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Author's Chapter Notes:
I didn't think I'd get this out because of internet issues, but Tim wanted to talk so here he is!

We die,
Welcoming Bluebeards to our darkening closets,
Stranglers to our outstretched necks,
Stranglers, who neither care nor
care to know that
DEATH IS INTERNAL.

From “The Detached” by Maya Angelou

 

~ 36 ~

Don’t…

Tim had never been what you’d call a happy person.

There were three times he actually came close to ending his own life.

When he was a little boy, he would lie awake in his bed and think about dying. He would lie as still as possible in his little twin bed with the bumpers on it to protect him from falling and pretend he was in a coffin, imagining his mother standing over him and crying because she missed him so much.  Even as a child, he understood that maybe it took something as drastic as death for people to see what they missed out on when they were alive. He often fantasized about his dad standing over his grave and crying tears of regret for not being a good enough Father to his son, but sadly he was also the sole reason that would never happen.

The first time he thought about killing himself was when he was only ten years old. They had just gotten to the cabin and Tim felt like his life had fallen apart. There was no explanation and no apologies. His father’s behavior was scary and erratic and his mother was not talking. His dad kept saying she was catatonic and a total waste of space. Tim remembered wondering whose cat had bit her to make her feel so bad. He would bring her milk in a saucer hoping that maybe she would lap it up and feel better. That’s all he wanted, was for her to get better. He didn’t like when she was not able to take care of him. He didn’t like being all alone with his father.

One day, it was particularly bad. His dad was pacing back and forth and yelling at his mother as she just sat there quietly rocking on a chair. He kept telling her it was all her fault, if she hadn’t forced him to take the bastard in the first place, hadn’t insisted he kill the bastard’s mother, they could have had the life they wanted. They could have been happy together. She had to be selfish though, she wanted a baby and that baby ended up being the cause of all their problems.

Tim remembered wanting to meet this baby and give it a piece of his mind until his father cornered him that day and told him he was the bastard and the reason their lives were falling apart.

He walked into the bathroom and found his dad’s razor. He tried to cut his wrists but stopped when he felt the burn. He was bleeding pretty badly. So, in a panic he had walked over to his mother, while dripping blood and held out his wrist.

“Mommy,” he said, “I tried to die for you.”

She had stopped rocking and looked at her son and then grabbed him in a hug and cried. The saucer of milk didn’t help but the blood did. Maybe it was a vampire cat?

He had passed out at that point and when he woke up he was in his bed next to his mother who had cried herself to sleep beside him.

~~~

Tim felt so hurt and betrayed when Howie attacked him. Up until that point, he had been the one person who hadn’t lied or hurt him but then it turned out he was the worst of them all. He really thought he was going to kill his new brother as he sat on top of him with his hands around the smaller man’s neck.  He felt like maybe he had deserved it, maybe he should die for what he did. That fire poker hurt!

He was also feeling a little tired and dizzy. He wasn’t sure why but that thought quickly disappeared when he felt a very sharp pain in his leg, so he let go of Howie’s neck and rolled off to see what had happened. When he looked at his leg and saw the arrow, he lost it. Both his mother and father were yelling at him at that point. They hadn’t shown up in years but suddenly they decided to make an appearance together. One telling him he was a giant wuss, while the other urged him to pay attention to the two people in the room. Turns out he should have listened to his mother because a few minutes later he felt a sharp pain as he was hit in the head.

When he woke up he was laying on the living room floor. He heard his truck pulling away and he knew at that point, things were only going to get worse.

 

~~~

 

The second time Tim tried to kill himself was shortly after he had lost Annmarie. He was so overcome with grief he didn’t know what to do with himself. Normally he would seek comfort from his Mother but he knew he couldn’t do that without letting her know why and his dad made it a point of letting him know that if he ever told his mother about the things that happened at the campsite, he would be helping to bury her there. So, instead he took to writing in his journal.

He made sure to keep it hidden in his room way up in the corner of his closet so this way his father would never find it. If he did, it would surely find its way into the fireplace. He found writing cathartic, whether it was a poem or just his random thoughts. Besides his mother, pen and paper was his other best friend.

He kept track of all of the people he had met while he was up in the cabin. Not that he met anyone, really but in his head he would create stories about the girls his father would taunt. Some of them he made his friends from school while others he made cousins. A few were the popular girls who would never give someone like Tim the time of day, but just this once they made an exception because of how cool he was. That’s all he usually needed to do to make himself feel better except when those quiet moments hit.

In those quiet moments he would suddenly become all too aware that he was living a fantasy and his real world would come crashing in the door like an unwelcomed visitor.

It was in one of those moments when he decided maybe he should just end it all. On paper, Annmarie was one of his best friends. Someone he could see marrying one day but in all honesty, he hardly knew her. He hardly knew anyone and never would. That was his reality. So he had once again journeyed into the bathroom but this time went for his mother’s pills. He grabbed a handful and put them in his mouth and then placed his head under the faucet and gulped some water.

This was the best thing for everyone he had thought. He sat on the bathroom floor just waiting to die when he heard his mother singing quietly in the living room. Her voice was so calm and soothing he started swaying along as the tears rolled down his face. At that point, he placed his fingers down his throat and forced himself to throw up. He had to stay alive for her. If he left, she’d have to deal with his father all alone. He would never do that to her. He loved her too much. After wiping his face and taking a swig of mouthwash, he walked out into the living room and started singing along with his mom.

~~~

He had slowly stood up after being knocked out by Howie. His head hurt, his leg hurt, but most of all his heart hurt. He had been so nice to them all, so welcoming and loving and this is what he got in return? He was sure they were all gone but he had to check so he slowly staggered into the bedroom surprised to find Nick and Kevin still there. Of course Kevin was holding his rifle!

He had threatened to shoot, but at that point, Tim no longer cared. He had intended to finish what he started before Howie attacked him so he grabbed for Nick. That’s when Kevin tried to fight him away. They struggled and he felt the bullet hit him. He yanked the gun away and hit Kevin in the head with it.

He was in pain but he still had to do what needed to be done, so he grabbed Nick by the arm and dragged him out of the house with one hand while he held on to his wound with the other.

~~~

 The third time Tim thought about killing himself was just about a month ago. It wasn’t like something devastating had happened or anything. He had found himself lying in bed with the very same thoughts he had when he was a kid. He laid there as still as possible, pretending his bed was a coffin and wondering who would actually come to his funeral if he died. That’s when he realized the answer was no one. If he were to die not one single person would ever find out or even care because that’s how long he had been away from people.

He then thought about all of the things he could have potentially done with his life if he were given the chance to live a normal one like everyone else. When he was a really little boy he used to want to be a fireman. Mainly because of the spotted dogs that seemed to come with the fire engines but also because they were heroes. He wondered while lying still on his back if it was too late to become a fireman. If he were to walk into a fire station and ask for an application would the chief just laugh and tell him to go away?

When he was a kid, he used to have big dreams about everything. He wanted to be rich, he wanted to get married and own a house. He wanted to take care of his mother and be a great father to his kids. He sat up and stretched at that point, trying to remember when he let those dreams just fade away. When did he stop caring about being alive?

That’s when it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t really alive anyway. Maybe he had died all those years ago when his father and mother fled with him in the middle of the night.

He decided maybe now would be a good time to end things so he spent the day trying to figure out exactly how he wanted to make his exit. The last thing he wanted was for bears to eat him so doing something like slitting his wrists was out of the question. Too much blood would attract the animals. He could take pills again but he wasn’t sure if they would work. He then decided maybe he would just hang himself.

He walked into the bedroom, opened his closet door and looked for something he could use. He didn’t want to use an actual rope because he knew it would be painful and he didn’t want to die with rope burns around his neck. There he found one of his dad’s ties. Why his father even bothered to bring ties up to the cabin made no sense, but even still, it would work. He noticed on the back was his name written in marker. LOVE TIM, it said. He had given his father this tie as a present but the message sounded more like a plea than anything else.

He held the tie in his hands for a really long time, in fact so long that when he bothered to look away from it and at the window he noticed the sun had gone down. Maybe the only reason his dad brought the tie with him was because his son gave it to him as a present. Maybe that was his way of telling Tim he loved him.

Tim clung on to that tie and that thought for the rest of the night before putting it back in the closet and then going to bed.

~~~

It was hard getting Nick out of the house. He seemed like a dead weight and Tim was pretty sure that’s all he was at this point, dead. When they got down the steps, he decided to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way to the campground. He was going to drive there but Howie ruined that plan.

He had to stop because the pain in his leg plus the place just below his stomach where he had been grazed by the bullet was a bit too much for him. He gently laid Nick’s body down on the ground and sat beside him. He really did like this kid. They could have had a great relationship if things would have been different.

 “I’m not sure why you lied to me or your friends felt like they had to attack me. I’m a nice person. You would have really enjoyed living with me.”

It was a mistake to sit down and rest because he was really drowsy and had no more energy.  The campsite seemed so far away even though he was more than halfway there. He realized in that moment that he wouldn’t make it the rest of the way. Something else occurred to him at that moment as he heard the sound of a chopper flying over his head, Howie had told and soon the police would be there, just another betrayal in the final act of his life.

He made the decision right then, that this would be it. After he buried Nick, he would finally end his own life. Maybe he would fall on top of the grave he had dug, poetically. Seemed like a fitting end. So, he moved to his knees and began to dig with his hands.

“My father would be proud that I chose here of all places to end things, Nick. Well, not really because we didn’t make it to where I actually wanted us to go, but close enough…close enough.”

He had a big mound of dirt by him now and had managed a nice sized hole. Big enough for Nick to fit in but not nearly deep enough to consider him buried. Still he rolled him in, it would have to do. He was running out of time. He thought he heard the faint sounds of sirens off in the distance. He wanted to be gone before they showed up.

He slowly began to lay the dirt on his new baby brother but stopped when he thought he heard Nick speak. He crawled closer to him at that point, “Nick, did you say something?”

Nick slowly opened his eyes and said only one word. It was barely audible but unmistakable.

“Don’t.”

He then closed his eyes again.

Shocked, Tim backed away from Nick as if he was a zombie about to rise from the dead and eat his brains. How could that be? He was sure Nick was dead. Did he come back just to tell him not to kill himself? Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe it was a sign from God, or maybe it was his mother talking through Nick? Either way he backed all the way against a tree and just sat there staring at the shallow grave he had dug with Nick inside sprinkled with dirt just as the police poked through the trees with guns drawn.

 

Chapter End Notes:
Hope you enjoyed! I might be back with a new one tomorrow! :O)