The Suicide King

by Kevin Ahearn

conclusion

“Whatever the worth of Man, I am one, and as long as evergreen trees grew out of the earth, I would always be. Admittedly, I have been tempted to live out the life of a woman, just once, to see what it was like, to experience the fullness of the other sex, but I never did. Was it that I felt that Man was better, superior to Woman? In the beginning I believed so; tradition dies hard. Yet with each new life and every new woman I loved, I soon discovered that we each make our own equality in our own way. Whoever we become is up to us.

“With one exception. I became a black man only once and for a very short time. It was not the poverty or the powerlessness of his being that infuriated me, but that those around him had conspired to ensure that he would never be given the opportunity to escape his fate. I had my evergreen needles.

“With each new life I grew more careful, more cautious, more aware that death was stalking me every moment and that my very next heartbeat could be my last. To suddenly drop from a fatal flaw in my latest brain or a malfunction of my heart, to have death pounding at my door and my evergreen needles out of reach...The slightest tap, real or imagined, would have my fingers dancing in the bowl.

“Still, I’ve had my share of close calls.

“Around 1780 in the New World, was it my royal curiosity or my compulsive nature to seek out the new and the untried, to forever explore the outermost boundaries of Man’s reach?

“I found the handsome, young man with a musket at his head. I had no way of knowing it then, but this would be the start of a masculine trend. To end one’s life with a gun: no more falling on a sword and the noose had become more and more out of fashion. As for poison or the slashing of one’s wrists — how feminine!

“Perhaps this unfortunate lad had lost his lady or all his money or his lands. Not until I became him did I discover that his body was wracked with an incurable disease. The constant pain was almost unendurable. To the needles.

“About a century later I came upon another young man, seeming healthy with the barrel of gun in his mouth. This time a six-shooter. Ah, progress! Seconds after I became him, a group of angry men broke into his deep woods cabin and seized me. Too late I found out that I had taken the body of a murderer whose date with justice had been long overdue.

“My trial was swift, but fair. As was the verdict. Found guilty of killing three men, a woman and a child, I was sentenced to hang the next morning. Surrounded by forests and not a single needle within my grasp.

“If they’d have given you twenty years, I’d have put a bullet in your brain before you ever left the courthouse,” declared the Sheriff through the bars of my jail cell. “God knows you have no heart!”

“I understand that nothing I could possibly say, no apology I could possibly make would make any difference to you or anyone else,” I told him tearfully. “May my death be some consolation to those whom I have offended.”

“Don’t give me any of your lip,” he barked back. “Consider yourself lucky we’re not as inhuman as you are. What do you want for your last meal?”

“My ‘last meal’?”

“A tradition we keep to remind ourselves we are not like those we condemn. My wife’ll fix you up a steak and baked potatoes, if you like. She makes a great apple pie.”

“I thank you,” I said gratefully, thinking quickly. “But instead of food, might I be given a bowl full of evergreen needles?”

“Huh. Whatever for?”

“My father, the bravest and most gentle man I have ever known, was a lumberjack, struck and killed by a falling tree when I was only six. Though I have given him nothing to be proud of, I’d like to think that wherever his spirit may be, it will be comforted in knowing that in my final night in this world, I was thinking of him.”

“I got a well-cooked steak, three baked potatoes, some fresh peas, a slice of delicious apple pie, and a bowlful of evergreen needles.

“The next morning, the townsfolk had no way of knowing that I was almost as disappointed as they were when they discovered the empty corpse with its hand dipped in the needles. That vile blaggard deserved to swing!

“The very first time I beheld an airplane, I was determined to fly, but only in relative peacetime. Between the great wars, I finally took the chance and there I was, sitting in a seat thousands of feet off the ground and my heart in the clouds.

“Suddenly one of the engines caught fire and the machine went into a spin, plummeting towards the earth faster than a hunting falcon. A fraction of a second before my borrowed body was to be obliterated, my right hand found my magic escape.

“I still fly, and keep my pouch handy.

“How often I had to adapt as times changed. I had never been much of a horseman, but no sooner that I had at long last mastered the skill, when the automobile showed up. Cantankerous device. And dangerous! I stuck to trains as often as possible and rarely took a taxi.

“Through it all, not for an hour or a minute or even a split-second did I ever tire of life. On beyond the cowardice of my inherited selves, how could anyone not treasure every instant of existence? Yes, I’ve known poverty and pain and unbearable as both can be, they’ve got to be better than what I don’t know: death.

“And what happens after that? Where does my spirit go when all the bodies have all gone? After all humanity commits suicide? The longer I’m in this world, the more I’m led to believe that could happen. No. Never as long I live!

“I sampled one religion after another and while all seemingly meant well, if there were a God, how could He be exclusively known by one sect and no other? With each passing life, Man had discovered more and more about his existence in the vast universe. Humanity is but a single species among millions living on a single planet in orbit around a star, one of billions. Surely there had to be an almighty power at the root of life, but how could anybody or any religious group know the Creator of the universe?

“From my days when I was King, religion had changed so little: worship, pray, obey, donate. Don’t worry about life in this world; it’s only preparation for the next. What is ‘next’? Between lives, have I been there? Is there nowhere else to go? Where could it be? Would my spirit be welcome?

“A half a dozen years into the New Millennium, I left behind my last body after twenty-five years, many of them very happy. But when the doctor said, ‘It could be cancer. We’ll have to run more tests,’ I reached for my evergreens.

“And if I couldn’t have? Would I have been able to endure the disease? I had full medical benefits. What if I hadn’t? Who would pay or would I just be left to die? How does anyone live in this new day and age?

“The toil of life had gotten much easier, but coping had gotten more and more complicated. Minutes out of my last body I knew I’d be able to pick and chose; suicide had become an epidemic among healthy young males. Though there had been some improvements in society, I still felt I lacked the strength and tolerance to occupy a black body, but becoming an urban gang member intrigued me: I’d rise to royalty yet again!

Time was running short, but Hope flies like a shooting star.

“Ah, now there’s an appropriate specimen!”

III

Michael James Thomas, age 19, had decided to die a teenager. Sitting on his dormroom bed, pistol in hand, he positioned the weapon for a temple shot.

“A university student!” said the King’s spirit, preparing to enter Michael’s body. “At last I’ve got my chance...to grow up and learn how to be a lawyer.”

As in court, it was all in the timing.

Michael fingered the trigger. The King’s spirit made its move.

But as if an invisible, impenetrable wall had been thrown up between Hope and the boy, his spirit was blocked.

“Who dares defy my royal destiny?” shouted the King’s spirit.

“I do, Your Majesty,” said the spirit of the young farmboy from centuries ago.

“As do I,” said the spirit of the failing artist.

“And I,” added the spirit of the corrupted politician.

“And I,” said the spirit of the thieving accountant.

“So do we all,” said the chorus of the spirits of the self-killed. “You must be destroyed for all time.”

“Never!” said the King’s. “Make way, you hopeless spirits. I must live forever!”

Michael James Thomas took the gun from his head and held it in front of him with both hands. The weapon was a cheap, imitation chromeplated automatic and the boy could see his reflection in it.

His empty, sorry face said it all, that Michael would never amount to anything. Not a word he would ever say or write would last past the moment it was out of earshot or as fast as the delete button could be struck. No idea or concept or notion he would ever have would even be considered by anyone. Whether he lived for a hundred years or only for another minute would make no difference. It would be as if he had never been alive in the first place.

“Begone you hopeless wretches who surrendered your lives without a fight,” said the King’s spirit. “I only accepted what you first abandoned and fled from.”

“But you punished me more than I had ever suffered in life,” said the spirit of the brokenhearted farmboy. “With royal courage and confidence, you found the strength to endure and make something wonderful out of my life. And I had to watch every moment of it. If only I...”

“I did nothing you couldn’t have,” said the spirit of the King. “Courage every man is born with. You can’t allow it to be beaten out of you. Allow nothing to take away your will to live.”

“You painted magnificent pictures I never had the talent or the vision for,” said the spirit of the failed artist. “I’ve been seeing them ever since.”

“Work you could have done had you not lost your confidence,” said the spirit of the King. “You had the talent and the vision all along, but you never found the confidence to push it through.”

“You went to jail instead of me,” said the spirit of the thieving accountant. “But you faced up to my mistakes and came out a new man, ready to start all over and succeeded even beyond my own dreams.”

“That you could have done yourself,” said the spirit of the King. “But you were too afraid and unable to believe that others might forgive you and give you another chance.”

“Easy for you to say,” argued the corrupt politician. “You faced the humiliation I had brought upon myself and then went on to work for the people I had cheated until all amends had been made.”

“As you should have done,” said the spirit of the King. “The strength I found to overcome your many weaknesses was within you from the start.”

“But none of us are you, Your Majesty,” said the farmboy’s spirit.

“Do any of you believe I wasn’t saddled with your problems and your tragedies?” asked the spirit of the King. “I was as frightened and as frustrated and as despondent as any of you, but I wanted something more than anything else in the world: to be alive. To go on living. And I did!”

“No more,” said the chorus of the spirits of the self-killed. “Your reign ends now and forever.”

Michael James Thomas remembered buying the pistol a week ago. “I need a gun to shoot a rat,” he said to the dealer who showed him just the thing.

But the barrel was too small, he thought, and the ammunition not up to the job.

“Make that a damn dog,” said Michael and got what he wanted.

“Make way, hopeless spirits all!” demanded the King’s. “I have to get to that boy before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late,” said the chorus. “Before it ever came to this, somebody else should have noticed. Somebody else should have cared. Somebody else should have taken the time.”

“I am that ‘somebody else’,” pleaded the King’s spirit. “Let me get through to him.”

Michael put the gun back to his temple. All his life he’d been trying to figure out who he was and where he’d fit in and he couldn’t. Who’d want anything to do with the likes of him? He had nothing to offer anyone. No potential to live up to. No talents to develop. Nothing. At this moment it came to him — exactly who he was — he had it right: a damn dog!

A calm came over Michael who had no way of knowing that his spirit had abandoned him.

“Wait! Don’t leave now!” said the spirit of the King. “If I cannot get to him, he’ll die.”

“Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” raged the fleeing spirit of Michael James Thomas. “There’s nothing worth anything left.”

“Michael, you still possess the greatest of all gifts: your youth. Any man my age would gladly trade places with you,” said the King’s spirit. “You’re just not old enough to understand that. The only way to truly understand the glory of youth is to get old enough to look back on it. You’ve yet to even begin to live.”

“Give up! Throw away your life and join us,” said the chorus of the self-killed. “Yeah, you. You damn dog!”

Time ticked away. The spirit of the King fought on to break through, but he was beginning to feel his own spirit failing.

“Don’t let me die. I must go on,” begged the King’s spirit. “I must live forever. I am Hope!”

Blam!