Lost in a Dream
He/him - Metal head
- Feb 22, 2020
- 2,001
3 years ago I started writing this story but never finished it. I made a significant amount of progress but stopped suddenly because I lost the motivation to continue until today when I suddenly felt like going back to it. Mostly all I did today was fix minor things in the old chapters, but after going through them, I've continued writing the story from where I left off. It's about a fictional suicide forum that is very similar to Sasu and members from the fictional site meet each other in real life by accident. The story does get very dark at times, but that is to be expected I suppose. There are some light-hearted moments in the story as well so hopefully someone likes those.
I'm going to share the first 2 chapters here just to see if there is any interest in it. The story takes place in 2023 because that is when I wrote it.
LonelyOfficeWorker33 only had one hour left before he had to return to the daily grind, but he was still sitting in his bed, clad in shorts and a worn-out T-shirt, browsing the forum he joined just a few months before on his smartphone. Its name was Ready2CheckOut?.org, and he often found himself browsing threads containing detailed information about how to end his life in the section called, "Yes". Most days, he felt certain that he was ready to go, but sometimes he felt unsure. On those days, he sometimes read other people's threads in the "Maybe" section, but then something new would happen in the real world that made him feel certain about suicide all over again. He felt trapped and had no hope for the future.
He still needed to make himself some breakfast, take a shower, and head out the door, but he had no motivation to do any of those things, so he just kept browsing. He was in the process of reading a thread discussing Sodium Nitrite, when he suddenly received a notification that someone he followed had posted something. Curious, he clicked on the bell icon at the top of the screen. As soon as he did, he was saddened to see that it was the post of a heart broken, elderly man he'd been following since the beginning of his site membership: HippieBus62.
LonelyOfficeWorker33 (whose real name was Jeremy), was saddened by the title of the post he clicked on – "Anyone Else Lost a Spouse? How do you deal with it?"
Jeremy furrowed his eyebrows at the screen while scrolling through a thread that was created by a new member, describing how they wanted to die after losing their husband to cancer. This person also had doubts about suicide, and they were really struggling, so the first reply from HippieBus62 was a welcoming sight for them. He had the profile picture of a Volkswagen bus covered in colorful paint, peace signs, and flowers, displaying his love for the vehicle, and his freedom-loving spirit always showed itself in his words.
"Hey, I'm sorry about your husband," HippieBus62 said. "I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but it doesn't. When I lost my sweet Mary, she went quick, but it still hurts like hell after all these years. She didn't suffer long thankfully, so I can't imagine what it's like to watch someone you love so much waste away like that.
I kept some of her things and I talk to her, even though she isn't there. Sometimes I light up a joint and drink her favorite beer just to feel close to her. That's how I deal with it, but some days it just isn't enough. If you still have some of his things, maybe you can try something similar? I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope you can find a way to recover from this. Whatever you end up deciding, I'll support it 100%"
Reading the post caused Jeremy to get choked up, and he felt an ache in his throat as tears blurred his vision. Although his girlfriend had left him willingly, without dying, he still felt just as broken and empty as the people interacting in the thread. He didn't feel comfortable replying unfortunately, so he resorted to reacting to the two posts he read with hugging emojis, before logging out and closing the browser. Since it was a private browser, his online history was deleted automatically, so he set his smartphone down on the mattress beside him.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Jeremy swallowed hard and tried to calm himself as he spoke in a soft, shaky voice. "Fuck, why does that shit happen? It's fuckin bullshit…"
At last, he made the decision to get out of bed and crossed the hall to his bathroom. After doing his business, he stepped in front of the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He had dark patches under his eyes, the disheveled mass of brown hair behind his receding hairline was an absolute mess, and the scraggly strands that poked out of his face told him that he was due for a shave. He had taken three days off from work to improve his mental health supposedly (one day for an hour of therapy), but most of that time was spent eating junk food, sleeping, and crying his eyes out over a beer bottle while watching old game shows on TV.
Jeremy narrowed his eyes at the mirror as he tried thinking of a joke to distract himself from his problems. "Okay, you lazy dick… Time to get ready for work!"
It wasn't much of a joke after all; he merely insulted himself. Still, he thought it was a little amusing, so he smirked at the mirror and chuckled. Then he undressed, took his shower, and got into his work attire after drying off and shaving his face. Leaving his bedroom and bathroom behind, he went out into the living room of his messy apartment, where he stepped over empty beer bottles, a few pizza boxes, and an empty carton of ice cream on his way to the kitchen. Directly above his electric stove and oven (which had eggshell pieces, stains, and dried up noodles all over it) was a cupboard where he kept a small stash of granola bars and his jar of Sodium Nitrite.
After pulling the door open, Jeremy smiled at the box of granola bars. "Hell yeah! A breakfast fit for a king…"
He grabbed a couple from their box, but then he paused to look at the big mason jar full of white powder at the back of the cupboard. It had no label on it now, so it would be impossible to identify at first glance, and he kept it well hidden behind packages of noodles and cans of soup. Satisfied that his SN was safe, he slammed the door shut before returning to his bathroom to inspect his outfit once more; his khakis, thinning brown hair, dress shirt, and blue tie were all in order. This meant it was time to get back out there and be the best wage slave he could be, just so he could keep paying taxes to Uncle Sam and keep up with the bills.
No matter how many years passed by, HippieBus62 never could forget the day he lost his young, beautiful wife just a few months after they got married. It was Memorial Day weekend in 1992, and he was only 30, but Mary was 29. The two of them were cruising down the interstate in HippieBus62's blue Mustang in holiday traffic, and they were in high spirits, despite feeling so cramped by all the vehicles around them.
When shit hit the fan, they were in the left lane with a semi-truck hauling a load of grocery store produce to their right, and a dark green minivan directly ahead of them. In that vehicle, the driver and front passenger seemed to be yelling at each other; they were making aggressive hand gestures, and sometimes they turned their heads to say something nasty to one another. Mary, being the kind-hearted soul she was, immediately started to worry about the people in front of them.
HippieBus62 (whose real name was Calvin) thought his wife's voice sounded like music, and when she spoke, he couldn't help but glance at her and smile. He never forgot the way the sunlight glistened on her long, black hair, as it shone in through the car windows, while the clam shell that hung from her necklace bounced up and down over the front of her rock and roll t-shirt whenever the car hit a bump. Her pretty face and bright smile melted his heart every time he saw her, and he could never have imagined living his life without her.
Mary's smile had faded from being worried about the people in the van, however, and she pointed at them to get her husband's attention. "I hope they're gonna be okay. If they keep that shit up, they're gonna cause an accident!"
Calvin glanced at his wife and smiled, but he remained silent. When he looked ahead at the minivan again, that is when he realized how intense their screaming match really was. Unsure of what to do in that situation, he reached up with one hand and started to anxiously play with his bushy, black mustache. The driver of the van appeared to be a middle-aged guy, mostly bald, and the passenger was a woman, possibly his wife. They were jabbing their index fingers at each other, and then the driver lifted his hand, threatening to smack his passenger with the back of it.
"If that dick hits her, I swear to God!" Mary cried, suddenly enraged. "I'll give him a new hole to shit out of!"
Not sure what to do, Calvin slammed his hand down on the steering wheel and honked the horn at the people in front of him. This caught the attention of the driver up ahead, who snarled back at them through his rear window. He scowled at Calvin directly for a few seconds, but then he turned back towards the front and slammed on his brakes, causing Calvin to do the same.
"Motherfucker!" Calvin cried. "That son of a bitch brake checked us!"
The driver ahead of them let up on his brakes, and his passenger yelled at him. Mary noticed that her husband had an iron grip on the steering wheel, so she had to try calming him down before things escalated.
She reached over and ran her fingers through Calvin's mullet to distract him, but her tone remained serious. "Don't let him get under your skin! You're better than that asshole. Just keep tailing him and we'll call the police when we get a chance."
Not wanting to make things worse, Calvin glanced at her, nodded, and then looked ahead at the minivan once more, just as the passenger pointed ahead through the windshield and screamed something. About a second later, the van took a sudden turn to the left and started swerving.
"Oh, fuck!" Calvin cried, just as both tires on the passenger side of the minivan blew.
Then the whole thing started to flip, revealing the jagged, broken 2x4 that lay horizontally across most of the left lane. Nails poked out of it everywhere and it went flying straight towards Calvin's Mustang, just as the vehicle ahead of it hit the ground and rolled multiple times before flipping over into the right lane, directly in front of the semi. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, but he still plowed through the van, creating a shower of sparks as crumpled steel and shards of glass scraped across the pavement.
As soon as the 2x4 went airborne, it turned and blasted straight through the middle of Calvin's windshield. It missed the couple by mere inches as it passed between them and turned the car into a shish kebab, but that was only the beginning of what was to come. The truck driver beside them had taken a turn to the left after smashing into the minivan, and Calvin had unintentionally turned his steering wheel towards the right, the moment the plank of wood impaled his car. He ended up crashing into the side of the truck's trailer, crumpling the front of his vehicle and flipping the back end upwards. This caused the giant, metal box full of fruits and vegetables to jackknife, as the truck driver lost complete control. The whole thing ended up flipping onto its right side and rolling, while the twisted hunk of scrap metal that was once a minivan blasted the strip of grass between the northbound and southbound lanes like a meteor, launching a cloud of dirt up into the air.
Calvin and Mary screamed all throughout, and glass flew all around them after they crashed and jettisoned the 2x4 out the rear window. The back end of the Mustang never went high enough to flip the car upside down, but when the back tires hit the pavement, they landed on pieces of twisted metal and popped, leaving the two of them trapped like sitting ducks. All the people coming up from behind swerved to try and miss them; some went off the road and crashed into each other, others smashed into the flipped semi-truck, but a large, red pickup that was unable to avoid the Mustang smashed into the passenger side of the car. The only thing Calvin could do was watch as the large pickup flew straight at them, turning to the left as the driver tried to miss them, and then slamming sideways into the passenger door. That whole side of the car caved in, killing Mary instantly, and he couldn't do anything but scream her name, before suddenly sitting up in bed.
His worn-out t-shirt and pajama pants were soaked in sweat, and his chest was heaving as he blinked his eyes and tried to remember where he was. When he realized that he had been reliving his past trauma all over again, he was brought forward in time nearly 31 years, to the start of 2023. This was the point where his mullet was gone, his hair was gray and disheveled, and he looked just as old and worn out as he felt. As the grief from losing his wife washed over him all over again, he buried his face in his hands and sobbed. After a few minutes, he calmed down enough to lower his hands to his lap and take a deep breath, but he was still devastated after witnessing his wife die for what seemed like the millionth time.
Realizing he needed to get up and clear his head, he got out of his bed and stepped over to his bathroom door, which was right next to the closet in his bedroom. He went inside, turned on the sink, and cupped his hands under the water so he could rinse his face. Once he calmed himself down some more, he looked at the mirror in front of him, which had spider web cracks all over it from punching it a few weeks earlier. He looked at the smooth sections of glass that remained and saw that his eyes were bloodshot, his face was pale, and long, tangled strands of gray hair hung down over his forehead.
"Fuck," was the only word that came to mind, so Calvin said it out loud and left the bathroom again.
Thinking fresh air might do him some good, he left his bedroom and headed down the hallway towards the stairwell that took him to the lower floor of his house. The place was kind of big, and the retirement money he collected from being an army veteran helped a lot, but sometimes it seemed too big, and it always felt empty, even though he had furniture. The stairs led down to a carpeted hallway that branched off to the right and left; one way led to his living room, and the other to his kitchen. Directly ahead was the front door of his house that led out to the front porch, and that was the door he went for first.
Sitting beside the door was a small table with a nearly empty pack of cigs, a small lighter, and the urn containing his wife's ashes resting on top. Calvin snatched the pack and the lighter before stepping outside and closing the door behind him. Once he was outside in the sunlight, he could hear birds chirping in the trees, and kids laughing in the distance, but hearing them didn't improve his mood at all.
Looking down into the pack, he realized he only had two cigarettes left. "Shit… Guess these will have to do."
He pulled one out and stuck it between his lips before lighting it up and taking a hit. Hoping to relax a little, he took a seat on the lawn chair that he kept on his porch, so he could enjoy the crisp, cool, early morning air of spring. By now, all the trees had buds on them again, and a few were sprouting leaves, but those things did little to ease Calvin's mind. He had lived a long life and seen a lot of shit, but nothing else he experienced came close to the pain of losing his wife so long ago. It never got easier with time, only harder, and now he was feeling an overwhelming urge to get the 12 gauge out of his gun safe and jam the barrel in his mouth.
By the time he finished his last two cigarettes, it was already starting to warm up a bit outside. He knew he would have to get more eventually, but at least he smoked enough to keep himself sane for awhile. He still wanted to die, but he felt like he had the patience to play the waiting game a little bit longer, just to see if there was any point in continuing his miserable existence.
After taking the final puff from his last cigarette, he stuck the butt down into an ash tray on a small table next to his chair. Then he put his hands on the knees of his pajama pants and got up with a sigh. After heading back inside, he turned and headed down the hallway that led to his kitchen, where he kept his reading glasses and a laptop sitting on a table by a window. After sitting down and opening his computer, he powered it on and put his reading glasses over the bridge of his nose. He had to wait a bit for it to start up, but then he went through his usual morning routine of logging into Ready2CheckOut? and browsing the site for any topics that caught his eye. He had a few notifications, but they were all from people liking his posts, so ignoring those, he went ahead and got to browsing.
Before long, he stumbled upon a thread that was posted by someone who lost their spouse to cancer, and he absolutely had to leave a reply. After reading their story, he felt their pain and it brought tears to his eyes, just like his nightmare had done a short while earlier. He had to pause and take off his glasses to wipe the tears away, but after putting them back on, he started typing away on the keyboard.
He did his best to comfort them, while also sharing his own experiences to let them know they weren't alone. After submitting his reply, he went back to browsing the site, but it only took a few minutes for the original poster and LonelyOfficeWorker33 to respond with hugging emojis. Seeing a familiar user like the post brought a smile to the old man's face, and he stayed on the site for a few more minutes, before logging off and setting his reading glasses back down on the table.
I hope someone likes these first 2 chapters. After I pasted the text into the spoilers, there were a lot of formatting issues I had to fix so hopefully I got them all. Feel free to leave some feedback! While I could try publishing this, I don't think I want to share it anywhere but here because honestly, most of the world probably isn't ready to handle what I've written on these pages. If there's enough interest, I will post Chapters 3 and 4 in a few days.
I'm going to share the first 2 chapters here just to see if there is any interest in it. The story takes place in 2023 because that is when I wrote it.
1
LonelyOfficeWorker33 only had one hour left before he had to return to the daily grind, but he was still sitting in his bed, clad in shorts and a worn-out T-shirt, browsing the forum he joined just a few months before on his smartphone. Its name was Ready2CheckOut?.org, and he often found himself browsing threads containing detailed information about how to end his life in the section called, "Yes". Most days, he felt certain that he was ready to go, but sometimes he felt unsure. On those days, he sometimes read other people's threads in the "Maybe" section, but then something new would happen in the real world that made him feel certain about suicide all over again. He felt trapped and had no hope for the future.
He still needed to make himself some breakfast, take a shower, and head out the door, but he had no motivation to do any of those things, so he just kept browsing. He was in the process of reading a thread discussing Sodium Nitrite, when he suddenly received a notification that someone he followed had posted something. Curious, he clicked on the bell icon at the top of the screen. As soon as he did, he was saddened to see that it was the post of a heart broken, elderly man he'd been following since the beginning of his site membership: HippieBus62.
LonelyOfficeWorker33 (whose real name was Jeremy), was saddened by the title of the post he clicked on – "Anyone Else Lost a Spouse? How do you deal with it?"
Jeremy furrowed his eyebrows at the screen while scrolling through a thread that was created by a new member, describing how they wanted to die after losing their husband to cancer. This person also had doubts about suicide, and they were really struggling, so the first reply from HippieBus62 was a welcoming sight for them. He had the profile picture of a Volkswagen bus covered in colorful paint, peace signs, and flowers, displaying his love for the vehicle, and his freedom-loving spirit always showed itself in his words.
"Hey, I'm sorry about your husband," HippieBus62 said. "I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but it doesn't. When I lost my sweet Mary, she went quick, but it still hurts like hell after all these years. She didn't suffer long thankfully, so I can't imagine what it's like to watch someone you love so much waste away like that.
I kept some of her things and I talk to her, even though she isn't there. Sometimes I light up a joint and drink her favorite beer just to feel close to her. That's how I deal with it, but some days it just isn't enough. If you still have some of his things, maybe you can try something similar? I'm sorry for your loss, and I hope you can find a way to recover from this. Whatever you end up deciding, I'll support it 100%"
Reading the post caused Jeremy to get choked up, and he felt an ache in his throat as tears blurred his vision. Although his girlfriend had left him willingly, without dying, he still felt just as broken and empty as the people interacting in the thread. He didn't feel comfortable replying unfortunately, so he resorted to reacting to the two posts he read with hugging emojis, before logging out and closing the browser. Since it was a private browser, his online history was deleted automatically, so he set his smartphone down on the mattress beside him.
Wiping tears from his eyes, Jeremy swallowed hard and tried to calm himself as he spoke in a soft, shaky voice. "Fuck, why does that shit happen? It's fuckin bullshit…"
At last, he made the decision to get out of bed and crossed the hall to his bathroom. After doing his business, he stepped in front of the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He had dark patches under his eyes, the disheveled mass of brown hair behind his receding hairline was an absolute mess, and the scraggly strands that poked out of his face told him that he was due for a shave. He had taken three days off from work to improve his mental health supposedly (one day for an hour of therapy), but most of that time was spent eating junk food, sleeping, and crying his eyes out over a beer bottle while watching old game shows on TV.
Jeremy narrowed his eyes at the mirror as he tried thinking of a joke to distract himself from his problems. "Okay, you lazy dick… Time to get ready for work!"
It wasn't much of a joke after all; he merely insulted himself. Still, he thought it was a little amusing, so he smirked at the mirror and chuckled. Then he undressed, took his shower, and got into his work attire after drying off and shaving his face. Leaving his bedroom and bathroom behind, he went out into the living room of his messy apartment, where he stepped over empty beer bottles, a few pizza boxes, and an empty carton of ice cream on his way to the kitchen. Directly above his electric stove and oven (which had eggshell pieces, stains, and dried up noodles all over it) was a cupboard where he kept a small stash of granola bars and his jar of Sodium Nitrite.
After pulling the door open, Jeremy smiled at the box of granola bars. "Hell yeah! A breakfast fit for a king…"
He grabbed a couple from their box, but then he paused to look at the big mason jar full of white powder at the back of the cupboard. It had no label on it now, so it would be impossible to identify at first glance, and he kept it well hidden behind packages of noodles and cans of soup. Satisfied that his SN was safe, he slammed the door shut before returning to his bathroom to inspect his outfit once more; his khakis, thinning brown hair, dress shirt, and blue tie were all in order. This meant it was time to get back out there and be the best wage slave he could be, just so he could keep paying taxes to Uncle Sam and keep up with the bills.
2
No matter how many years passed by, HippieBus62 never could forget the day he lost his young, beautiful wife just a few months after they got married. It was Memorial Day weekend in 1992, and he was only 30, but Mary was 29. The two of them were cruising down the interstate in HippieBus62's blue Mustang in holiday traffic, and they were in high spirits, despite feeling so cramped by all the vehicles around them.
When shit hit the fan, they were in the left lane with a semi-truck hauling a load of grocery store produce to their right, and a dark green minivan directly ahead of them. In that vehicle, the driver and front passenger seemed to be yelling at each other; they were making aggressive hand gestures, and sometimes they turned their heads to say something nasty to one another. Mary, being the kind-hearted soul she was, immediately started to worry about the people in front of them.
HippieBus62 (whose real name was Calvin) thought his wife's voice sounded like music, and when she spoke, he couldn't help but glance at her and smile. He never forgot the way the sunlight glistened on her long, black hair, as it shone in through the car windows, while the clam shell that hung from her necklace bounced up and down over the front of her rock and roll t-shirt whenever the car hit a bump. Her pretty face and bright smile melted his heart every time he saw her, and he could never have imagined living his life without her.
Mary's smile had faded from being worried about the people in the van, however, and she pointed at them to get her husband's attention. "I hope they're gonna be okay. If they keep that shit up, they're gonna cause an accident!"
Calvin glanced at his wife and smiled, but he remained silent. When he looked ahead at the minivan again, that is when he realized how intense their screaming match really was. Unsure of what to do in that situation, he reached up with one hand and started to anxiously play with his bushy, black mustache. The driver of the van appeared to be a middle-aged guy, mostly bald, and the passenger was a woman, possibly his wife. They were jabbing their index fingers at each other, and then the driver lifted his hand, threatening to smack his passenger with the back of it.
"If that dick hits her, I swear to God!" Mary cried, suddenly enraged. "I'll give him a new hole to shit out of!"
Not sure what to do, Calvin slammed his hand down on the steering wheel and honked the horn at the people in front of him. This caught the attention of the driver up ahead, who snarled back at them through his rear window. He scowled at Calvin directly for a few seconds, but then he turned back towards the front and slammed on his brakes, causing Calvin to do the same.
"Motherfucker!" Calvin cried. "That son of a bitch brake checked us!"
The driver ahead of them let up on his brakes, and his passenger yelled at him. Mary noticed that her husband had an iron grip on the steering wheel, so she had to try calming him down before things escalated.
She reached over and ran her fingers through Calvin's mullet to distract him, but her tone remained serious. "Don't let him get under your skin! You're better than that asshole. Just keep tailing him and we'll call the police when we get a chance."
Not wanting to make things worse, Calvin glanced at her, nodded, and then looked ahead at the minivan once more, just as the passenger pointed ahead through the windshield and screamed something. About a second later, the van took a sudden turn to the left and started swerving.
"Oh, fuck!" Calvin cried, just as both tires on the passenger side of the minivan blew.
Then the whole thing started to flip, revealing the jagged, broken 2x4 that lay horizontally across most of the left lane. Nails poked out of it everywhere and it went flying straight towards Calvin's Mustang, just as the vehicle ahead of it hit the ground and rolled multiple times before flipping over into the right lane, directly in front of the semi. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, but he still plowed through the van, creating a shower of sparks as crumpled steel and shards of glass scraped across the pavement.
As soon as the 2x4 went airborne, it turned and blasted straight through the middle of Calvin's windshield. It missed the couple by mere inches as it passed between them and turned the car into a shish kebab, but that was only the beginning of what was to come. The truck driver beside them had taken a turn to the left after smashing into the minivan, and Calvin had unintentionally turned his steering wheel towards the right, the moment the plank of wood impaled his car. He ended up crashing into the side of the truck's trailer, crumpling the front of his vehicle and flipping the back end upwards. This caused the giant, metal box full of fruits and vegetables to jackknife, as the truck driver lost complete control. The whole thing ended up flipping onto its right side and rolling, while the twisted hunk of scrap metal that was once a minivan blasted the strip of grass between the northbound and southbound lanes like a meteor, launching a cloud of dirt up into the air.
Calvin and Mary screamed all throughout, and glass flew all around them after they crashed and jettisoned the 2x4 out the rear window. The back end of the Mustang never went high enough to flip the car upside down, but when the back tires hit the pavement, they landed on pieces of twisted metal and popped, leaving the two of them trapped like sitting ducks. All the people coming up from behind swerved to try and miss them; some went off the road and crashed into each other, others smashed into the flipped semi-truck, but a large, red pickup that was unable to avoid the Mustang smashed into the passenger side of the car. The only thing Calvin could do was watch as the large pickup flew straight at them, turning to the left as the driver tried to miss them, and then slamming sideways into the passenger door. That whole side of the car caved in, killing Mary instantly, and he couldn't do anything but scream her name, before suddenly sitting up in bed.
His worn-out t-shirt and pajama pants were soaked in sweat, and his chest was heaving as he blinked his eyes and tried to remember where he was. When he realized that he had been reliving his past trauma all over again, he was brought forward in time nearly 31 years, to the start of 2023. This was the point where his mullet was gone, his hair was gray and disheveled, and he looked just as old and worn out as he felt. As the grief from losing his wife washed over him all over again, he buried his face in his hands and sobbed. After a few minutes, he calmed down enough to lower his hands to his lap and take a deep breath, but he was still devastated after witnessing his wife die for what seemed like the millionth time.
Realizing he needed to get up and clear his head, he got out of his bed and stepped over to his bathroom door, which was right next to the closet in his bedroom. He went inside, turned on the sink, and cupped his hands under the water so he could rinse his face. Once he calmed himself down some more, he looked at the mirror in front of him, which had spider web cracks all over it from punching it a few weeks earlier. He looked at the smooth sections of glass that remained and saw that his eyes were bloodshot, his face was pale, and long, tangled strands of gray hair hung down over his forehead.
"Fuck," was the only word that came to mind, so Calvin said it out loud and left the bathroom again.
Thinking fresh air might do him some good, he left his bedroom and headed down the hallway towards the stairwell that took him to the lower floor of his house. The place was kind of big, and the retirement money he collected from being an army veteran helped a lot, but sometimes it seemed too big, and it always felt empty, even though he had furniture. The stairs led down to a carpeted hallway that branched off to the right and left; one way led to his living room, and the other to his kitchen. Directly ahead was the front door of his house that led out to the front porch, and that was the door he went for first.
Sitting beside the door was a small table with a nearly empty pack of cigs, a small lighter, and the urn containing his wife's ashes resting on top. Calvin snatched the pack and the lighter before stepping outside and closing the door behind him. Once he was outside in the sunlight, he could hear birds chirping in the trees, and kids laughing in the distance, but hearing them didn't improve his mood at all.
Looking down into the pack, he realized he only had two cigarettes left. "Shit… Guess these will have to do."
He pulled one out and stuck it between his lips before lighting it up and taking a hit. Hoping to relax a little, he took a seat on the lawn chair that he kept on his porch, so he could enjoy the crisp, cool, early morning air of spring. By now, all the trees had buds on them again, and a few were sprouting leaves, but those things did little to ease Calvin's mind. He had lived a long life and seen a lot of shit, but nothing else he experienced came close to the pain of losing his wife so long ago. It never got easier with time, only harder, and now he was feeling an overwhelming urge to get the 12 gauge out of his gun safe and jam the barrel in his mouth.
By the time he finished his last two cigarettes, it was already starting to warm up a bit outside. He knew he would have to get more eventually, but at least he smoked enough to keep himself sane for awhile. He still wanted to die, but he felt like he had the patience to play the waiting game a little bit longer, just to see if there was any point in continuing his miserable existence.
After taking the final puff from his last cigarette, he stuck the butt down into an ash tray on a small table next to his chair. Then he put his hands on the knees of his pajama pants and got up with a sigh. After heading back inside, he turned and headed down the hallway that led to his kitchen, where he kept his reading glasses and a laptop sitting on a table by a window. After sitting down and opening his computer, he powered it on and put his reading glasses over the bridge of his nose. He had to wait a bit for it to start up, but then he went through his usual morning routine of logging into Ready2CheckOut? and browsing the site for any topics that caught his eye. He had a few notifications, but they were all from people liking his posts, so ignoring those, he went ahead and got to browsing.
Before long, he stumbled upon a thread that was posted by someone who lost their spouse to cancer, and he absolutely had to leave a reply. After reading their story, he felt their pain and it brought tears to his eyes, just like his nightmare had done a short while earlier. He had to pause and take off his glasses to wipe the tears away, but after putting them back on, he started typing away on the keyboard.
He did his best to comfort them, while also sharing his own experiences to let them know they weren't alone. After submitting his reply, he went back to browsing the site, but it only took a few minutes for the original poster and LonelyOfficeWorker33 to respond with hugging emojis. Seeing a familiar user like the post brought a smile to the old man's face, and he stayed on the site for a few more minutes, before logging off and setting his reading glasses back down on the table.
I hope someone likes these first 2 chapters. After I pasted the text into the spoilers, there were a lot of formatting issues I had to fix so hopefully I got them all. Feel free to leave some feedback! While I could try publishing this, I don't think I want to share it anywhere but here because honestly, most of the world probably isn't ready to handle what I've written on these pages. If there's enough interest, I will post Chapters 3 and 4 in a few days.
