The Tick

DISCLAIMER: Features mental health problems and suicide.

The spring weather, neither hot nor cold, seemed to put the brakes on the never-ending tick of the clock. However, that only gave me more time to process what had happened.

It seems like something that only happens to other people, but when suicide happens to people you love, you normally get rocked to your core. 

The day was gloomy, a cliché that made the funeral even more insufferable than it already was. 

At last, the funeral ended, and I could hopefully go home and drink myself to sleep. While traveling on the backroads from the cemetery leading to my house, I noted how I had already forgotten most of the details about the burial. It was like my brain wanted to forget, and I definitely wasn’t going to protest against it. It’s not like I wanted to think about my best friend being lowered into the ground, and eventually rotting into just a skeleton after a few months. 

When I arrived at my house, I noticed the mailbox’s lid was ajar, and within I could see what looked like an envelope. I walked to my mailbox past my dying, yellowing lawn that had probably been dead since last summer, and over my cracked asphalt driveway I should have hired someone to repair long ago.

The envelope happened to not actually be an envelope, but turned out to be a folded up piece of paper. There was no post address on it, so it’d probably been hand delivered. On it was written “To: Alex” on the front. Oh no. This definitely wouldn’t be more good news for Alex.

“Dear Alex,

How’ve you been? You never respond to me over text anymore, and I’ve been worried about you. You seem so sad now. It’s like the old version of you kinda just died and withered away, and a new, way more depressing version of you appeared in the place of yourself, you know? Anyways, I was hoping to cheer you up, I dunno what you want to do, but I guess I could just come over and hang out? I’ll do whatever you want to do, since I guess you probably deserve a treat. Anyways, I’ll see you later, maybe. Bye!

-From: Lukas.”

Oh.

This was from Lukas. Too bad Alex was put in the ground little under an hour ago. I guess Lukas delivered his message a little too late to do anything useful, just like me. I could’ve helped, you know? I live next door to him, and I’m his best friend, yet I never went over to help him out. Anyways, I guess I’ll tell Lukas about Alex and how he delivered the letter to the wrong address. He should know, since he was good friends with Alex as well. He’s not fond of me, but he might listen to me for once. 

I leave my car outside. I’m too tired and indifferent to use the garage, which is one of those old-fashioned ones you have to pull up. I open my door with my key and I head inside. 

It’s an absolute mess. And I’m hungry. I open the fridge to find some Chinese leftovers from yesterday, and I plop them in the microwave. As I’m waiting on my food, I reread the letter, which is still in my hand. 

Reading it again, something feels … off. Lukas doesn’t write like this. Also, the wording just sounds a little weird. “Died and withered away?” “More depressing version of you?” No one else knew Alex was depressed up until he was gone. And Lukas did have a falling out with us before he died. It’s probably my brain just trying to find odd patterns in just a normal invitation. And at this point my leftovers have probably gone cold again. 

The leftover Chinese tasted horrible, but it wasn’t like there was anything better in the fridge regardless. I spent the rest of the day inside my bedroom, curled up in my bed, watching Psych, and taking a shot every time I spotted the hidden pineapple. Throughout all of this though, my mind kept going back to the letter. It’s just a little too suspicious for my liking. I guess I can go ask him about it tomorrow. However, I’m only on the sixth episode, and I’d like to continue this knockoff Where’s Waldo until I black out. 

I blacked out. But before that I had managed to send a drunken text that was barely comprehensible to Lukas explaining the whole Alex situation. He had responded at 7:38 am, asking me if I was joking. I hadn’t mustered the courage to tell him I wasn’t. At about nine o’clock, I finally decided to get out of bed. I was tired and hungover, and I definitely needed to get out of bed for a while. The bed had been soaked with my sweat, and there wasn’t a single spot on it that wasn’t warm. The TV was still playing, and it had autoplayed itself to a true crime show. Ew. That stuff was never particularly intriguing to me, and especially not now. 

I headed towards the kitchen, got myself some water, and opened up my fridge. Literally nothing edible within it. I decided to go get some food, and so I searched up some restaurants that I could eat out at. Unfortunately, they were all closed, bar one. Jubilee’s. Jubilee’s was a little 80’s style diner on the outskirts of our town, which is the only town for about 50 miles. So it’s practically in the middle of nowhere. More importantly, it was the place Alex and I would go to hang out and mess around. They were the only restaurant still currently open, despite the tornado that had just gone through town and wrecked a lot of small businesses. I really didn’t have any other options than to go here unless I wanted to go to a grocery store and make my own food. Yeah, that option was definitely off the table.

It had rained last night, which meant that my car was now wet. I saw it as a free car wash. I drove around for 20 minutes through town, trying to not get emotional as I saw places that held fond memories of me and Alex. There’s Eliziabeth park, where Alex had gone missing and consequently started a manhunt which ended when they found Alex hiding in my room. That empty lot that I just passed, yeah, that was where the preschool we first met at once stood. And that’s Lukas’ apartment. I’m definitely not going to tell him in person, since I’m not brave enough for that. Eventually, I arrived at Jubilee’s where I was the only person there.

My favorite waitress, Bess, was waiting at the front for somebody to come in when I made her daydream come true. Her face lit up, excited to be seeing some business.

“Will!” she exclaimed, “You’re the first customer we’ve had in two days. This tornado really hit us hard, huh.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I guess it did.”

“Well anyways,” she continued, “come this way. Your usual seat is open today, as well as every other one. Say, where’s Alex?”

“He killed himself,” I responded.

“Oh. Well, tell his family that I’ll be praying for them, and you need to stay strong through all of this.” She told me after a brief period of silence. 

“I will,” I confirmed, and she went away, seemingly unable to talk to me now that she knew what happened to my friend, even with the lack of any other customers in the restaurant to talk to.

The cut up seats where you can see the padding inside held so much memory. The cheap chipped plastic tables with a wood grain veneer seemed to just fish out all of the remaining memories of Alex I had been trying to suppress. After about five minutes, Bess came back over to my table. No one else had come in. Bess didn’t talk to me the second time she came around, spare asking about what I wanted to order.  I decided to get my usual, a “Jubilee Epic Burger”, which is just cholesterol and fat served in a bun, but comfort food would definitely be a welcome sight right now.

The burger came about ten minutes later, about the same time as Lukas. As soon as he saw me at our usual seat, he didn’t even talk to Bess, he just walked over.

He greeted me as he sat down at the banquette across the table.

“Hey,” he said.

“What are you doing here?” I inquired, but I didn’t expect a response.

“Well, you told me that Alex killed himself, and I knew you were always a sentimental sod, so I thought you would be here. Turns out, I was right. Even if you weren't here, I wanted to relive some memories.”

“Oh,” I mumbled, “well I guess you can ask me any questions you have.”

“I don’t have any questions,” he answered promptly, “I just wanted to confirm with you that he really did it.” 

“Yeah,” I eventually stuttered out, “he did.”

“Well, that settles it then,” he said, and left to go find Bess.

I couldn’t believe his callousness at the situation. He had made the whole thing seem like just some mundane event. I really couldn’t believe it. I quickly grabbed a napkin and wrapped my burger up with it. I’ll just eat it later. 

I spedwalk past the bar where Lukas is currently giving Bess his order, and I make it to the door. However, before my hand could turn the handle, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and find Lukas facing me directly. 

“You know, I don’t think Alex killed himself. He was too happy for someone who was depressed. You want to go to his house later today?”

I’m shocked. How can someone have this little understanding of the human psyche? How insensitive could you get? The second part scared me a little though. We both have the keys to his house, and I’m terrified that he’ll do something messed up in there. So, trying my best to hide my emotions of disgust towards him, I reply,

“I really don’t want to do it, I feel like it’s a bit disrespectful, you know?” I said.

“It’s really not. I just want to make sure there’s nothing he left behind.”

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes,” he responded.

I sighed.

“Fine, you can go, but I’ll be watching you. Is 4 p.m. okay?”

He nods, and takes his hand off my shoulder, finally letting me go.

I regretted the decision almost as soon as I made it. But the other option would be letting him in by himself, and that would definitely be worse. So, I just heaved a sigh on my way out. 

The rest of the day wasn’t really eventful. I spend most of it fretting about the upcoming search through Alex’s house. I wasn’t looking forward to that. But no matter how much I didn’t want it to happen, again, time betrayed me, and eventually led to the clock ticking its way to four o’clock.

I grabbed my stuff and I walked over to Alex’s house. Lukas was already there, almost like he was excited for this. Honestly, it was kinda weird how Lukas spontaneously just wanted to go to his house. It seemed, well, very odd. But I couldn’t back out of it now. I went up to the front door where Lukas was standing. No words were spoken between us, but he acknowledged me with a nod. He inserted the key into the keyhole and opened the door.

There was no smell. I don’t really know what I expected. It wasn’t like his decaying body was in here. I walked towards the living room, where his stained burgundy couch was still sitting. I sat down in it, as far away from the stains as I could possibly be. I was going to monitor Lukas’ activity, but I definitely wasn’t going into Alex’s bedroom. He headed upstairs, where the bedroom was, and I pulled out my phone. I just needed to make sure Lukas wasn’t about to mess up Alex’s house. 

After almost an hour, Lukas had made basically no noise. I could hear him walking around upstairs, but he hadn’t called out or exclaimed. Finally, though, he came down. 

“Hey!” he called out to me. “I found something important!”

“What did you find?” I asked him.

“Well, I found this letter. It was from his therapist. Basically what it says is that he was cured of depression. I also found a letter from his doc-”

He stopped. He dropped the papers onto the floor.

“W-what are you doing?” he asked.

“You shouldn’t have dug around,” I told him. “I tried to stop you, you know.”

“Please, I won’t tell anyone,” he pleaded with me.

I still had the gun pointed at his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. 

“Why are you doing this?” He asked.

“Well, if people find out, it’s kinda going to be a PR disaster, you know? I knew he was depressed. I didn’t do anything. You wanna know why? He was honestly dragging me down. And when your friends are bad, you also turn bad. So, I may have done a little instigation, but not too much. I guess he just couldn’t handle it.” I explained.

“Y-you’re psychotic!” He said.

“Maybe. But you won’t be able to share the news since I guess you’re going to be like Alex now, aren’t you?”

“I should’ve checked the addresses before delivering the letter.” 

“Too bad, so sad. You should learn from your mistakes next time,” I told him.

There was a moment of silence. The clock seemed to tick in slow motion. Then, it stopped.