Out With A Bang

Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts

December 22, 2020: Life is a meaningless chaos. It’s the second day of winter, a Tuesday, the randomest day of the week. I can’t take it anymore; I’m going to end it. I suppose the easiest way is to do an internet search for the over the counter medication that is most sure to kill me if I wash a handful down my throat with a fifth of vodka and go to a few pharmacies to get a stash. It would have to be an over the counter med: I have no prescriptions. I haven’t been to a doctor in years. As to street drugs, I understand an overdose of fentanyl is not hard to obtain and will kill me right quick but I can’t get it. Junkies have connections but I don’t. I have a problem with that plan. I would die here in my bungalow and not be found until the police broke in because the neighbors complained about the smell. The team in charge of removing my body would try to keep a professional respect but I’d be just another dead old man to be disposed of like a rat. I have lived a lonely, pathetic life: I couldn’t stand a lonely pathetic death.

December 23, 2020: I have decided to go out with a bang. I went to my driveway and started up my old RV. I bought it years ago back when I had a wife and kids. After they left, I would sometimes use it to take a trip alone to some place until I realized there was no place I wanted to go. Now I start it up every few months and drive it around the block just to make sure it runs. I took it to the gas station and filled the tank. I have a pamphlet on stump removal from the USDA that I got once when I was in a similar mood. I have never had any reason to remove a tree stump but with a few simple alterations in the instructions it had everything I needed to know to make a bomb of any power I wanted. The materials I needed were easy to buy or order but it is important not to buy from the same place or at the same time in order to not raise suspicion. I won’t go into details. Probably the only readers of this will be the police and that information is not new to them. As to people like me who might read this you can do your own research and planning.

December 24, 2020: It is Christmas Eve and I’m thinking about life and death. I believe when you’re dead you’re dead. All that is left is rotting meat and bones. Whatever it was that made the living you is now nothing. That was not what I was taught as a child. If there is life after death I know I’m not going to a better place. How could I deserve it? As to eternal suffering even that seems preferable to the numb apathy I live in now. Although I think probably the demonic torturers will not even bother with a nonentity such as myself. 

December 25, 2020: It is Christmas but in my house there are no decorations, music or even cards. I sometimes enjoyed Christmas when my kids were in my house. Kids are easy to make happy. When I met my wife she was one of those, um, left on the shelf women. You know she hadn’t found anyone and as she got older her prospects were getting worse. I managed to convince her I wasn’t that bad a guy. She seemed to enjoy having sex with me and tolerated my morose moods so I asked her to marry me. She wanted kids so we had a boy and a girl two years apart. Because I now had a family, my wife tried to get me out of my black moods so I could engage with life. She really believed there was a good man inside me that her feelings for me could bring out to be a husband and father. She didn’t realize that any good man inside me had been defeated by life and had given up, shriveled and died long before I met her. Instead she only provoked the vicious caged animal that lived inside me. When I couldn’t take her nagging and pleading and wanted her to leave me alone I would go into a rage and smack her hard until she went away sobbing. I knew even as I did it that she didn’t deserve it but I had no better nature to stop me. Eventually she decided that I wasn’t worth it and left taking the kids. I didn’t try to stop her. I don’t know for sure what their life is like now because we have no communication. Once in a while I look her up on the cyberstalking service I subscribe to; she seems to have gone back to school, started a new career, and married a better husband. Getting away from me was the best thing that happened to her.

December 26, 2020: I have a sister who lives in another state. After my parents died she reached out so we could have a relationship. I think my parents loved her. I know they didn’t love me. Whatever she did the resentment I always carry around would come out and I would cause embarrassing, upsetting scenes. One time her husband, a usually peaceful, sensible man, punched me square in the mouth and ordered me to get out of his sight. I had the urge to punch him back but he’s a larger man than I, so I left with my tail between my legs. She doesn’t try to contact me anymore. 

December 27, 2020: I decided to blow up myself, the RV, and anyone around it on New Year’s Eve. The city I live in has many tourist attractions and usually brings in crowds of New Year revellers.  Due to the pandemic there should not be any crowds but anyone who has lived in America for the past year knows that there will be a smaller  crowd but adequate for my purposes. I will drive my RV downtown to where there are the most popular bars and restaurants and detonate just before midnight. Celebrators knew they were taking a risk; I’m just adding to the danger. I am not going to die alone and forgotten.

December 28, 2020: I have to give some thought about the fate of my writing. After the bomb goes off the police will retrace the RV to my bungalow. They will want to search my house and especially my computer to find motives and possible accomplices (as if!) I decided to make it easy for them. I wrote my password on a scrap of paper and taped it to my desk even though, of course, I have it memorized. I’m putting the present writing into a file labelled Manifesto. Manifesto!? I guess a mass murderer can afford to be pompous. I think anyone reading this far knows I am not some moronic scrawler. I think of myself as quite intelligent for all the good it has done me. During my life I have met people (teachers, employers, etc.) who said I had “potential.” I have never understood. Potential to do what? Potential to be what?

December 29, 2020: I have all my supplies and except for some last minute tasks the bomb is set up in the RV. It should cause an impressive amount of death and destruction. I am thinking about the showmanship of my final act. The explosion should be a climax rather than a random event. I set up a sound system in the RV. Just before the detonation I will play the Beatles’ “Hello, Goodbye,” an infectiously silly song that always makes me feel slightly better for its three and a half minutes. I and the other people the bomb will kill deserve that before we are annihilated. I feel something more is needed. Perhaps people who for some reason want to live should have a sporting chance. Just after the Beatles there will be an announcement that there is a bomb in the vehicle. I decide not to use my own voice, that would be “on the nose” and who would pay attention. I download a perfect robobitch voice to make the announcement; you know the voice from your phone and PA systems, polite and feminine but with a steely undertone that tells you that you will not be allowed to move on unless you do exactly what you are instructed.

December 30, 2020: I suppose briefly there will be speculation about my being a “terrorist.” Uninformed people may even call me a terrorist. I am not a terrorist. Terrorists are trying to change things. I am doing this because I know things can’t change. 

December 31, 2020: The waitress touches my shoulder, “Enjoy your pie, hon.”

        I usually don’t go out to eat. I usually microwave one of the frozen dinners I buy at the supermarket and use the time I’m not preparing the RV or writing my manifesto to search the internet for reasons for not wanting to live. That is extremely easy. Even most feel-good stories support nihilism. If this was a fair, compassionate world the protagonists would not be in the situation that the surprising stroke of good fortune gets them out of. Since this was my last few hours in existence I thought I’d treat myself.

      The waitress is near my age. She may have been attractive when she was younger but the years have worn that away. She is wearing a black mask with a big silly grin made of sequins. She picked it out before coming in for her shift in hopes of cheering up her customers. She seems to want to do her crappy job of bringing food to sad and angry people in this sad place well. I know she does this in hopes of getting tips. I know she probably needs money because she spent too much on Christmas for her grandchildren. 

      I have just eaten a bacon burger. It is far from the best burger I’ve ever had but it will do. The waitress has just brought me a slice of lemon meringue pie and a cola refill. 

      I take a bite of my pie. I like lemon meringue pie but it is never as good as it looks in the display case. As I chew my pie I take two deep breaths through my nose. It is good to breathe. 

      After I finish my pie and drink half my refill I leave my usual tip on the table and pay at the register.

      I drive my compact sedan through the sleet to my driveway. I go into the RV and break a few connections to prevent accidental detonation. The RV is still a bomb; it just isn’t ready to detonate tonight. For some reason knowing I can blow myself up makes me not want to do it right now. Life is a meaningless chaos. That means it is possible it will get better. I don’t know why but I seem to be curious about whether it will. I don’t know why I continue writing this; it is unlikely it will ever be read.