Scott Smith - The Ruins

"You…" He was shoving the knife back toward her. "You…"

"I can't, Eric."

"Please…" He had her hand, the knife; he was pressing them together. "Please…"

It was over, Stacy knew-Eric's life. All he had left here was torment. He wanted her help, was desperate for it. And to ignore his pleading, to sit back and let him suffer his way slowly into death, simply because she was too squeamish, too terrified to do what so clearly needed to be done, couldn't this be seen as a sort of sin? She had it in her power to ease his distress, yet she was choosing not to. So, in some way, wasn't she responsible for his agony?

Who am I? she was thinking once again. Am I still me?

"Where?" she asked.

He took her hand, the one with the knife in it, brought it to his chest. "Here…" He set the tip of the blade so that it was resting next to his sternum. "Just…push…"

It would've been so easy to pull the knife away, toss it aside, and Stacy was telling her body to do this, ordering it into motion. But it wasn't listening; it wasn't moving.

"Please…" Eric whispered.

She closed her eyes. Am I still me?

"Please…"

And then she did it: she leaned forward, shoving down upon the knife with all her weight.

Pain.

For an instant, that was all Eric was conscious of, as if something had exploded inside his chest. He could see Stacy above him, looking so frightened, so tearful. He was trying to speak, trying to say Thank you and I'm sorry and I love you, but the words weren't coming.

They'd gone to a roadside zoo in Cancún one afternoon, as a lark. It had held no more than a dozen animals, one of which was labeled a zebra, though it was clearly a donkey, with black stripes painted on its hide. Some of the stripes had drip marks. While the four of them stood staring at it, the animal had suddenly braced its legs and peed, a tremendous torrent. Amy and Stacy had both collapsed into giggles. For some reason, this was what came to Eric now-the donkey relieving itself, the girls grabbing at each other, the sound of their laughter.

Thank you, he was still struggling to say. I'm sorry. I love you.

And the pain was slowly easing…everything was…moving further away…further away…further away…

The vine claimed his body. Stacy didn't try to fight it; she knew there was no point.

The sun was directly overhead; she guessed she had six more hours or so before it would begin to set. She remembered Mathias's words-"How can we say for certain that it won't be today?"-and tried to draw some hope from them. She'd be okay as long as it was light. It was the dark that frightened her, the prospect of lying alone in that tent, too terrified to sleep.

She shouldn't have been the one to survive, she knew; it should've been Jeff. He wouldn't have been scared to watch the sun start its long journey westward. Food and water and shelter-he would've had a plan for all of these, different from hers, which wasn't really a plan at all.

She sat just outside the tent and ate the remaining supplies-the pretzels, the two protein bars, the raisins, the tiny packets of saltines-washing them down with the can of Coke, the bottles of iced tea.

Everything-she finished everything.

She stared out across the clearing and thought of the many others who'd died in this place, these strangers whose mounds of bones dotted the hillside. Each of them had gone through his or her own ordeal here. So much pain, so much desperation, so much death.

Fleeing headlong from a burning building-could that be called a plan?

Stacy could remember how they'd talked about suicide late one night, all four of them, more drunk than not, choosing prospective methods for themselves. She'd been slouched on her bed, leaning against Eric. Amy and Jeff had been on the floor, playing a halfhearted game of backgammon. Jeff, ever efficient, had told them about pills and a plastic bag-it was both painless and reliable, he claimed. Eric proposed a shotgun, its barrel in his mouth, a toe on the trigger. Amy had been drawn to the idea of falling from a great height, but rather than jumping, she wanted someone to push her, and they argued back and forth over whether this could count as suicide. Finally, she surrendered, choosing carbon monoxide instead, a car idling in an empty garage. Stacy's fantasy was more elaborate: a rowboat, far out to sea, weights to bear her body down. It was the idea of vanishing she found so attractive, the mystery she'd leave behind.

They'd been joking, of course. Playing.

Stacy could feel the caffeine from the Coke, the iced tea; she was becoming jittery with it. She held her hands up before her face, and they were shaking.

There was no rowboat here, of course, no idling car or shotgun or bottle of pills. She had the drop into the shaft. She had the rope hanging from the windlass. She had the Mayans waiting at the bottom of the hill with their arrows and their bullets.

And then there was the knife, too.

How can we say for certain that it won't be today?

She found her sunshade, used the roll of duct tape to repair the damage the storm had wrought upon it. She retrieved the bottle of tequila from the center of the clearing. Then she set off down the trail.

Carrying the knife.

The Mayans turned to appraise her as she approached: her bloodstained clothes, her trembling hands. She sat at the edge of the clearing, the knife in her lap, the sunshade propped against her shoulder. She uncapped the bottle of tequila, took a long swallow.

It would've been nice if she could've figured out a way to fashion some sort of warning for those who were yet to come. She would've liked that, to be the one whose cleverness and foresight was responsible for saving a stranger's life. But she'd seen that pan with its single word of caution scraped across its bottom; she knew others had tried and failed at this, and she saw no reason why she should be any different. All she could hope was that the mute fact of her presence here, the low mound of her bones sitting at the path's mouth, would signal the proper note of peril.

She drank. She waited. Above her, the sun eased steadily westward.

No, you couldn't really call it a plan at all.

Stacy spilled some of the tequila onto the knife's blade, scrubbed at it with her shirt. It was silly, she knew-both pointless and hopeless-but she wanted it to be clean.

She grew calmer as the day drew toward dusk. Her hands stopped shaking. She was scared of many things-of what might come afterward, most of all-but not of the pain. The pain didn't frighten her.

When the sun finally touched the western horizon, the sky abruptly changed, taking on a reddish hue, and Stacy knew that she'd waited long enough. The Greeks weren't coming, not today. She thought about the approaching darkness, pictured herself once more alone in the tent, listening to whatever noises the night might offer, and she knew she didn't have a choice.

She thought briefly about praying- for what, forgiveness? -only to realize she had no one to pray to. She didn't believe in God. All her life she'd been saying that, instinctively, unthinkingly, but now, for the first time-about to do what she was about to do-she could look inside and claim the words with total assurance. She didn't believe.

She started with her left arm.

The first cut was tentative, exploratory. Even here, at the very end, Stacy persisted in being herself, never leaping when she could wade. It hurt more than she'd anticipated. That was okay, though-that was fine-she knew she could bear it. And the pain made it real in a way that it hadn't been before, gave these last moments an appropriate heft. She cut deeper the second time, starting at the base of her wrist and drawing the blade firmly toward her elbow.