Yin and Yang

This needs a rewrite but I was thinking that I might write more using these characters so I'm posting this now as is.

Yin and Yang

by Nathan Mitchell

If it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger,

But if it kills you, you'll be dead

-Jonathan Coulton

Zachery Morris was sitting at his desk with his typewriter in his shitty little apartment. He had decided that the typewriter was better for writing than his laptop. Less distractions. Also, he had gotten sick of playing Free Cell. He had something to write. Possibly the most important thing he had ever written, and he had been published in Rolling Stone.

He was having trouble getting started though. Writer's block can be a bitch. He glanced at the clock and realized that he had been sitting there staring at his typewriter for almost an hour now. Why is it so hard for me to think of a way to start this thing, he thought. What would Stephen King do?

He knew a moment later exactly what Stephen King would do (at least prior to 1990) and he went into his kitchen and came back with a glass of wine.

About two or three glasses later, just as the alcohol was starting to cloud his brain, he began to type.

Dear World, he typed. It's always easier once you know how to start, he realized.

Dear World,

What you hold in your hands is my final message. The body you find accompanied with this letter is, of course, mine. Sorry about the smell, which I'm assuming is why you found my body.

My name was Zachery Morris and I was 24. My mother's phone number is next to the phone. If you could inform her of my passing I'd be forever grateful.

He stopped. What the hell is this? He thought. I'm being waaaay too formal. “inform her of my passing!” This isn't a letter to my damned grandmother, it's my fucking suicide note!

He then proceeded to take the letter out of the typewriter and rip it into 10 even strips of paper. He took them into the kitchen and, as he poured himself another glass of wine, burnt them on the stove in a little pile. The smoke detector went off for a second but Zach just took the battery out and tossed it in the garbage on the way back to his desk.

He took a big gulp of his wine before he started to type again:

To whom it may concern,

Life has its ups and downs, mostly downs. I guess that's why I decided to kill myself today.

This piece he crushed into the smallest ball he could before taking it into his bathroom and flushing it down the toilet.

He came back and sat for two more glasses of wine thinking about it. He stared at the blank sheet of paper, thinking: What am I trying to get across here? What's the point? Why do I have to leave a damn note anyway? It's not like it's going to change anything. 'I'm dead now because I killed myself, you don't come back from where I've gone. But, I left this note for ya'll ta read.' I don't know why that voice in my head went all southern there, but it just seems pointless. What message am I supposed to convey? Something that cheers people up? Something positive and uplifting like 'i'm dead now, but don't worry, be happy.' what the fuck is that supposed to mean?! I doubt anyone would even care, doubt anyone would read my fucking note, and I seriously doubt that they'd think that a happy uplifting note would really be good for the time and place.

He started wondering what they would think once they found his body. Probably just why I did it, he decided.

Why I did it.

Why does anyone kill themselves? We do it because we're sad, or depressed or whatever you want to call it, but it's more than that. We do it because we've lost all hope. Because we dread getting out of bed in the morning, because we can't go another day of this dark, cold existence. We do it because there's just nothing fucking here for us anymore. There's no god damned pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. No dream job, dream home, or dream vacation. And there is no Santa Claus! Everything is ugly to our eyes because all the beauty was just a lie to begin with. God doesn't exist, just something else made up, this one to make us feel that our lives have meaning. But they don't. Nothing means anything. It's all just stupid fucking bullshit trickling down from our parents and their parents and their parents' parents, for generations. Just one civilization, coming from nothing, built on nothing, going to nothing. Forever and ever. I'm just sick of it. And I've consciously decided, as a sane, rational person, to take myself out of it.

Goodbye World,

Zachery Morris

He read over it once, and actually thought it was pretty good before he ripped it into about a million pieces and threw it up into the air to let it rain down like confetti. He decided that no note was good note.

Now just how do I do it, he thought.

This was probably a bad time to decide this, he realized. If one was going to kill themselves they should choose how first, then get drunk and write a note. I'll have to remember that for next time, he thought.

First he opened up a new bottle of wine and poured himself another glass. Then he checked his medicine cabinet, but he didn't have any pills other than baby aspirin. He also didn't have any razor blades other than the disposable kind. He wondered if he knew anyone who owned a gun but could only imagine that conversation:

“Hey, can I borrow your gun?”

“What do you need it for?”

“Uh...”

He found a rope in the back of his bedroom closet, about 8 feet long. He didn't know how to tie a noose but that's what the internet was for, right? As he sipped his wine he thought about hanging himself. He had read that if you do it correctly you break your neck right away and you die nearly instantly. If you do it wrong though you have to hang there and suffocate to death. I hear that takes awhile, he thought taking another big gulp from his glass, I wonder if I'd have enough time to jerk off while hanging there. Imagine if someone walked in on me doing that, 'oh no you got it wrong, this isn't what it looks like! It's actually attempted suicide that happened to turn into homo-erotic-asphyxiation!' Yeah that'd be good. But if I actually died like that everyone would think it was an accidental suicide. I can't have that.

He threw the rope back into his closet. He drained his wine glass and decided that he might as well just jump off of his balcony. Death by gravity. Fairly painless.

He grabbed his wine bottle, leaving the glass and went through the sliding door to the outside. The air was brisk on this fall evening. His balcony had a two foot high railing that he climbed up on, steadying himself on the support beam with one hand, holding his wine bottle with the other. He stared down at the ground below him, wondering if he actually had the balls to do it.

-TRANSITION-

Alice arrived back at the apartments just as the sun was setting. That's funny, she thought, the sun was rising when I left. That made her laugh a little, she had literally just worked from sunup to sundown.

She was a waitress at the Hob Nob in town. She didn't always work long days like today, but she needed the money so she was grateful for it. And no work tomorrow, she thought, I'm gonna take a nice long bath, get in my jammies and curl up with my cat and an old Humphrey Bogart movie. And then I'm going to sleep for a million years! That's what Alice was really looking forward to, the sleeping, the resting, the not-moving.

She was about halfway to the front door when she dropped her keys. As she bent over to pick them up she saw something out of the corner of her eye which seemed strange. When she glanced over at first she didn't see anything. Thinking it was just a trick of the poor lighting she started to turn away. That's when she saw him. A man standing on the railing on one of the balconies staring down at the ground.

She stopped and stared at him for a minute, not really knowing what to think. After a moment, she shrugged and walked over to see what was what.

When she got close enough she saw that he was using one hand to steady himself against a post and the other to drink occasionally from what looked like one of those over-sized wine bottles for alcoholics with little money. That's judgmental Alice, she thought to herself, You should never judge a book by its cover. Socrates said that.

She was almost just below him but he didn't seem to see her, so she yelled up to him, “Hey!”

He noticed her for the first time, and he swayed a bit when he saw her, “I was wondering *hic* if I was going to draw a crowd.” He said back to her.

She raised an eyebrow at this, “A crowd? I'm just one gal, guy. Is this some kind of one man show? I think you'd get a bigger group of people if you, I don't know, did this in the daytime, maybe.”

He stared at her in what seemed to her to be some kind of drunken, shocked expression, either that or he was about to sneeze, “Can't you see, I'm going to jump?” He yelled down at her, “I'm going to *hic* kill myself.”

At this her eyes got really wide. She stared up at him, she stared down at the pavement below him, she stared back up at him, “You've got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

She looked up at him with a curious little smile on her face, “You're drunk.”

The young man seemed to think about this, *hic* “What if I am?”

She shook her head, her smile grew wider, “What's your name?”

“Zach.”

“Well, Zach, I think you should first take a good look at where you are now, and then look back down here.”

He looked around the balcony, then looked back down at the ground, he did this a second time, “I don't think *hic* I thought this through very well.”

At this Alice couldn't contain her laughter, Zach's apartment was located on the second story of the building. He was only about ten feet above the ground (including the railing).

Zach was put off by her laughing, “You know, I could still kill myself from up here, I'll just dive straight down head first and break my fucking neck. What would you think of that, huh?”

Alice took a deep breath and calmed down, “Alright Zach, why do you want to kill yourself anyway?”

Zach was slow to answer, “Everything just sucks. Life sucks, people suck,” he took another drink, “I just don't want to live this life anymore, I don't want to be me anymore. I just don't want to be in a world where all you get is pain.”

“Hmm,” Alice thought about this, “have you ever heard the phrase, 'Happiness is a choice'?”

Zach shrugged, “I don't know.”

“Well Gandhi said that, and I think it's something you should think about, you know?” She tilted her head slightly when she said that, “you gotta learn to enjoy the little things, and to not make such a big deal out of everything. Life isn't always painful, though it can be stupid sometimes, you just gotta learn to make the most of it. So, what do ya say, huh? How bout you get off that ledge before you hurt yourself?”

Zach was feeling pretty ridiculous right then anyway, he was only ten feet up for christ's sake, and now here this girl was laughing at him, might as well pack it in, try to kill yourself tomorrow night.

That's when Zach, acting stupidly, tried to do three things at once, his one hand was trying to bring the bottle back to his face so he could take another drink, one of his feet was attempting to step around so he could get down from the ledge while his other hand let go of the support beam. This triple-action-coordination caused him to be balancing with only one foot on the railing, and with his shifting weight and drunken state, he proceeded to topple over the edge and land directly on top of an unsuspecting Alice.

You know those scenes in movies where the male and female leads fall on top of one another and they end up with their bodies pressed closely together, staring deeply into one another's eyes, neither one wanting to move away first, just trying to delay the moment and enjoy the closeness of one another. This was nothing like that. This was more the painful, twisting your ankle, hitting your head on a rock type of falling on top of one another.

At the end of it, Zach was lying on the ground, he looked up at her, blood was streaming out of his forehead onto the pavement. She got down next to him and was taking a handkerchief out of her purse to press against his bleeding head wound, “Are you an angel or are you the devil,” he whispered to her just before he lost consciousness.

-ANOTHER TRANSITION-

It was a couple of hours later when Zach woke up in the hospital. His head was throbbing. Partly because of the alcohol but mostly because of the head injury. There was a bandage wrapped around his head which covered one of his eyes. Looking around, he was surprised to see that the girl from the apartments was sitting there. He didn't get a good look at her before, but now he could see that she was wearing an apron, high healed shoes and was actually kind of cute, “What are you doing here?” He asked.

She looked up from the magazine she was reading, “Oh you're finally awake.” She said with a smile, “You gave me a bit of a scare there Zach. But the doctors said you're going to be fine.”

He started to sit up, but that only made his head throb, “Sorry,” he grumbled.

She handed him a glass of water, which he drank greedily, “I hope you've learned something tonight.” She said.

He put the glass down, “I have,” he sighed, “that I shouldn't try to kill myself.”

“And why's that?”

“Because I might live.”

She almost laughed, but then saw that he was serious, “That's...close enough Zach.” She reached behind him and started to adjust his pillow, “Not to worry about the doctors or anything, I told them that you got drunk and slipped, which you have to admit is kind of the truth.” She stopped with the pillow and took his hands in her hands, “Okay, I'm gonna go home now. I've had a very long day. I'll be back tomorrow to pick you up okay?”

This surprised Zach, “You're coming back?”

She laughed, “Of course dummy, 'if you save someone's life you're responsible for them.' Abraham Lincoln said that. So yes, I'll be back to pick you up and I'll make sure your all settled in when we get back home, okay?”

“...I guess so...”

She got up, and grabbed her coat and threw it over her shoulder like she owned the place, and she didn't just walk out, she strutted out in what seemed like super slow motion to Zach, and for a brief moment he was almost sure he heard a few lines to the song “These Boots Were Made For Walking” as she was leaving. He made a mental note to ask the doctors about his head injury tomorrow.

Just before she went around the corner she turned back to him one last time, “And the names Alice by the way. Chao.” And like that she was gone.

Zach settled once again into the hospital bed. He was asleep almost instantly.