Forgive

The telephone cord around his neck tightened, cutting off the airflow. The chair crashed to the floor with a loud thud. The metal pipe running across the basement ceiling held Jake’s weight like he was nothing.

It’s what he’ll soon be, nothing.

Sharp pain and a rush of panic tore through his apathy like a hot blade. He reached at the cord, which dug deep into his neck, and tried to loosen its hold. The pain was worse than he anticipated.

I’m dying, he thought in panic, legs thrashing about, hands trying to free the neck. He tried reaching for the metal pipe, but it was wet with condensation and his grip slipped.

You wanted to kill yourself, why resist now? Foolish and undecisive to the very end. This was so like him. Jake, the victim.

He listened to his rasping grunts, tasting his own life as it escaped through his mouth. It was the saddest sound he ever heard, and the loneliest feeling he ever felt. And it seemed to take forever.

Jake did his research before deciding to hang himself. It wasn’t the most pleasant of ways to go, but it was one of the cleanest and cheapest. If only his neck would break as he jumped from the chair, but it didn’t, and now Jake had to choke to death.

In his death throes, he looked over the basement one last time, noticing his life’s legacy packed in brown carton boxes, feeling even worse. Then, his vision blackened, his groaning stopped. The last thing he felt was warm liquid spreading through his pants, as his body released all tension in every muscle.

Jake died.

They would find his body in about a week when the apartment owner would come demanding rent - which was overdone as it was. Or maybe nobody would come and he’d just hang there forever, slowly rotting, until the building itself would be brought down by time or bulldozers. It would be fitting, as nobody cared for Jake in life, so why should anybody care for him in death?

Something was wrong. Jake was having thoughts. Wasn’t he dead? There was supposed to be nothing awaiting you after death, at least if you were an atheist, like Jake. Yet, he still had thoughts.

I hope I didn’t survive in some way, he thought, feeling another surge of panic. So useless that he couldn’t even kill himself. The only thing worse than his former life would be if he had to live it as a vegetable.

There was light. Color… and shapes.

Jake realized he could see. And with horror, he noticed that he was looking at himself - a dead man, hanging from a cable tied to a pipe.

“What is this?”

He could speak. Looking down, he noticed he had a body, but it was strangely translucent, like a ghost. 

Am I hallucinating? The last neurons firing in my brain?

He raised his palms and looked through them, gazing at his hanging body.

Or… is this…

“What have you done, my dearest Jake?”

Jake turned around and gasped. A little boy sat on the overturned chair and observed the body with saddened eyes. 

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am, Jake. But do you know who you are?”

Jake stumbled. “What’s going on here? I thought I died.”

“You did, Jake,” the boy said, voice filled with compassion. “You died inside long ago. And now you died on the outside too.”

“What?” This boy looks familiar… “Who are you? What’s going on here?”

“I am God,” the kid said plainly. “I took this form so you can comprehend it.”

“There’s no such thing,” Jake said. “Are you the neighbor’s kid? How did you get in?”

The boy looked at Jake, eyes too wise for his young age. “It’s time you take a look, Jake.”

“Look at what?” Jake asked. Confusion was building up, prompting another wave of panic. With dread, he noticed his chest was still. No heartbeat.

“What the hell is going on here?” he screamed.

“You took your life before you ever truly lived it,” the boy said. “I’m here to help you. Do you really not recognize me, Jake?”

Jake looked at the kid again. He felt like tears were building up behind his eyes, but no tear came. He didn’t even breathe, he felt nothing in his body, save for a terrible emptiness in his still heart.

“You… look familiar.”

The boy sighed. “Come. It’s time you remember.” He stood up and walked away, down the basement hallway.

Jake frowned, staring after him. “Where are you going?”

The boy didn’t answer. He walked down the hallway and then turned around the corner, stepping into what seemed to be a well-lit room.

Strange, Jake thought, my basement doesn’t have another room…

As he came around the corner, Jake found himself in a familiar place. A spacious living room with a white sofa, wooden laminates, and a large window overseeing a beautiful garden. 

“Impossible,” he breathed. They were underground, in a basement, how could they oversee a garden? 

In the middle of the room stood a man and a woman. One of them was Jake, alive. The other was his wife. They seemed to be amidst a heated discussion.

“Do you know when we are?” the boy asked, standing next to the couple arguing.

Jake knew very well where they were. How could he forget this day? It was one of the reasons he hung himself. But how was this possible?

“... have become insufferable and I don’t want anything more to do with you,” the woman shouted. She turned to leave but living Jake grabbed her arm.

“Hey! Don’t you walk away-”

She turned and slapped him. The man released her arm in shock. Then he pushed her to the floor in a fit of rage. He yelled and overturned the coffee table as the woman scrambled to her feet, dashing for the door.

“I can’t look at this,” Jake said, closing his eyes. With a shock, he realized he could see right through his eyelids, as they were just as translucent as the rest of his body.

“Look, Jake,” the boy said. “Look at what you have done. At what you were.”

Jake wanted to turn away, but his eyes were fixed to the image of his former self, running after his ex-wife, mouthing all sorts of threats. The woman’s face was red from crying.

“That slut…” Jake whispered, looking at the man he was. “How could she leave me…”

“She loved you very much, Jake,” the boy said, looking after the woman through the window. “She endured much to be with you. But in the end, you forced her to leave.”

“She left me because she was an ungrateful bitch!”

“No, Jake.” The boy turned and looked at him. “It was you who was ungrateful. You became too toxic to be around.”

“I got fired from my job, unfairly, and all she ever did was complain! I worked my ass off and what did I get? A court restraint!”

“Jake,” the boy said, frowning. “Did you not look?”

“Oh, I looked alright. Perhaps you didn’t. You can show me all the images you want but I know what happened.”

The boy sighed. “Let’s go, Jake. Further back.”

“No, I’m not some puppet to be told what to do. Let me go so I can die!”

The boy walked through a door and waved a hand to follow. Jake hesitated, looking one more time at his past self, slumped on the couch, head buried in his palms, and then walked after the boy.

The next room was even more impossible than the previous one. They were in an office, some thirty stories high. It overlooked the city with a magnificent view, golf trophies decorating the mahogany desk.

Jake felt anger bubble up. This is my old boss’s office.

“What game are you playing?” he asked the boy. “Why are you showing me all this?”

“So you can look,” the boy said, pointing at two men sitting. One sat behind the mahogany desk - Jake’s boss - the other opposite to him, Jake himself. The expression on the boss’s face didn’t look promising.

“This is the third time, Jake,” the man was saying. “You promised it wouldn’t happen again. Twice. I trusted you and you let me down.”

“I had a bad day,” living Jake said, looking distractedly at the golf trophies. “Some asshole cut me off in traffic, nearly crashed into him, and then we got into a fight…”

“You got into a fight with somebody?” The boss raised his eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” Jake said. “I made sure the bastard won’t forget what he did. So you can imagine that after that, I needed a drink.”

The boss sighed. “Jake, you should have called the police. Then you should have called me and I’d give you the day off. You shouldn’t have come to work after that, and certainly not drunk.”

Jake shrugged. “I still did my work.”

“You insulted half the department. Not to mention the clients.”

“They were nagging on me.”

“Jake, you realize that you give no choice, right? I have to let you go.”

Jake’s head snapped up, face becoming red.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Jake said. “I’ve seen enough. I know how this ends.”

“Look,” the boy said. 

Jake from the past suddenly lost his temper and threw all the trophies from the boss’s desk, threatening to beat the man up just like he did the asshole who cut him off. Eventually, security came in and they had to drag him out. A lawsuit followed and he was fired without compensation.

“What a prick,” Jake said. “He knew I had a tough time and he still fired me, the bastard!”

“You were irresponsible at work, you were mean to other people and you lost your temper,” the boy said in an even tone. “What did you expect would happen?”

Jake puffed. “Wasn’t my fault. They were all useless, too touchy to handle a little roughness. I was just being real. Seems I was the only one living in the real world anyway, where all is not flowers and rainbows.”

“Jake, do you realize who you sound like?”

“Like me.”

The boy inspected Jake’s face. “Do you remember me, Jake?”

Curly brown hair, blue-grey eyes… that boy did look familiar. “Are you David, John’s son?”

The boy’s shoulders slumped. “Let’s go further.”

“How much more do I have to endure before you’ll let me die?”

“As much as it takes.”

“Are you sure you are God?” Jake asked. “Because showing me all this, you act like the Devil.”

Jake followed as he didn’t know what else to do. Perhaps if he played the game, he could finally die and be done with it all

They took the elevator down. As they passed by other people, nobody seemed to notice them. When the elevator arrived at the bottom floor, the door opened directly into the street. There was no lobby. To the right there stood a school with a playground. Jake’s highschool.

“Oh, come on,” he sighed. “I’m not going in there!”

“You need to look, Jake,” the boy said. “You need to remember.”

“No, I don’t! I worked this out of my memory for a reason!”

“You didn’t learn the lesson, Jake. You need to look at it and feel it.”

“Enough of this-”

The surroundings changed. They were now inside the school, in one of the bathrooms. There was a group of boys in front of one of the stalls, beating on the door and shouting profanities. Jake knew that his past self, a teenager, was on the other side.

“Get me out of here,” Jake said. “I don’t want to see this!”

“Look.”

“Jake, come out or we’ll break in!” one boy shouted. The others laughed. Sobs were coming from inside the stall.

“Are you… crying?”

“Leave me alone!”

The boys laughed and one of them slammed his shoulder, breaking the lock on the door. Inside they found Jake with his pants down, doing his business on the toilet.

“My, it smells in here,” one boy said. “You’re gonna have to eat that, Jake. Seems you didn't digest it properly.”

The face of teenage Jake became bone-white.

Jake slumped to the floor. “Why are you making me remember this?” He felt like crying, but no tears came.

“Do you remember me now, Jake?” The boy wasn’t any of his colleague's sons, nor was he one of the boys tormenting Jake at highschool. He was younger. Why was he so familiar?

“Please, let’s just go…”

The group of boys laughed in the back, as young Jake vomited, having been forced to eat his own excrement.

“Jake-”

“I looked at it. I saw it. Happy?”

The boy sighed. “Let’s go. This is the last one.”

“It better be.”

They walked out of the bathroom, leaving laughter and crying behind. Jake never felt as miserable, having been forced to remember all the horrible things that happened to him. Was death like this for every person? Did everyone get to see all the bad things before they died? If so, then there was no peace in life, nor death.

The next room struck Jake as vaguely familiar. A big, soft rug on the floor. TV in the corner, heavy curtains hanging from the window, dimming sunlight. The air smelled of old cigarettes.

“This is…” He realized. He froze. “No…”

A boy sat on the rug, playing with legos. A boy that looked exactly like the one who brought Jake on this journey of torment. It was Jake, at the age of five or so.

“Do you remember me now?” the boy asked, eyes hopeful.

“You are me…”

The boy smiled. “Good. Look.”

Someone entered the room. Jake’s dad. He smelled of cigarettes and alcohol.

His footsteps were heavy, burdened with drunkenness and he mumbled to himself. Jake played in silence. 

“...all I do is work, work, work. All my life is just work. Slaving away, and what do I get? Nothing.” 

Jake tried making himself as small as he could, not wanting to draw his father's attention. The man walked over to the couch, stepping on one of the legos. The plastic brick cracked.

Jake flinched, a silent tear rolling down his face.

Dad stopped. “What’s this?” he looked down, noticing Jake for the first time.

“You stepped on my lego,” Jake whispered.

“I what?”

Jake swallowed. “My lego…”

“You mean, my lego. Your mom bought that with my money. This lego is not yours, it is mine! I worked for it, I paid every cent for it! You didn't do anything! You never do anything, you ungrateful brat! I slave away for this family and what do I get in return? Ignoring and ungratefulness! You’re all useless, you’ll never amount to anything in life! You’re a weakling and a pile of sorry-ass misery, wallowing in pity all day-”

“ENOUGH!”

Jake held his fist clenched, his jaw tightened, his whole body shaking. 

“ENOUGH!”

The imagery froze, father looming over kid Jake.

“Did you see it?” the boy asked, eyes hopeful. “Did you see what happened? How you abandoned yourself all those years ago? How you victimized yourself based on this incident with your father?”

“THE BASTARD DID THIS TO ME!”

“No, Jake. You did it to yourself. He had his own problems and his own way of dealing with them. It wasn’t right, what he did, but he didn’t know any better. He acted in the best way he knew, so he could survive through his burdens. It was unfortunate that you got caught up in the middle of it, that you were the outlet of his anger. But when you became a victim because of it, that was your doing, Jake. Not his. And therefore it is only you who can undo what was done. It is not too late.”

“I-'' Jake was shaking. Trembling. Tears poured down his face, there was a pounding in his chest. All the suppressed emotions from 30 years ago raged and bubbled inside. He could barely see through the torrent of tears, but he did notice that the room had changed. He was in the basement, standing on a chair, a telephone cord around his neck.

About to hang himself.

“NO!” he screamed, throwing the cord away and jumping off the chair. He collapsed to the floor, crying. His body became a pile of emotions and he just laid there, crying his lungs out. He didn’t know if what happened was real, if God came to save him or if he got an epiphany, but it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that he was there for himself, now. Finally, he stopped running and looked. He saw who he was and didn’t turn away.

After much time, Jake stood up, knees shaking, throat hurting. He waltzed over to his phone and called a specific number.

A few seconds passed. Then a scratchy voice answered.

“Dad?”

Silence.

“Dad, it’s me, Jake. I… I forgive you.”

Silence.

Then a sob.