Penni Jones - Suicide Souls

“What if Oblivion is the absence of pain?”

“I’ve been on my own for a year and they stick me with Sylvia-fucking-Plath. This sucks.” Naomi stands up and marches toward the kitchen.

“What are you doing?” I don’t get up. She can’t really go anywhere. At least I don’t think she can.

“Look. Do me a solid and at least try to make this work. You’re standing between me and my new life. If you don’t like things the second go around, then off yourself again and disappear.” She crosses her arms over her chest, those perfect round boobs, and I once again I find myself wishing for a boner.

“Okay,” I say. No one’s asked anything of me in a very long time.

“Is your dad the last one?” She walks back over to me and sits down with her back against the wall. We’ve been here all day, I think.

“Yeah. Should be.” Maybe. Maybe not. “There might be one more. I’m not sure.”

“One more?” Her eyes grow as wide as an anime character.

“I was sort of seeing this girl. Her name is Daisy. I haven’t seen her yet. But I don’t really know if I’m supposed to.”

“Were you two fucking?” I never knew a girl who used the word “fuck” so loosely when I was alive. It’s taking some getting used to.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m pretty sure you’ll have to watch her grieve. Even if things weren’t serious it had to have messed her up when you decided to stick a gun in your mouth.”

“What if you’re unattractive?” I ask as soon as the question pops in my head.

She glares at me and says, “Excuse me?”

“What if you’re not pretty and don’t have a great body?” It’s never occurred to her. I can tell by the way the question seems to slide down her face.

“I’ll figure it out. I’ll learn how to dress for my type. I’ll figure out the best hair and makeup for my new face.” Her bravado is diminishing.

“What if you’re aggressively unattractive and there’s nothing you can do about it?” I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly overcome with an urge to crush her. To make her understand that nothingness might be preferable to trying again. To living day after day in this miserable shit pile called life, pretending to smile when you’d rather punch everything you see.

She turns her face to me and inches closer. I would be able to feel her breath if she had any. “There’s always something you can do. Always. But maybe it would be nice to not be sexualized by every man who views my tits as permission to call me ‘sweetheart.’ Maybe people will think of me as someone who has autonomous thoughts instead of just blonde hair and a big rack.”

Wow. It’s almost like I’m having ghost-pains for an amputated limb, but in the form of a ghost-boner.

“Why the fuck are you still here?” she asks.

I don’t understand the question. She knows why I’m still here. Is she trying to get back at me by rubbing my face in my failure?

“Because I haven’t finished grief watch?”

“That’s not what I mean, dingus.” She shakes her head. “You were so desperate to get away from here that you shot a gun INTO YOUR MOUTH. Why the actual fuck have you not finished your grief watch if for no other reason than to get out of here?”

My mom walks past us into the kitchen. She turns the oven on for the preheat cycle, which is as long as one sitcom episode.

“I don’t know. Maybe it seemed easier to accept this as my fate.” This. Listening to my parents talk about dinner and watching my dad drink beer. What is wrong with me?

This is more boring than Jamie’s house. More boring than my parent’s house where contemporary Christian music played from a speaker on the bookshelf all day long. Much more boring than Eliza’s, where I could at least watch reruns of Friends . The only upside is I’m not alone, though Luke isn’t very entertaining.

“Did you live anywhere else?” This place is a disaster. It’s the kind of home that’s always on the verge of being uninhabited. Not necessarily abandoned but given up on. No happiness ever happened here.

“Just the college dorm and then an apartment. Neither was any better than this place,” Luke is counting the faded orange flowers on the wallpaper.

I grew up in a brick, middle-class home with taupe walls and a dedicated powder room. Before I died, I lived in a decent apartment. It wasn’t fancy, but I decorated it with the best furniture and art I could find at the thrift stores and Target. There is a rush that comes with beautifying a living space on a small budget. I don’t think anyone has ever told Luke or his parents, though.

“Thirty-two!”

“Shit.” He starts over at one.

It’s mean, but after that unattractive bullshit, he totally deserves it.

“You died before the internet got good. You died during dial-up.” I don’t know how long we’ve been here. I don’t know if it’s possible to lose my mind after I’m dead, but I’m starting to believe it is.

“It got better?” He looks at me with his eyebrows scrunched together.

“So much better. But also worse because it was a constant distraction and a constant source of misinformation.”

He nods and turns back to his faded orange flowers.

“Twenty-eight, twelve, thirty-seven.”

“Would you please stop that?” He sighs and stomps, or at least tries to do both but neither really turns out right.

I would kill myself all over again to get out of this house. It’s a wonder he made it to the age of twenty.

“What did you expect to happen when you blew your brains out?” I ask.

Luke stops counting again. This time at one hundred and ten. He’s made it past two hundred a couple of times.

Maybe his dad moved out when we weren’t watching. Maybe we’re in the wrong place, bored and waiting for the creepy Death Shadow. Maybe we’re not even dead and this is all just a dream like a reverse Jacob’s Ladder scenario.

I had no idea that death would be so boring.

“My mom took me to church when I was a kid. Dad was usually too hungover to go. All those stories about God, this grandfather figure who took care of us in life and death. I don’t know if I still believed it when I grew up. But I wanted to. I thought there would be peace on the other side. A kind of permanent Zen.” His eyes are a shock of aquamarine, and I don’t know how I didn’t see that before. “You?”

“I didn’t really think it through. But I liked the idea of some sort of Zen.”

“Maybe the darkness is the Zen.” He starts counting again.

Naomi doesn’t see the Shadow behind the curtain. Maybe it’s only for me, and she’s not privileged enough to feel its constant threat or subtle pull.

“I’ve jerked off in every corner of this house.” I don’t know why those words come out of my mouth. It’s a surprise revelation, and now I have someone to tell these things to.

“Of course, you did.” Naomi sits crossed-legged on the floor, humming the theme song from The Muppets . “I caught my brother fucking a pack of lunchmeat once.”

I struggle for a response and all I can offer is, “He didn’t take it out of the package first?”

My dad finally walks in the house. He throws a duffle bag down, and I’m glad to know that he has been gone for more than a day. That my concept of time isn’t so destroyed that it’s only been an hour in this room with Naomi and her snark.

“He’ll grab a beer or six from the fridge. Then he’ll sit down.”

Naomi stops humming and looks at my dad. “No offense, but he looks gross. I bet he smells like beer and Gouda.”