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When you die, comfort is oddly a priority. You don’t want to be bothered by a leg falling asleep or a sore spot in the neck while the last of your life slips away. No you want to be comfortable. Wrapped in warmth and cushioned as the final blow comes. Perhaps that’s why we filled the magical tub with the hottest water magic could provide. Why we set a lavender bath bomb in it. Why we set a small table with a phonograph playing your favorite music and a glass of your favorite wine. Never mind there was also a bottle of the strongest sleeping potion you could acquire.
Clothing slides from your body, pooling in a trail from the door to the tub. The soft rustle of the fabric oddly loud in the space despite the music playing. The patter of your feet against the stone near indistinguishable from the pulse rushing in your ears. Gods you were tired. So tired of the demands and expectations. Of never meeting those expectations. You had been relegated to being a teacher before all this. Even then you taught only the basics, barely worth even that. After all those who can’t do teach and you certainly couldn’t do anything. This misadventure you'd been contracted into proved that.
A hiss leaves your lips as you step into the steaming water. Your skin igniting from palid to red. Still you step further in, sinking deeper into the water. Settling against the tub you relax. The water lapping at your neck. Sitting up slightly you take a deep drink of the wine. You’d already taken probably a dozen of the pills from the bottle, it was there simply as assurance if you needed more. Your limbs already feeling heavy and your thoughts lethargic. There’s no panic in you as the world narrows. It’s not enough though, you can feel your body fighting the blissful, endless sleep. Fighting giving this role to someone better suited. Who could provide the things the team, if not the world, deserved.
You had anticipated this though, hidden amongst the things on the table is a small letter opener. Nothing large enough to draw attention, but you had sharpened it to a lethal edge. Clumsy, clammy fingers struggle to grab the blade. It takes several attempts before you can get a hole of it. A quiet sigh of frustration leaving your lips.
It starts as a shallow thing. Short drags of the blade against your skin. Just enough to feel the steel against yourself, not enough to give even a paper cut though. As you drag it up and down your arms and legs you grow more and more bold. Shallow nicks begin to form along its path as the confidence and assurance builds. The cuts grow deeper and deeper. Soon, tiny red streams become crimson rivers that disappear into the opaque water. Each ribbon larger than the last. With a quick draw you suddenly can’t feel the fingers in your left hand. It feels disconnected from the rest of you. Looking down you fancy you can see bone at the bottom of the latest cut.
A particular silence sets in as you stare at it. Fascinated by the structure you can see under the ever more impressive blood flow. Somehow you muster just enough energy to slice just as deep into your other arm. The knife sliding unceremoniously into the bathtub. Disappearing into the water like your blood. It seems odd. That one’s life is entirely bound to such a finite thing. Blood. A source of power to some is nothing but a curse to you. Why anyone even bothered with you up until this point was a mystery. You’re no one. Nothing. The failed daughter. The world narrows further, the edges fraying. The darkness creeping in like tendrils from the abyss. Your breathing slows, your body sags. The now crimson water now lapping at your face. You wonder if you’re going to down first, before the pills or the blood take you from this endless parade of failure.
You’re eyes roll back. The world is dark. Is this what peace is. Is this death. You feel nothing. Not the pain, nor the water. Not the hands scrambling to pull you from the water. Nor the panicked screaming. Your last thought as you’d body fails is that you finally did something right.