The rain was falling, which crossed his mind as fitting.  He stepped into the bathroom, his preparations made.  It occurred to him that he was at the proverbial point of no return.  The familiar chips and cracks in the bathroom tiles held his gaze, as if he were saying goodbye to yet another familiar place for the last time. 

            He paused a second before entering the bath he’d run, debating whether to die clothed or not.  Meeting his end naked was a bigger loss of dignity than he wanted to bear, so a clothed death won out.  That was his manner of thinking prior to his suicide, all he concerned himself with was controlling his death.  Once he had made his decision to go through with suicide, the concerns weighing so heavily on him were lifted from him, and distanced from him, and for a time he no longer felt them a part of his life.

            He ran more water, warming the place of his death, meticulously controlling his circumstances.  As he drew back his sleeves, he began thinking over his reasons for suicide, as if trying to clarify them to himself.  His reasons were a sudden progression of events, compounding on each other until he could no longer cope with it, and he decided to end his life, his will to live broken.

            Two years before his death, Troy’s father lost his job, and deserted the family.  His mother’s reaction to finding herself suddenly a single parent was to throw herself into the dating scene, and she paid less attention to her kids because of it.  Without a father, and with a mother hardly paying attention to her kids, he became somewhat lost, withdrawing and isolating himself from others. 

            The only person he connected with in high school was Breanne.  Her family was broken up by her mother running off and leaving her with her step-father, and so she had an innate understanding of his feelings and problems, as if they’d always known each other.  When he was 15, he briefly considered asking her out, but never got up the courage, and as time passed, the relationship as friends became too important to him to risk throwing it away on just a chance at a relationship.  The humidity from the water started to fog the room, blurring the lines of the yellowed room.

            Troy had focused most of his emotional attentions on Breanne, against the growing recognition in his mind that becoming overly attached to one person wasn’t healthy for him.  Even knowing this, he was unable to stop himself, and as he became more distant from his family, she became the only important person in his life, keeping him emotionally stable.

            He sighed, sinking lower into the water, and picking up the razor blade he had set on the ledge beside him.  Breanne’s step-father’s sudden death from a heart attack broke her cheerful spirit, and it caused Troy a great deal of pain to see his friend in such condition.  After a few months, she committed suicide, a surprise to everyone who had known her, never thinking that she would do anything like that.  Troy was swamped with feelings of guilt for failing to save her, piling more depression upon him. 

            He realized he’d been in the water for almost an hour, and with decisive suddenness cut his wrists.  He’d never believed in any sort of afterlife, and had no illusions of going to a perfect place.  As far as he was concerned, his fate was to die in a bathtub crimson with his own blood.  Breanne had been the only person whom he really cared about, and with her gone, he could no longer find reasons to keep living. 

            He knew that he was overreacting, and possibly making a mistake, but he had made his decision, and stubbornly clung to it.  As his life bled from him, Troy passed on as he listened to the rain beat against the outside of the house.