The fat rain slammed against the glass window of the house on 142 Picket Drive. Seth was the only person in the house; his mother was out grocery shopping. Outside, a river of rain was rolling down the cracked asphalt, draining into the cold sewer. It had begun raining heavily on and off for the last two weeks and finally the newscaster on TV was predicting a flood.
Right now would be the perfect time, Seth thought to himself. Nobody was there to stop him, well, actually, there was. It was the little voices in his head, his conscience, and the other two, probably demons from Hell. But his conscience, that was all that was stopping him. “No, not now. Not yet. You will at least owe your mother an explanation.” The other two voices always objected to this, but Seth knew agreed with the reasonable one. He at least owed his mother an explanation. He didn’t want her to hurt the way he was hurting right now. He at least wanted her to understand why he had decided to do this.
The rain continued to pour outside, thumping against the roof, sounding as if Seth was inside a hollow drum. This really would be a perfect time, but he pushed the thought from his mind and kept on writing.
The whole thing had started about a year ago; before he had been the “perfect son”. He had been a straight A student, been the quarterback for the football team, had been invited all of the parties. It had been a good life. He was dating the hottest girl in school, Kathleen. He thought that he was in love with her, but wasn’t quite sure.
But one night after an exceptionally rowdy keg party, Seth and Kathleen were driving home. Seth was behind the wheel and he very drunk. So drunk that he wasn’t seeing doubles…he was seeing triples.
The memories of that night were very hazy whenever Seth tried to think about it, but he felt like he was he was watching a movie of it whenever he dreamed about it. The car spinning. The deafening sound of the crash. The crackling dead tree plunging onto the car. Kathleen limp form slowly bleeding to death, impaled by a tree limb. And Seth was helpless to do anything; he was trapped with the car on top of him. Hot metal dug into his back, scraping his spinal cord, spilling blood onto the freshly laid asphalt. The pain was mind shattering. All he could do was lay there and either watch Kathleen bleed to death or shut his eyes and pretend it was all a dream. He didn’t want to, but he watched her bleed. He watched the thick, oozing red blood gush out of the open cavity in her side. It was horrible, but it also fascinated him to see human life drain slowly away in the form of blood.
Then he remembered, that’s Kathleen! He tried with all of his might, but he couldn’t manage to pull himself out from under the car. He needed to save her. He had to, because it dawned on him then; he loved her.
Finally, about an hour later, an ambulance arrived. Kathleen had been dead for about forty-five minutes. Her face looked like someone had colored it with chalk. The paleness revolted Seth. Her once rosy cheeks were now solid white.
It took seven people to lift the car off of Seth and drag him out. He had cracked four ribs, broken a leg, and arm, and his back. He had various wounds from the broken glass that seemed to have pierced almost every part of his skin; it took the doctors three hours to remove it all. And Kathleen had lost her life.
“It’s all my fault,” Seth muttered to himself. “Oh Kathleen, I’m so sorry.” He brushed away the tears that were welling up into his eyes, then returned to his excruciating work.
After Kathleen had died, Seth was in a wheelchair for almost half a year while his broken back healed. He was lucky that he hadn’t been paralyzed. Through the whole time, he only went to school for about three months. And everyday that he was at school, he was ridiculed. There is a Stephen King novella that states “If you go out alone, you die a hero. If you take someone out with you, your dog piss.” In this case, Seth had one the dog piss of the year award. He started to exile himself from all of his old football friends; they always made fun of him because he would never play football again, and because of the limp that he had developed, calling him “Quazimodo.”
Nobody cared if he cried in pain and misery every night over the girl that he had killed. They didn’t care; they didn’t provide sympathy when he needed it the most. They only provided hate.
It took a few weeks, but Seth finally drifted into a group that would accept him. It was a group that he used to scorn. The punks, or Goths, or whatever you want to call them. The people with long black hair, addicted to metal, addicted to their computers. It was they who took Seth in from the ridicule and introduced him to black clothes, black metal, computers, and drugs.
That seems like so long ago, Seth thought to himself, staring out the window into the street below. Dirty rainwater rushed over his front. He looked in the gutter across the street and saw the carcass of a dead kitten, drowned in the speeding current.
“What you wouldn’t give to be that stupid cat,” the voice said. It was right too, Seth wanted to be that cat right now. Dead. Cold water rushing over his limp body. But he had to finish his task first. He had to complete it perfectly; leave nothing out. It was imperative that his mother not be hurt when he followed the voice’s advice.
The new friends started Seth off slowly, with weed. After smoking that nonstop for about a week, he wanted more to help him feel nothing of his loss. So he jumped straight from pot to cocaine and herion. The Goths applauded him. But whenever Seth went home stoned, he felt like a wreck, but it took his mind off of the torment he was going through. He was surprised that he hadn’t slit his wrists when he dazedly looked into his mothers eyes and saw that she knew what he was doing, and it ripped her heart apart each time she saw it.
But he never tried to change. He’d just go upstairs to his room and cook up another shot or snort a few more lines. He knew even then that he was killing himself, but the only way that he could keep from hurting. He still thought about Kathleen everyday, and cried every night.
It took several weeks of the drugs before the voices arrived. They came one at a time. First, one of the bad ones, suggesting that Seth just get it over with. That was when the first serious thoughts of suicide first crossed his mind. The voice seemed very reasonable about it too. No one will miss you. Everyone would be better off, perhaps live easier if they knew that he was dead. All they would have to do is pretend that he had died in the car accident if they felt at all guilty.
Then the second voice came, even worse than the first. It was like Seth’s most hated enemy was in his head; the taunting never ceased. He was going to end it then but the third voice, his conscience, came in.
It was the voice of reason, it talked him out of several suicide attempts already, but he had already set his mind to ending it all. Finally the third voice gave up and told him to at least write a note to his mother, explaining why.
That’s when Seth decided that although he was going to kill himself, he was going to be remembered. He was going to write a letter. A long letter of accusation and forgiveness. He would write this before he proceeded with his plans.
Seth sat at his desk, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, writing. The letter was finally coming along smoothly. He had poured over it the last week or so, crumbling up paper, breaking pencils when he became frustrated. Finally he was writing smoothly and level-headedly, unlike when he had started a week ago. He wrote for a half-hour later longer when he stood up and taped the letter to his short. He walked to the far corner of his room. A noose was hanging from a bar that he used to do pull-ups on. He pulled the little table that he had built a few years ago underneath the dangling rope. Seth checked to make sure that the letter was taped onto his shirt. He put his head through and tightened the slipknot. Glancing out of the window, he saw Kathleen walking in the street, not a drop of rain touching her smooth skin or the long, white, silky dress that she wore.
“I’ll see you in a minute,” Seth said to the smiling phantom in the streets. “I love you Mom.”
Then Seth tilted the table with his feet. He felt himself lose his grip from solid ground and plunge downward. His neck cracked and everything went black. Seth opened his eyes and saw Kathleen in a shining white light, with her arms open.