Tonight was the night. His apartment was clean, and he even had stuff packed away in boxes. It was amazing how much crap people accumulate over the years. He threw a lot of shit away—old receipts, bills, and countless other unnecessary items that he wasn’t sure why he kept. He had just gotten into another fight with his sister the other night over something stupid, although they made up so he was glad about that. He didn’t want his sister to feel badly about their last encounter together.
He had plenty of money in his bank account to cover funeral expenses. After debating about a million times over what he would say, he decided not to leave a note. But he did tell his sister he loved her before he got off the phone with her. She already knew he wanted to be cremated when he died, and he didn’t bother to write up a will since she was his only living next of kin. He knew everything would go to her anyway.
His driver’s license clearly stated he was an organ donor, so if nothing else, he could at least be a hero in death. By killing himself, maybe he could save a few more lives, lives of people who actually matter.
He had purchased a cheap health insurance policy awhile back, so he went over everything to make sure it would cover hospital expenses in case he ended up there instead of on the other side. All was well. He was ready.
He made the decision at work. He had been planning for awhile but wasn’t entirely sure when the plan would be executed. But with how bad his day had been going, he knew for sure that this was the night he wanted to check out. It was a Friday in March. Still cold out, but spring wasn’t far away.
It was another insanely busy night at work. They ran out of ribeye steaks and shrimp, so of course it was his fault and everyone was pissed off at him. Even Lydia, although not directly. She had walked back into the kitchen, and Nancy had said to “eighty-six the ribeye”, meaning they were out of it.
Lydia looked upset and said, “Are you serious?” She apparently was about ready to put an order in for a ribeye, so now she had to turn back around and let her customer know they didn’t have it. But when it came down to it, she was not blaming him for it or treating him like shit for it. He just knew she was irritated by it as everyone else was.
Barry reamed Jason out for not telling him to order more. But the last time he told him he should order a lot, Barry shot him down, saying it was too much. So now of course it was not enough. You could never win. And as much as tonight sucked, he knew that tomorrow would be even worse because Saturdays always were.
And he couldn’t stand the thought of being here tomorrow. It was literally making him feel sick to the stomach. He couldn’t do it. There was no way. He could barely even function now as is.
To make matters worse, he met Ryan for the first time. Ryan apparently wanted to surprise Lydia by picking her up from work and taking her out for drinks with a couple of friends. He would have thought that she would protest being that she had worked all night and was tired, but she just said she wanted to go home and get changed first.
He despised Ryan even more when he met him. He came back into the kitchen with Lydia, and he had a big grin on his handsome face. He was extremely friendly and outgoing, and everyone seemed so delighted to meet him. He was a big, burly guy, probably a couple inches taller than Jason. And of course he was much better looking than Jason was. He had on a red Phillies baseball cap, so Jason hoped he was trying to hide prematurely balding hair. But that was probably unlikely.
He had even hoped for a little while that moving in together would be a good thing, as in it would make them realize they didn’t make a good pair after all. But no such luck. They seemed perfectly happy together. Lydia was all giggles and smiles.
“Ryan, this is Jason, the head cook here. Jason, this is Ryan.”
Jason finished wiping a few crumbs off the counter, put down the cleaning rag, and shook his hand.
“Nice to meet you,” Ryan said.
Jason just nodded and didn’t respond. So it wasn’t polite, but the asshole had a firm handshake, and that pissed him off too. Why couldn’t it have been one of those weak ones? He had to keep telling himself it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter that he saw them kiss. No, that didn’t matter at all.
Ryan had wrapped his arms around Lydia and kissed her on the mouth, a little longer than he should have at her place of employment. “I’ll wait for you outside while you finish up.”
“Okay, I’ll be right out.”
“Love you,” he said.
“Love you!” she replied as he walked outside.
So now they love each other. Great. But once again, why did he care? He shouldn’t care. He was going to end his life tonight anyway. But he still cared. He knew it, and he couldn’t help it. He almost hoped something would happen that would make him change his mind. But so far, everything that was happening was practically pushing him off the cliff. Death was taunting him, looking forward to welcoming him.
He heard Dana and Nancy talk to Lydia about how handsome Ryan is.
Fuck it. He was done for the night. He was done forever.
He took off his white chef’s jacket that was so dirty it was barely even white anymore. Normally, he would take it home and wash it. But now, it would just stay in his car. He would never wear one of those fucking things again. He would die wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt and his black work pants. He wished he had his blue jeans instead. But oh well.
After he clocked out, he tried not to say anything to anyone. He felt like he was going to cry, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. He hadn’t even cried when his father died. But of course as he went to leave, Lydia said good night to him.
He mumbled “bye” and didn’t say anything else. Then he left, thinking he would never see her again. He hoped he didn’t see Ryan waiting outside. He just kept his head down and walked to his car.
When he got inside his car, he started the engine and neglected to buckle his seatbelt. For a second, he wondered what he would do if the engine failed to start. Because crashing his car was the way he wanted to die, and he didn’t want to have to think of another way. He just wanted to disappear. He felt insignificant and worthless, and he knew that out of billions of people in the world, he mattered very little. Out of the vast universe, he was about as important as a tiny bug that most people wouldn’t think twice about before squashing. His death would just be one of the many obituaries in a local paper, and that was it. It wouldn’t be news that anyone would care about except for a few people. And even they would be able to move on and live without him. His sister might tell everyone about it on Facebook, and there would be people that found out that he went to high school with. Oh how sad, they would say. But that would be it.
Years from now, his existence wouldn’t matter at all. But that’s how most of us are. Most of us don’t make a huge impact on the world. And time goes fast, and new generations replace the old. That’s just how it is. We’re all eventually forgotten. So he just wanted to make the suffering stop now. He didn’t want to have to think about anything.
But as he started to drive, all he could do was think. And then he did start to cry.
All of the bad memories, thoughts, and feelings that had been buried beneath the layers of rocks in his brain were now rising to the surface. Everything from his subconscious was erupting like lava from a volcano, burning and attacking him all at once. Things that he thought he had forgotten long ago were all still there. Any good memories or thoughts were just reminders of what he once had, what he once felt, that were now gone forever. Nothing good lasts forever. And with the way his life was going, he couldn’t foresee experiencing anything worthwhile ever again. Living might be more bearable if he knew he had something to look forward to, but he had nothing.
He thought about how his mother had died. He remembered how scared and upset he was when she was gone. And how his father was never the same after that, only he couldn’t remember what his father was like before. All the guilt he felt about not getting her more help and not making her take her meds must have been horrible, and he actually started to feel badly for him. And look at what his life had become. He didn’t want to end up like his father.
He was jealous of his sister for getting to live with their grandmother. Why didn’t she want him to live with her too? He knew the reason—that it was too much for her, but she was still trying to ease the burden on their father by taking Melanie. But he couldn’t help but feel that she didn’t want him, that he wasn’t good enough. And he was sad for not being with his sister, for being stuck with their father alone. It just seemed so incredibly unfair.
He remembered a time when he was eight years old, and he had started to feel horribly sick in school. He became feverish and nauseous. He could barely sit up right at his desk. He went to the nurse’s office, and the nurse took his temperature. He was running a slight fever, but it wasn’t severe. She tried to call his father so he could pick him up and take him home. But he wouldn’t answer the phone. She called him several times, and Jason was sure he either heard it and was purposely ignoring it, or he was passed out drunk. He then lied and said that his father must have gotten called into work, and he didn’t have his new number there. She had him lie down in her office for the rest of the day. He remembered just lying there for hours, trying to sleep, wishing he could at least be in front of the TV.
He had to take the school bus home, and he kept swallowing to resist the urge to throw up every time the bus hit a bump in the road. When he got home, he saw his father asleep in bed. He poured himself a glass of water and laid down on the couch. He turned on the TV and had to keep adjusting the rabbit ears because they didn’t have cable. The screen kept getting fuzzy, lines would crawl up and down, and it would flicker between color and black and white. As the night went on, he got worse and worse. He was both hot and cold at the same time, sweating and shivering. He almost vomited several times, but there was nothing in his stomach to come up. His head ached, and his entire body was sore.
His father never once checked on him. He was lucky that the fever came down on its own and that it didn’t become more severe. But the entire time, he felt so alone. And he saw how mothers on TV took care of their kids when they were sick, and he wished his mother were still alive. He knew if Melanie was this sick that their grandmother would be by her side. She may as well have been in fucking Disney World compared to where he was living.
Aside from not always having enough money to eat or a bed to sleep in, he lived in so many bad neighborhoods where the other kids were mean to him. He would get teased in school for his ugly clothes that he had gotten from thrift stores. He would have to wear a lot of the same clothes over and over again since he didn’t have that many so he would get made fun of for that too. When he started working, he was stressed constantly, trying to make enough money to cover the bills. They couldn’t lose their apartment because then he might have to leave his job if they moved far away. He needed to be able to walk there.
He hated seeing how sick his grandmother looked before she died. She had lost her hair from the chemotherapy, she was so skinny, and she looked so old. He wished so badly that she wouldn’t die, but the cancer had spread and there was very little hope. Melanie wouldn’t stop crying, but he didn’t know what to do to make her feel better.
When Melanie came to live with them, he tried his best to protect her and take care of her. Their dad never hit her, and Jason made sure of that. On top of going to school, he was working two jobs so he was exhausted all the time. He would get in trouble for falling asleep in class, and the teachers would accuse him of being lazy and a terrible student. If only they knew why he fell asleep and why he didn’t have time to study or do all of his homework.
And now all these years that had gone by since they no longer lived with their father… Melanie was living the life she always dreamed of. She had her own family, and Dave’s parents were like her own. And Jason still worked for Barry, and the only real relationship he ever had was with Amy. And that was over, and it had been over for quite some time. She had certainly moved on, even before they broke up.
And even though he was no longer hungry and he had more than enough money for everything he needed, he was still just as alone as he was when he was a child. Melanie was far away just as she was when she lived with their grandmother. He was in with love with a girl who loved someone else and would never love him. He saw Ryan and Lydia kissing in his mind, and he kept crying even more. He pictured them fucking.
His vision was a blur, and he had to keep wiping his face so he could see the road. The tree would be coming up soon.
He couldn’t go back to that kitchen tomorrow night.
He had to do this.
And so he did.
He saw the tree ahead, sped up, and swerved his car right into it.