light across the yard that cut into the shadows.
“W-what the…?” I stammered.
“Do not be afraid Alex – I mean you no harm…” The voice creaked from the midst of the fire.
At this point in my life, I wasn’t into drugs at all, and as far as I know I’m not schizophrenic, so I sort of glanced around the yard, making sure I wasn’t being pranked or something.
“I… Assure you… I am… quite real…” The voice said, in it’s halting, stop and start manner.
“What… Uh… What are you…?” I asked, confused.
“I… I am your father… and your mother… You are my… True child.” The voice sounded almost like an old man who was on deaths door, but it seemed to twist and shift along with the flames.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I am the one… who gave you… to those you call…parentsss…” the voice said, the fire hissing along with its speech.
One of my anxious fears that I constantly grappled with was the idea of losing my mind and going insane, but the fear of it was worse than the reality of it. ‘I guess I’m insane now’ I thought to myself, as I sat back down in my chair and poured another drink – there was fear somewhere deep inside me over what was going on, but it was currently submerged in a pool of scotch, and unable to trouble me.
I sat in silence, smoking another cigarette, looking at the fire, which continued to shift and flow oddly, with its strange white radiance bathing the back yard.
“Are you not… curiousssss…?” the voice drawled, after a few minutes had elapsed.
“I think I’m crazy and you’re just a hallucination.” I said, flicking my cigarette butt into the fire. The fire burst to life suddenly, flooding the yard with light and climbing nearly twelve feet in the sky.
“DO NOT DEFILE MY FLAMES CHILD.” Came a booming, rage filled woman’s voice – both from the fire and what seemed to be inside my own head. In fright I was startled backwards, tipping my chair over and landing on the ground behind me with a dull thud. I scrambled to my feet and looked at my own hands, eyes and head wild with confusion.
As quickly as it had flashed alive, the fire settled back down to its former size, and I wanted to run away, to run inside and climb into bed and never come out again – but even though I wanted to run, it felt like my legs were rooted in place, keeping me fixed forward looking at the fire.
“I’m sorry child, come, let me comfort you.” Said the fire, speaking now in the voice of a young, cheerful woman.
“What are you…” I stammered.
“I am the beast of a thousand faces. The tongue with a thousand voices. The hand with a thousand fingers. I am the white light that burns in the dark, the lucid dream – the monster in your nightmares. I give life and take it away again.” The fire crackled – it shifted between voices as it spoke – men, women, children, old and young. I stood dumbfounded.
“Come… let me comfort youuuuu….” The fire crackled, in the halting voice it had first spoken to me in. A tendril of flame broke off from the main column of fire and held itself out towards me, like a hand extended to be shaken.
I stepped towards the fire.
“Yesss…. Come… let me feel the fire of my fire… the life who’s blood I have made… the fire… is hot… but will not… burnnnnn….” The fire spoke as I stepped closer.
I extended my hand into the outstretched arm of fire, as if I was in a trance. But I didn’t burn, didn’t recoil. My hand felt hot, hotter than anything I had ever felt, but yet… it didn’t hurt. Quite the opposite, the moment I touched the flame, a feeling of immense, pleasurable warmth spread across my entire body.
I felt muscles that I hadn’t known were sore relax themselves - it felt as though all the stress and tension was being burned out of my body. Everything negative was washed out of my mind, with complete and utter peace settling over me. I smiled from ear to ear, the most euphoric smile I had ever put on.
After what felt like an hour in heaven, the fire released me, and I sank slowly to the grass next to the fire pit. I looked up into the sky, and saw the fire crackling and twisting above me as my eyes began to close and I sank into a blissful sleep.
“resttttttt…….” Was the last thing I heard before I slipped into unconsciousness.
You know how it feels when you sleep for something like twelve hours after a day full of exhausting yourself? That feeling when you just wake up feeling refreshed and amazing? That’s how I felt the next morning, times a hundred. It felt like I was a kid again with how energetic and happy I was, it was fantastic.
The problem with amazing experiences is the fact that they end, and after they end, you’re left empty – trying to chase that same high again. I learned something that next year about chasing highs. For the month after my birthday, I would light a fire in the pit every single night, hoping to encounter the white fire again, but it never came.
Later that year, I happened to get into opiates through a friend of mine – and before you criticize, I know, it’s a terrible habit. But it’s the only thing that came anywhere close to how I had felt that night when I was touched by the fire. It wasn’t a great year, my habits definitely got worse, but I was still holding it together, and I still had plenty of money from the insurance.
It wasn’t until my birthday that the fire came back. I was enjoying my birthday the usual way when the fire began to dance unnaturally and shine with a white radiance. I gasped and almost leapt to my feet when I saw the white fire in front of me.
“You’re back!” I shouted.
“Yessss… I am… back…” the fire moaned.
“Can you do that thing again that you did last time? I’ve never felt so good in my life.” I said, with something near desperation in my voice. I reached my hand out towards the fire, but it felt scorching hot, and I pulled away.
“Is that… all… my child… wantssss?”
“Well… Last time… why do you, why do you keep saying I’m your child?” I asked, fidgeting in my seat.
The fire gave off a strange, crackling, guttering sound – almost like some sort of laughter.
“Look into… my flames… I will… show… you…” The tendrils of dancing fire parted to reveal some sort of vague shapes in the centre of the fire pit, I stared into it, my eyes growing hot, as the forms began to take shape.
I saw my mom and dad, my dad holding mom, and both of them crying. It looked like they were speaking, but I couldn’t hear any noise. Then the scene shifted and I saw both of them sitting by the same campfire I was now sitting next to – and the campfire they were having bursting into the dancing white flame that I had now become familiar with.
I saw mom and dad speaking to the fire, their faces shifting from initial amazement, to concern, as they deliberated with one another. I saw them sitting on the bed, mom holding what looked like a pregnancy test and crying, while dad sat there smiling. I saw them talking to a doctor, with joy on their faces and my mom’s stomach beginning to grow. I saw the hospital room where my mom was lying, cradling a small baby in her arms, weeping tears of joy, my dad next to her holding her by the shoulder, as they toyed with the baby.
“That doesn’t make sense… mom died giving birth to me…” I mumbled, but the scenes shifted on. I saw mom and dad standing next to the campfire, the dancing white flame in front of them… and both of them holding knives.
My heart went into my throat and my stomach turned upside down as I watched my dad place his hand on the stone rim of the fire pit and sever two fingers from his right hand, casting them into the fire and falling backwards, a silent scream on his face as he held the bleeding stumps on his hand. I watched the white fire in front of them leap high into the sky and my mother began to weep as she looked down at my dad.
As my mother raised the knife she held, and laid it across her forehead, blade facing down, I turned away from the fire in disgust and puked onto the grass right there.
“What the FUCK! I gasped. That’s not true! That didn’t happen!” I yelled as I lay hunched on my hands and knees.
The fire cracked and roared, sounding half like moans of pain and half like laughter. I stared at the fire, crouched down on the ground on my knees. Tears had begun to fall from my face and my body was racked periodically by sobs.
“Why…?” I managed to choke out pitifully.
“They traded their… most prized…posessionssss…for youuuu.” The fire moaned.
“W-what?” I gasped.
“Your mother… was… a great… beautyyyy…your father a…master…craftsman…she traded…her face and he…traded his fingersssss…” The fire sputtered in a strange laughing fit again. “In return…they got… youuuuu…their greatest….desire….”
The sobs came even more freely now, as I kneeled on the ground, clawing for air through the impact of the truth. Mom had died paying the price for me, and dad had given up the job he loved… all for me. In the midst of the sorrow and disgust that was running rampant through me, there grew a dominating, furious hatred.
The fire sat there, crackling and twisting away, the voice silent, as I cried out a lifetime of sorrows for the fate of me and my family. But it wasn’t long before the colossal rage inside me won – it threw me to my feet, and I reached for the bottle of scotch on my table.
“hmmmmm…” the voice came from the fire.
I uncorked the bottle and poured the contents straight onto the fire.
The fire guttered, cracked with a deafening pop, and what sounded like a dozen voices all let out a piercing scream at once. The fire guttered down low in the pit, partially smothered by the liquid, but after a few seconds managed to spring back to life, beginning to tower up to immense proportions as it had done before.
I pushed myself off the ground and sprinted back into the house, slamming the back door behind me. I could hear the fire raging and roaring in the backyard, and I looked up as the kitchen began to fill with a blinding light. The lightbulbs in my kitchen were growing white hot, and the filaments inside the bulbs had begun to grow tiny dancing flames on them.
“HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SMOTHER ME. I GAVE YOU LIFE!” Roared a dozen voices from the flaming lightbulbs. I grabbed the broom leaning against the wall in my kitchen and smashed it through each of my lights – each one letting out a roaring pop as the bulbs burst. I ran down into the basement of my house, every time I passed a lightbulb it would begin to glow immensely bright and scream at me – before I smashed it in with the broom.
“I GAVE YOU LIFE I CAN TAKE IT AWA-“ smash.
“I AM THE BEAST OF A THOUSAND FACES AND YOU ARE NO-“ smash.
“WHY ALEX, WHYYYYY-“ smash.
“I LOVED YO-“ smash.
I finally reached the breaker box and flipped everything off, killing the power to my house. Everything went silent, save for the faint crackling of fire I could hear from outside. I rummaged around in the basement, and finally found the fire extinguisher that my dad kept down there. I thanked him for being so prepared for everything, and marched back outside. The fire leapt into the air as I approached.
“DON’T YOU DARE.” The fire yelled, in the voice of my father.
I opened the valve on the extinguisher.
“PLEASE ALEX NO.” The fire yelled in the voice of my mother.
I pulled the trigger on the extinguisher.
White foam leapt forth and smothered the blaze, which screamed a scream of wild agony, guttering out in the bottom of the fire pit. After I emptied the fire extinguisher, the screaming turned into a hoarse, pathetic moaning, and a few red and white coals continued to glow at the bottom of the chemical mess.
I went around the side of the house, unspooled the garden hose, and dragged it over to the pit. I hung the edge of the hose into the pit and let the water flow. The voice from the fire sounded like some defeated wild animal being drowned. I left the hose running and went back inside.
I got higher and drunker that night than I ever have before, and slept for eighteen hours afterwards. I woke up barely feeling real, and stumbled back outside to the fire pit. The hose was still running, the coals were still faintly burning, and over the gurgling sound of the water, I could hear the piteous weeping of the beast of a thousand faces.
I’d like to say that I killed… whatever the fuck that thing is, but I didn’t. The coals continued to smolder, the voices continued to weep and beg and plead and cry, all hours of the day, but I never turned the hose off. My water bill this past year has been astronomical, but I kept it paid and kept the hose running 24/7.
My life really went to shit this past year. I was blowing through money on booze and drugs and had a few close calls with overdosing and killing myself. I barely cared at this point though, and throwing myself off a bridge became more and more appealing each and every day.
I won’t say any more than that though. It was bad. Things were bad.
Today is my birthday again.
I bought my scotch and set it down on my side table by the fire. I took a deep breath, and pulled the hose away from the fire pit. The coals stopped hissing, and a thin tendril of dancing white flame began to snake into the air.
“no… more… pleassssssse.” The voice moaned piteously.
“I have a question for you.” I said.
“yessssss….?”
“What’s the point of living?” I asked, slumping back into my chair and taking a deep drink straight from the bottle of scotch - I might have cried at this, if there had been anything left alive inside of me that hadn’t drowned in booze or gone numb from pills.
“To kindle… a light… in the darkness…of mere being…” the voice from the flames guttered, a few more tendrils arising to join the lone one.
“That’s noble for some fire monster that made my parents mutilate themselves. And then made me watch it.” I spat into the flames, and it hissed back at me.
“I made them…realize…what it was…they truly wanted…youuuuuu…”
“And look what I did with myself.” I said, looking down. I had grown thin and pale in the last few years, I looked haggard all the time, like I hadn’t slept in weeks and was dying from some sort of wasting sickness.
“I can…fix youuuuuu…” the fire guttered.
“Why would you?”
“You are…my child…I love you…. Alexxxxxxx…. Remember… when I first… held you….” The voice moaned from the fire.
I did remember, it was the last time I had actually felt good, and whole, and happy. It’s the feeling I’ve been chasing for years now.
“I remember.”
“Give yourself…to me…I will give you… all you’ve ever wanted…and…more…” the flames grew higher now, higher than I was, and the tendrils of flame parted aside to reveal the form of a chair in the middle of the towering inferno. The fire was warm on my face, and a faint smile played across my face.
“Give me an hour.” I said, and stood from the fire, taking my bottle of scotch with me.
I went inside to write all this down. I figured if nobody got anything out of me in life, you could all get an interesting story from me before I go. I’m… afraid… afraid like I never have been before in my life. I don’t know what to expect, and the not knowing is driving me insane. But I have no other choice at this point.
Mom and Dad, I miss you, and I love you.
Thanks for what you did for me, I’m sorry it was all for nothing.
Life is cold, and cruel.
But I’m going somewhere warm.
I hope.
Bye.