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Mud slicked my shoes as I stepped through muddy pond water, sloshing in gunk up to my shins. Shit caked my shoes, once nursing a healthy leathery brown, was now cased with a greenish, greyish, yellowish murky sludge water. Each step took utmost effort to pull myself out of the mud grave my last footstep had created. Woods whistled and screamed as wind blew through their twigs and leaves. My breathing huffed as my chest expanded and fell with each gasp. My mouth was choking on the unbelievable horrid stench of what smelt almost like a mix of cow dung and sea water. I heaved over with each step forwards, knowing I may never reach solid land, I may die by quicksand. Still, I treaded forwards.
It seemed as if the woods went on forever, I thought, that I may just die by starvation if I get truly lost out here. They’d find my body 3 weeks, 4 days, and 32 seconds after I had taken my last blink and my last breath. My body would be so decomposed they’d have to identify me by a missing persons report and a recovered but very obviously faulty healed ankle I had from an injury that occurred when I was 8. The idea tickled me, but still, I moved forward.
Pulling my last footstep out of mud, I stomped and wiped my feet on the grass and solid ground I had reached, just so that I wouldn’t have dead weight on me. Suddenly a wave of nausea ran through my organs. I leaned over, and I heaved and gagged a few times before I fell to my knees in a violent vomit. My arms could barely hold me up as whatever I had for breakfast that morning was thrown up not too far from the ungodly scent that has caused it. I could feel stomach acid go up into my nose and make it burn like hellfire. I tried to stop vomiting, for just a moment so I could recover, but it just kept coming. This scene continued for a while, thinking I had thrown up all that was left, just for me to be sent into a gagging fit and I’d cough up more fluids and gunk. Until my body felt as if I was dead with my eyes rolled into the back of my head, that’s when it stopped and I was free to wipe my mouth and get up.
I walked away from the pile of bile quickly and continued on my journey. Now climbing up a steep rocky hillside that was still a part of the woods but not exactly one in the same. At some point I would have to start using my hands to climb the rock like an animal, and I took turns wiping my face and climbing. My slick hands lost grip a few times, and nearly made me slide down painfully against rock’s edge to the bottom, yet I didn’t. “2 hours left,” I thought to myself every time I caught a hand or footing that let me keep going.
After a trial I’d yet to face as I had never made it this far in this route, I made it to the top of the cliffside. Windy with a breeze, surprisingly soft, that ran her fingers through my hair, swiping my bangs out of my face. I used small and carefully placed steps to get closer to the edge. Looking over, I saw jagged mountains, covered in trees with sharp pines, and rock even sharper. I groaned through my mouth, a guttural moan that was the final sign that let me know, I did it, I had made it.
If I fell from here, a hiking group would find my body at the bottom of the mountain 2 years and 4 months after I had died, they’d identify me by missing persons poster and my hundreds of picked off, broken bones.
Today is my 18th birthday. Today was also the day I had hoped to die.
I planned to sit there, recover from my hike, then smoke a few cigarettes I had in my back right pocket, maybe masturbate one last time, then I’d jump, and it’d be over. I didn’t plan to leave a note, or anything like that. I found death would be more cathartic to my soul If I just let people wonder whose fault it was and what they could’ve done better. Though I doubt anyone would’ve cared. Really, I wasn’t doing it for them anyways.
I picked today because tomorrow my father and I will be moving again, as part of his work. I figured, hoped, if he saw I hadn’t come home by the morning, he’d assume I had run away and that he should just move on with his life. I was an only child, and maybe the burden of a kid on his shoulders would be lifted and maybe his back wouldn’t crack so loud, as if I gave a shit.
Sitting a meter or three away from the edge, with shaking hands, I pulled out my half empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter I kept in the same pocket. I lit one up and paused for a moment before I led it to my mouth. It was shivering cold. It was spring, early morning, and wind blew at more ferocious rates on the edges of cliffs, for a moment I wished I was back in bed, slumbering away. I noticed I was staring off into the distance for a while, and my cigarette was starting to burn away without me taking a single breath from it.
I quickly took a puff from it and exhaled smoke that just blew right past me, but I quickly lost all appetite for the taste of nicotine and simply flicked it out of my hand and onto the damp grass next to me. Ok, so that was a bust. I curled my arms tightly into myself and edged myself close to the end. As if maybe if enough time passed and maybe if I scooted closer and closer towards it as it went on, eventually I’d just fall off.
An hour went by, just me staring at the grass that crept over the side and occasionally getting up to see over the end, just to go back down to sitting next to it.
I can do it. I can, just. I’m savoring my last moment, thinking my last thoughts, that— god…
I tried to jerk off, I swear, but it was too cold. And nothing about a scenic overview of northern mountains was enticingly erotic to me. I wasn’t bored either, my mind was racing, so bad. I thought for a moment I’d jump just for the sole purpose of getting my mind to stop, the heaviness, it was enticing. I got up one last time and walked to the edge of the cliff.
Each step creaked the rock below me, breathing felt as if it shaked myself and my soul, I stepped closer with titillation. Reaching the edge, I looked over again. Nothing had changed, but an overwhelming dread ran through my gut, and I stared longingly into it. I stared for what must’ve been at least 15 minutes, until a gush of wind blew from behind me, pulling my shirt up, and almost sending me over the edge. I stumbled for a few seconds, yelping for help that nobody would hear. I wobbled and tried to throw myself backwards. My heart beat through my chest and I gagged in anticipation. One foot sprained as I stepped on it wrong, and I fell backwards straight on my ass.
I cried, as I used my hands to pull back from the cliff, shuffling quickly until I was far away from it. I went farther than I would ever need to, and then a little farther. My breath huffed and quivered as I realized, I almost died. And I realized then, I only would’ve slightly wanted it. But not in complete totality. I got up, staring at the cliff’s edge for a few moments before I turned around and ran down the side of the mountain, and all the way back home.
The next morning, I woke up, and I got onto the bus with my father to my next home. Sitting down, I looked out the window and I wondered about yesterday, what would’ve happened if I had really died? Really, would nobody miss me? I wasn’t sure, and as I leaned over to my backpack, filled with the only belongings I was bringing with me. I pulled out my polaroid camera, my father had gotten it for my birthday, which was yesterday, I slightly recalled. I used it for the first time, to take a picture of the moving trees outside the windows of the bus. As the photo reeled out, I decided I would chalk up yesterday to a dream I had.
Yeah, a bad dream.