I think of death pretty often. I think about it in the mornings when I wake up, in the afternoons at lunch, and right before I go to bed. Every night, I contemplate what the perfect death would be. Sometimes, if I’ve had a hard day, I think about how nice it would be to just take a bunch of pills and drift off to sleep, never to wake up again. I don’t think that’s how it works, though. I don’t think things are ever easy, especially the things you want, even if it’s death you crave. Surely, if death were so easy and so painless, many others would have sought it out before me. Sometimes, if I’m in a particularly creative mood, I wonder how to kill myself, to make a point and create a splash. After all, if I were going to die, shouldn’t I make a little show and tell of it? What bigger crime would there be than to escape life with a banal final ending?
Then sometimes, when I am cuddled up safely in my boyfriend’s arms, I think about the perfect death for him. I think about how pretty he would look if his eyes were shuttered permanently, long lashes resting against those sallow cheeks. I think about how nice it would be if I could protect him of all the harshness of the world and let him lie in peace. There would be no stress, no anger, no agony, nothing. There would just be stillness. Quiet.
I do not think of death as a negative. I think of death as an escape, a respite, a mystery I’ll never discover. Will I know once I am dead? Will I go on to the afterlife, past shiny golden gates where an old, bearded man awaits me? Will I learn all my mistakes, reflect and repent, and then be sent back into the world to cleanse my sins? How do I remember? How do I know? Will my religion, or lack of one, make a difference in the afterlife?
We meet so many people in our lives. Some touch our lives fleetingly, some leave permanent marks. Some scratch our hearts dry, bleeding us till we’re nothing but withered husks. Some leave us with remorse, with a sense of wonder, with sad little pangs of regret that echo throughout and never fade. And some, some we wish we had never met.
I once dated a married man. This was ten years ago, when I was twenty two. He was eight years older than me, and I thought he was the smartest, most intelligent man alive. He was not conventionally handsome, but his charm and wit blinded me. He had been married for five years, and in the pictures of his wife that he showed me, she was a plump, plain lady. According to him, the marriage was loveless. It had been a shotgun marriage, and he was now stuck in a dead relationship with a woman he no longer desired and a child he didn’t feel much for.
His name was William. I thought it was such a distinguished name. We dated for three years. I lost a lot of friends during that time. When I confided in my close friends about William, they looked at me with disgust and told me what I was doing was plain terrible. Shameful. I knew it was, but it was so difficult to walk away. I pleaded with them not to judge me. It was so difficult. We don’t get to choose who we fall in love with, do we? It just happens.
I honestly thought he would leave his wife for me. I thought it was a matter of time. I dolled myself up every time I saw him. I was perfectly dressed, always in heels, no matter how much my legs ached. I would spend half an hour in the mornings armed with a concealer brush, painstakingly covering every pore that dared stand out on my face. I spent a bomb on the sexiest lingerie I could find. To be honest, I didn’t really like the lingerie he liked, but I bought it anyway. I liked cuter stuff, with neon colors. He hated those. He always wanted me in little red teddies and black stockings. Personally, I felt like I was playing dress up and he had some little fetish fantasy about bumping a little female Satan. I was often tempted to ask him if I should buy a pitchfork to complete this fantasy. I didn’t.
There was one day which stands out vividly. I went to his office to surprise him. I didn’t want people knowing he had a mistress, so I pretended I was there to courier him something and needed his signature.
When I arrived, there was a lady in front of me. She was tall and slim from the back, and had masses of dark, black, shiny hair cascading down her shoulders. I remember her smelling really good. She smelled of roses and sweet apples. When she flicked her hair, her scent enveloped me. Mmmm. I couldn’t help but breathe in the sweet smell of her.
“I’m here to see William,” she pronounced. She had very clear and precise diction. She turned her head, and I caught sight of her face. She was, without a doubt, ridiculously, stunningly beautiful. I started to feel a little jealous. Who was this beauty looking for my William? Was this someone else that William was seeing on the side? Was she a model? She didn’t look like a model, though. She looked more like some high-powered corporate bitch that got her way by stabbing people with her spiky heels.
I shuffled a bit, tugging self-consciously at my hair. As usual, I had dressed up, but there was no way I could compete with this woman. She was just blessed with good genes. Fuck her.
“Of course! It’s so nice to see you again, Julie. And how is little Katy?” the receptionist asked.
I remember standing there, galvanized, rooted to the spot. This was Julie? This was plain, plump Julie? I tried to remember the photo that William had shown me a long time ago. She resembled nothing of this beauty.
“Katy is fine,” the ice queen pronounced. The receptionist gave a muted smile and Julie turned around to take a seat at the waiting area.
She saw me, and stopped short. A look of recognition passed through her dark brown eyes. She stared at me, her large eyes boring into mine for five whole seconds. I stared back at her, a little bit terrified. Did she know me? She couldn’t possibly know me.
Her stare turned into a long, sweeping glare. Her eyes felt like hot lasers, beaming down on me from top to bottom, taking in everything I was wearing. I had on a knit top, fitted jeans and wedges. I had earlier thought my outfit was cute and fun, but now I felt like a child swimming in a baggy potato sack.
She opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment William came out.
“Julie! Sorry I’m late for lunch-“ his voice trailed off as he caught sight of me.
She looked at me again. It was a very strange glare. It managed to chill me to the bone while at the same time, I felt like I was being licked alive by some sort of flames from hell.
And then she smiled at me.
“Thank you. You are nothing.”
She took her husband’s arm, and left me, feeling like the smallest, stupidest person in the world. William avoided my gaze.
That was the end of the relationship. William tried calling, but I never could go back to him. I had always felt beautiful, and somehow even more desired, knowing that he had a wife but he still preferred me. But after seeing her, reality came crashing down. I had no idea what William was doing with me when his wife was so unbelievably beautiful. I felt unable to live with this comparison, and every day for the next three years, I tormented myself with visions of her. My hair would never be as shiny as hers, my clothes never as perfectly cut, or heels so un-scuffed.
It took me a long time to heal. When I met my boyfriend Tom, it took an even longer time to let my defenses down. I think that’s when my fascination of death started. I started seeing death as a way out. Every day, I lived a nightmare and hell of my own making, completely obsessed with her beauty and repulsed by my own. I know I probably built her up so much she turned into something akin to a very frightening goddess to me – she was on a toweringly high pedestal and completely untouchable. It’s not that I wanted to constantly obsess about her, but every day she crept into my thoughts. I remembered the scent of her hair, and how effortlessly her clothes draped onto her perfect body. Every day, I could feel a little bit of my self esteem ebbing away. Every day, I thought I smelled roses and sweet apples.
My boyfriend Tom was the nicest, sweetest man I had ever met. He was good looking, kind and always looked out for me. He was everything I could possibly want in a man – and maybe, maybe that’s exactly why I stopped wanting him. There’s something too good and too pure about him. I felt stained and dirty next to him. He never knew I dated a married man. It wasn’t a hard secret to keep. We had moved to a different city, where nobody knew who I was and where I came from. It frightened me though. I was afraid the past would catch up with me, and karma would hit me with a vengeance. I felt I didn’t deserve my sweet, lovely Tom.
I often wondered how his wife knew who I was, and why she had never said anything before. I also wondered how she must have felt, when she looked down at me and told me I was nothing, enunciating those words so perfectly through her rosebud mouth. Those pink lips. I remember those pouty pink lips moving.
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I woke up from a dream, feeling sweaty and unsettled. I didn’t remember the exact details of the dream, but it left me with a very bad feeling. I had been chased. In my dream, I had something on me that I was trying to get off. I idly moved my fingers down to the smooth skin of my thigh, and then to the back of it, where in my dream, I had developed scales. What a relief to feel the skin smooth and un-scaly.
Except that it wasn’t.
My breath caught in my chest, as my fingers pressed the back of my thigh lightly. It wasn’t scales, but there was a large, filmy bump at the back of my thigh. It was dark, so I couldn’t see, but it felt soft and liquidy. Pus? Did I have a giant boil on the back of my thigh?
I cannot explain how afraid I felt, to have dreamt of scales on my thigh and now feel a boil on the back of my leg. I tried to calm my racing heart. Perhaps I developed the boil from an allergy or rash to something, and the physical discomfort had manifested itself into a dream.
Yes, that was it. That must be it.
I reached over to put an arm around Tom, who was sleeping soundly. Tom, my rock. He gave me strength and support in everything I needed. I didn’t need to wake him up over something as stupid as this.
The boil subsided within the next two days, which gave me an immense feeling of relief. It really was just a dream, and I had been freaking out for nothing. But on the third day, one of those dreams started again. I woke up in a cold sweat, and automatically, my fingers went to the back of my thigh. I stiffened.
I could tell there was an erupted boil at the back of my thigh. The mattress smelled terrible, and there was this sticky, disgusting fluid in between my leg and the mattress. Beside me, Tom mumbled something. He was still asleep.
I got up, and padded to the bathroom. I switched on the light. Thick, yellow liquid was coming out of an angry, red boil the size of a dinner plate. Could you call a boil that big a boil? I don’t know. I didn’t know what to do. I stared at myself in horror, as I saw it wasn’t only my thigh. There was something else on my calf. I looked closer. It looked green and scale-like.
I decided to take a bath. In the half sleepy, half panicked state of mind that I was in, I decided I would wash it off. Yes. It would wash off, and it would all be okay. I washed and scrubbed myself for 45 minutes and succeeded only in making things worst. The skin was now red and inflamed. I went to the bedroom armed with wet wipes, trying to soak up the pus on the bed. I was amazed Tom did not wake up. I had to find a reason to explain why I would change the sheets mid week, when I only normally did it every weekend.
As it turned out, that was the least of my worries. Every night from then on, I suffered nightmares and would wake up to find a new patch of scales or a cluster of angry red boils on my skin. I tried to hide it from Tom, who tried to be supportive but I could see was getting completely freaked out.
“It doesn’t look normal, Caroline. I’ve never seen anything like this. You’d had better go see a doctor!”
To give him credit, he did go with me to the doctor. The doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me either. He referred me to a skin specialist, who neither could come up with any explanation. However, the way they looked at me told me much more than any of their diagnoses. There was a look of fear on their faces, and as professional as they tried to be, they couldn’t hide the revulsion in their eyes.
Three months later, I found myself hugging my knobbly, bumpy knees that were full of pustules, sobbing. Every time I cried, tears would run down my face, once so smooth but now it had the texture of a beehive. To add insult to injury, the tears stung my face. It hurt to cry. It physically hurt to cry. My entire body was covered in some kind of ugly combination of scales, boils and pus. Not one part of my body was spared. There were even little pustules on my scalp. My hair began falling out. I looked like some kind of terrible creature from a children’s storybook. Or rather, a children’s horror book.
Tom had left the month earlier. He had tried so hard to be supportive, but it proved too much for him. He just found the whole thing too freaky and bizarre. I didn’t know anybody else in the city, and I couldn’t go out looking like some kind of ugly tree monster full of fungus. I ordered food online. I survived in my apartment without meeting anyone. I hid the mirrors in my apartment. I couldn’t bear to look at myself.
I contemplated killing myself. The thought of death passed through me every single day. There was no point in living if I was going to be alone, looking like some kind of terrible mutation. I decided to plan my death. I came to the conclusion that I would overdose on Pentabarbitol. If that didn’t work, I would slit my wrists. If that still did not work, I would then hang myself. I was determined to die.
It was not difficult getting Pentabarbitol. I won’t bore you with my methods, but with the Internet and a credit card, a lot of things are accessible out there. I read that a little cocktail of Pentobarbitol, sugar syrup and an ethanol solution would help me be on my way to the beautiful escape that death was.
The day I got my package with all the ingredients to my last cocktail, I felt a little flicker of excitement. It was a strange feeling, this excitement, after months of feeling nothing but shame, revulsion, fear and horror. I would be able to end this.
I looked at the little cup I held, marveling that something so small could be able to snuff out a life. I thought about a lot of things, before I drank it.
I thought about William, and his beautiful ice queen wife. I thought about Tom. I thought about my life, about how my friends on Facebook were all either getting married or having children, and here I was, some kind of horrendous monster, trapped in my own apartment, smelling worse than goat cheese. I wondered how I had got here.
I lifted the cup to my cracked lips, and winced as the liquid seeped through my broken lips. It stung. I finished the cup. I closed my eyes, and prepared to die.
Except that I did not die.
I could not die.
I threw up every day for six days when I woke up, had no food and drank only water, but I did not die. I was in severe pain, every part of my body screaming. I felt like I was being torn apart alive, but I could not and somehow would not die. I could not even lose consciousness. Sleep began to evade me. I was awake, and completely aware of every single prick of pain on my body. My body developed an immense sensitivity to vibrations. When a car drove past my apartment, my body would feel every vibration of the wheels on the road. I lay huddled to the floor, trying and willing myself to die, or to fall asleep, anything to end the pain, but, nothing.
I don’t know how long I stayed that way before I decided to try and slit my wrists. The walk from the hall to the kitchen was agonizing. My legs gave way four times before I reached the kitchen. My body was slowly breaking down, but unfortunately my consciousness would not let me go. It wanted me to feel every single malfunction in my body. Sores were oozing from my body. There was a thick crust of dried pus on my legs and on my clothes. I no longer cared to wipe it off. What for? It was a nonstop sea of putrid pus coming out of me. There was pus everywhere. On me. On the floor. On everything I touched. Everything smelled so putrid. It made me think of the scent of roses and sweet apples, and how far, and terrible I smelled instead.
I cried for three hours when I found out I could not die, even with slitting my wrists. I hacked away at my own wrist, trying to sever every vein I could find. The pain was incredible. White-hot mind numbing pain flashed beyond my eyes. I don’t remember if I had the energy to scream, when I had finished with my harm, and my entire hand had been hacked away and was lying limply on the floor, I burst into tears. I was not fucking dead. There was blood everywhere, dripping from my now hand-less arm, on the sofa, on my clothes, every-fucking-where, and I was still fucking alive. I cried so hard, sitting in the middle of my room, staring at the severed hand on the floor. I just wanted it to end. I just wanted to close my eyes and have everything end.
But all I got was more warm, sticky bloody everywhere, and a room that smelled like pus.
When I had calmed down, I decided I would try and hang myself. I didn’t have rope, though. I closed my eyes in despair. I didn’t know what to do.
And then, a sound. I jumped, or as much as I could, given my frail, broken body.
“Hello, Caroline.”
My vision was blur, from a combination of sweat, tears and dried pus, but I recognized her face and the scent of roses and sweet apples.
She was as beautiful as ever. Her hair was tied back, making her look regal, queen-like.
“Are you having a good time?” she asked. She smiled prettily at me, exposing her white, perfectly even teeth.
I could not even croak back an answer.
“I know you are in a lot of pain, so don’t worry. You don’t need to talk. I will do the talking.”
She settled herself on the sofa, looking perfectly comfortable, despite it being blood-stained and smelling terribly foul.
“Now, you may not understand a few things, but I will do you a favour. I will explain some things to you, which is more than what people have done for me.”
“When I found out I was going to have a baby, I was over the moon. I thought I had the perfect boyfriend who would be the perfect husband. But, little did I know, that my dear boyfriend who was then forced to marry me, had wearied himself of me. I was no longer fresh and exciting. He was bored and wanted other women for himself. He found me unattractive. I had gained weight and I was too comfortable with myself, to the point where I found no need for makeup. I was happy and confident, but what he saw was an ugly pig. So, he began cheating. Do not think you are the first, or the last, of his many women, Caroline. You are nothing special. Do not even think you were the only one during your time together with him. I knew of you, and of every single conquest he had. I decided I would leave him, but only after I lost weight, made an effort and proved to him losing me would be a big loss. If I had walked out on him when I was still a fat little ugly pig, he would not have felt anything. He would have felt vindicated. Happy. He would have rejoiced my leaving!”
As usual, her words were perfectly enunciated. She looked at me, complete in my misery, and a little smiled touched her face.
“And so, yes. I paid attention to myself. I lost weight. I grew my hair. I began to feel sexy again. Slowly, he began to pay more attention to me. You know, Caroline, I always felt I wasn’t beautiful enough, and only when I deemed myself beautiful, I would walk out. This is where I have to thank you, dear Caroline. When I finally saw you, face to face, I knew I was complete. Oh, you were a pretty little thing, but such a disappointment in the flesh. I had built this image of you of being one of his perfect little nubile things, that when I met you, I was quite shocked to see you were just as human and regular as any of the girls out there. I’d been trying to compete all along with you, and all his other girls, when you all were not even playing in my league. I was pleased. Satisfied. That night, I walked out on him.”
“The thing is, Caroline, you might say that chapter of my life is over. It is, but I brooded and pondered over it for a very long time. Do you know how ugly and how dark that chapter was for me? Do you know the nights I cried, feeling my heart break over and over again? I gave my life and all of my heart to this man, who used me, cheated on me and even insulted by cheating with girls whom I didn’t even find comparable to me!!
“And you, of all of them, had the gall to be at his office. I was perfectly aware of all his affairs, but he was reasonably discreet. What did you expect, turning up at his office? Was it your intention to turn me into a laughing stock? Did you have absolutely no respect at all for the role that I play in his life? Obviously not.”
“Unluckily for you, my mother and grandmother gifted me a little special something in life, which not too many people in this world have. I’m going to be simple about it, since you have a rather shallow brain that is probably not well used. Let’s call it a little magic. Now, I have never used it to such an extent before, but every little boil or pustule or scar you have represents all that hurt and anguish I felt. Everything you feel physically, I have felt mentally. And I think you deserve very much to feel in full force how completely wretched and miserable I felt. All those years I was married, and even all those years after. I was never free. I was shattered and damaged. I do not understand girls like you. How do you go after married men knowing full well you are nothing but a homewrecker? You have no respect for anyone and you think of only yourself. So if you are feeling sorry for yourself right now, you can stop. The only person who brought this about is you.”
“The best part? You’ll never die. Or rather, you will only die once I’m at peace. Looking at you shivering and quivering in fear does make me feel a little better, but far from being at peace. You are not going to need food. You can sit here and try and kill yourself a thousand times with a thousand ways, but you are wasting your time. You will never again fall asleep, or feel happiness and pleasure. Instead, all you will feel is every single bit of misery you have inflicted on me.”
“You will never be loved again. You will live here, alone, miserable, where even crying hurts you all the more. And with every tear you weep, every prick of pain you feel, it gives me pleasure. It pleases to me to know your boyfriend has left you. Luckily for you, you will not know the pain it feels like to be left for someone else, or to be cheated on. This pain you have been spared. So, you can actually thank me, Caroline. You can thank me because you will never ever feel the pain of someone leaving you for someone else, because nobody will ever be with you again.”
And with those words, she swept out of the house and left.
I collapsed down onto the floor and stared at the ceiling unblinkingly, as the familiar stabs of pain began and boils began exploding on my back.
The Metropolitan Paper
Saturday, 5th January
MACABRE CRIME IN KELLY STREET
A man was found dead in his apartment with his penis severed into nineteen pieces. The man, identified as William J.E, a divorcee with a child, was found by his neighbor after noticing a bad smell coming from the apartment.
“It was terrible. It was like a scene from a horror movie,” said neighbour Henry Ting, visibly distraught by the incident when questioned.
Police are investigating possible motives. Anyone who has information should contact the polite at 999-9394.