No Good Way To Die:

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It wasn’t lit the first time that Jack stumbled past; he was sure. He closed one eye to fix a lousy double vision and staggered about on inebriated legs. Back and forth, side to side in a small circle. His sheer will to stand was about all that kept him from crashing down, fading into the night and dying a slow cold death. Even he, in his current state didn’t want to go like that. The flame burned bright in the backdrop of the woods that swallowed all light. It buried every photon like the black hole nested in the middle of our cosmic neighbourhood. The moon couldn’t completely penetrate the thick foliage although the lonely blue beams tried their hardest. The closest town was a few miles back, its vibrancy stood no chance out that far, nature had created an unwelcome void in the middle of the beautiful heartlands. Jack had walked a long way to look for something, anything, and surmised that he’d know exactly what when he saw such a thing. He took a shot from his whiskey that he held between his thumb and first finger which had ceased in place on the bottles neck. All he had to do was raise it to his lips, tilt his head back and enjoy the slow burn. He figured if the cold didn’t kill him maybe the burn would, the ninety proof might trigger something as it descended his torso, a final frontier for all. Except for the one window, the cabin was shadowy and decaying under a thick veil of moss. Ivy had encased the porch and its limbs undoubtedly held up the structure’s integrity. What ripped through the cabin also kept it up, Jack observed and took another shot. The December ground reeked of everything that had died on it and now lay rotting, he hadn’t known decaying leaves to give off such a repulsive smell, the stench doubled when he dragged his heels through the wet mud. He had to fight for his feet, his legs ached from peeling his boots from the thick sludge. He hadn’t quite realised he was approaching the cabin until he was well underway. His subconscious mind followed the sweet scent of something he once knew. So, He approached. Drawn like a moth to a flame.

Nearing the door, he observed no sign of anyone entering in a long time. This further convinced him that it called to him, that the candle glowed for a purpose, a singular beacon for him alone. He climbed the steps; his left foot slipped through a rotten panel and curled his ankle on the ground below. It should’ve caused an immense agony, but the whiskey had brought him to a dangerous level of numb that would suffice for killing pain, or some at least. The weathered door had dropped from its hinges, it took some force to get it open and when it did it gouged the floorboards below and dug in, the door wouldn’t close again when he tried. He paused and remained outside a moment with his lips pressed tightly together. “Hello?” He called, his voice unsure. No answer, no matter, he’d set his mind on entering already. The ground creaked under him like the cabin cried, what kind of cry Jack couldn’t place. Old white dustsheets covered everything, even the unit by the window that the candle burned upon. The candle base was wound in undisturbed spider’s webs, the flame danced in the winter gust that now entered. The ivy had broken through the narrow walls, but its leaves were thin and wispy. Inside it was notably colder, Jack’s breath rolled from his lips like pale dew. The metal of his pistol tucked in his belt felt icy against his back so he pulled it out and placed it gently beside the candle. Reflections of its flames danced on the gun's chrome surface. He explored the room further, it was mostly bare, the furniture under the sheets looked as old as the building itself, a portrait hung over the mantle, but it was too faded to see now its canvas had turned a stale grey. He wasn’t alone in the empty house, someone or something lit the candle and called him forth but the rest was up to him, he thought. He wet his finger and thumb and extinguished the flame. He closed his eyes and hoped to feel something, fear, terror or peace, anything. Nothing, just the same hollowness that plagued him for months. He picked his gun up and knelt in the middle of the room with his eyes shut, he took another shot from his bottle and changed his breathing from frantic quick draws to calm lengthy exhales. “I let you down.” He said. “I let you down, her down, I let myself down.” A warm tear cooled quickly on his cheek. “I won’t ask a single soul for forgiveness, I don’t forgive myself, so why should they? Why should you? Why should Jesse?” Saying the name aloud concaved his chest and his ears ached from a deep hum that came from the hall. “It all feels like a dream now, our life. Our family. All those years are just a chemical flash in my fucked-up brain.” He tapped the gun barrel against the side of his head. The hollow grief fed on his entire being like a pain fuelled parasite. “I can’t go on like this. I am so sorry, I can’t find balance or normality, I can’t escape my thoughts and when I do, even for a second, it brings a whole new kind of guilt.” He sat and gazed into the dark with a heaviness about him, a deep ache nagged at his neck in an instant, he refused the pain the attention that it sought and carried on with his confession. “I don’t think I have any options left.” He said. “Therapy doesn’t work, exercise doesn’t work. Alcohol sinks me lower, and philosophy pushes me further back in my mind. I’ve tried it all.” He really had, at least to his knowledge. “So, I’m sorry. I just can’t live like this.” He cocked the gun and placed it gently against his temple. “One.” He counted. “Two.” He pulled the trigger before three, to blow out the mind before it changed on the last count. It jammed with a loud metallic tick that resonated in the empty house, he threw the gun down and gasped, he pulled his collar as far as it would reach from his neck. Whilst the adrenaline flowed, he cleared the lodged bullet from the chamber and cocked the gun again, his compulsion to die remained uncontested so he reset it against his head again with trembling hands.

“One.” He counted. A great thud came from the other room like something heavy dropped to the hardwood floor. His eyes darted. He missed the second count. “Two.” He continued with a cry, A thud louder than the other occurred. His jaw clenched with a pressure that tested his teeth. Another thud. “Two!” he screamed and at the same time, loud, heavy steps raced down the hall toward the closed door. He locked his eyes and pulled the trigger. Nothing. The hall door crashed open, bringing a chilled gust with it, the main door that was stuck only moments ago slammed shut and the candle reignited, all in a shared second as quick as sheet lightning. He cleared the lodged bullet as fast as he could with violently shaking hands. A shadow caught his eye, it shot from the door to the far corner. He finally cocked the gun, raised it and fired at the figure; the bullet passed right through the wall. His features screwed in a horrified bewilderedness, where the shadow appeared and disappeared was a message carved into the wall, he read it aloud. “No good way to die.” He loaded another round, the metal was now hot against his temple. with no countdown, he fired. It jammed again and the metallic click rung louder than before, a deep dull tone hammered against him. He threw the gun down a second time, his hands trembled, he bowed down low, and he refused to look up in fear of what he might see.

A few seconds went by but moved like an hour. “I’m going.” He assured and without delay he walked to the door with his head low. He tried, It wouldn’t budge, it was as though ten men pulled against it from the other side. “Let me out.” He cried. “Please.” He pulled and battled the unforgiving door until tiredness undermined his arms and legs and rendered him too weak to fight it anymore. He dropped back against the wall in unusual fatigue and stared at the carving, he couldn’t stomach reading it aloud again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry if I disrespected you or here, or-” He didn’t know what he was apologising to, he didn’t want to know. I was trying to find peace, that’s all. Let me go, you can have yours, I can get mine.” The only other way out of the room was the dark hall but every fibre in him refused to recognise it as a remote possibility. Whatever entered the room now lingered in the hall's black canopy. “What do you say?” He lightened his tone; his voice still shook in a subtle vibration that echoed in his chest. “Peace and quiet. What’s better than that right?” He picked the gun up, tucked it into his belt line and tried the door another time. The thud from the other room came again. The footsteps down the hall followed. Jack dropped to his knees and covered his eyes, he didn’t want to see a thing. He felt a cold rush through him as though the entity shared the same space for a moment. The moment went by but the frost of it didn’t. The footsteps scurried away, back into the disagreeable abyss of the hall as quick as they’d come and may come again. “God or Jesus or something help me.” He uttered toward his own chest. He looked up; a new carving had been scratched into the door in sharp, jagged letters. “I don’t trust you.”

Jack felt the world collapse, a feeling he knew all too well and didn’t welcome back. “I need to go, I won’t tell anyone about this place, I want peace too, I understand, I promise.” A strange, almost deranged clicking emanated from the hall and the slur of loud swallowing. Jack refused to look, his imagination painted pictures of what stalked him and those were enough alone to paralyse him. The clicking, he realised after a moment, was the desperate gasp of choking.

“How.” The word broke through the suffocating and gargling. The thing in the shadows was struggling to speak and continued to sputter until it wheezed something above a whisper. “How you die, you stay.”

A wave of chills came over Jack. He looked at the first carving and read it aloud. “No good way to die.” He looked to his left and saw a transparent apparition of himself in the middle of the room on his knees. A gun pressed against his head. He counted down, as Jack had done moments ago, and then fired. It didn’t jam, it blew chunks of matter on the opposite wall. His body dropped to the ground, heavy and limp, blood seeped from his head and dripped down beneath the floorboards. Thick claret crept out slow like spilled syrup. The lifeless body, his body, laid open-eyed and still. Jack approached and stared down at himself. His head jerked back when the eyes blinked. A scream followed, an unimaginable scream of strange torment. Jack, the one on the ground, held his hands against the holes in his skull, the entry and exit wounds. He pressed tight, as tight as his arms would allow and bellowed an intense cry that filled the room twice over. “Stop, stop, stop!” Jack screamed and almost as soon as he did, the other version of himself vanished, the blood and brain matter with it. He’d turned ghost white, and his eyes had aged like those of a boy who returned from war, he looked on with deep-set, traumatised, but wise eyes. He’d seen himself die and reawaken only for the pain of the bullet to persist, undead, unalive. “How you die… you stay.”

Another candle burned, this time at the end of the dark hall. The same compulsion to follow gripped him. The same sweet scent of something he once knew. He treaded with light steps, placed preciseley and with respect as though he crept in the presence of something greater. The back room dropped another few degrees which seemed impossible to Jack. The candle extinguished behind him. The room was wide, minimal, dark and reverbed the emotion of something that happened there a long time ago. A beam ran across the middle of the ceiling and from it, a short piece of cut rope hung. Nothing else hung there but the beam creaked like it was under strain. Jack understood the carvings now. The clicking, swallowing, gasping and sputtering made a small echo in the room, it originated from a short distance under the beam. The beginnings of words were started and then abandoned, they didn’t amount to anything intelligible and then stopped altogether, as though the pain outweighed whatever had to be said. Jack declined to his knees, he removed the gun and placed it beside himself.

“My wife and daughter burned alive. Are they still burning?” A Pressure built behind his eyes. “This is something I must know.” The creak of a body swaying back and forth was all that dared the silence. “It was an accident, does that mean they’re spared of ongoing pain? I guess it hurts you to talk, but I need to know.” Intrusive pictures popped up in Jack’s mind like a plague of painful illusions. The blistering on his daughter’s skin as the heat rose, his wife trying to get to her and choking in the smoke. “I left the house in a rush that day, my wife Bri and I had a fight over something stupid. Jesse gripped my arm and begged me to stay. She’d seen the whole thing. I needed a moment alone. I shook her loose and left. I sped off the drive and cruised a while, maybe fifteen minutes, twenty at most, that’s all. When I pulled into the road, I saw the smoke rise above the whole neighbourhood and just knew.” Jack choked. “I just fucking knew. The police and fire crew held me down on the lawn as I watched the whole house go up, I just wanted to stand in the flames with them. I never told them I loved them one last time, hugged them, kissed them. The least I could do was burn with them.” Jack broke down and held nothing back. He was reduced to a solitary soul that wept into its own palms.

“Please.” He wailed a desperate beg. “Please tell me they aren’t burning still.” He got nothing back but the slow creak. “I’ll pick that gun up and put a bullet through my head if you don’t tell me, I’d sooner have that pain forever than another minute of not knowing.” He heard nothing still and gripped the gun, he cocked it again and placed it in the same spot against his head. “Tell me! Tell me, tell me now damn it!” He pulled the trigger and the thing jammed again, the resonation of the click continued and filled the place with the sound of crushed metal. A sudden and sharp twist of his spine sent him down and he began to convulse. His limbs tightened and his fingers and hands folded inwards toward himself. He was thrust into a seizure that he was painfully present for. He was curled like a beaten dog, helpless and unable to move or speak. He saw the figure hanging now. It dropped from the noose with a loud thud and limped unnaturally toward him. It bent down and brought its face close to Jack’s. It was a man, his skin was blue with purple braid marks on the neck, his eyes were bulged, bloodshot and yellow. It lingered, choking and spluttering, close enough to smell death, a repugnant stench. The pale lips struggled for words and instead, the man placed a finger against his lips. He rose, turned, and dragged his feet toward the door. Jack convulsed still and watched the figure leave the room.

Jack was paralyzed for hours, his mind flicked constantly between a surreal state of awake dreaming and total numbness of the mind, body and spirit. Eventually he could move, although he was severely weakened, he tried to leave but the door wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t feel a presence in the room anymore and wondered if any of the night’s events had really occurred, he was sober now, painfully so. He saw the gun on the ground, he wasn’t past the idea of ending it all, but the thought of doing so in such a violent way sickened him. He felt through the dark until he reached a chair and dropped into it. He was exhausted, frail, alone and scared. He wanted to go home but he didn’t have one, if he did, he’d have nobody to go back to. He put his palms to his face and sobbed.

Small and cold fingers fell around his and urged his hand from his face. “Don’t cry daddy.”

“Jesse?” Jack couldn’t see her, but he could feel her, he reached out, he felt her small arms, her small face, her hair, her nose, her ears and even the bow in her hair. It was all as he remembered, only cold to the touch. “Are you okay sweetie? Are you in pain?”

“No daddy, but you are.” She said, her voice so gentle and melodic.

“I just miss you so much, how are you here?” He kissed her tiny fingertips.

“The man brought me.” She said.

“What man?”

“The blue one, he told us you were here.”

“Us? Is your mother here?”

“Yes, she’s holding your shoulder, can’t you feel her?”

He could, it was faint but he could. There was the sweet scent of something he once knew, her perfume. He leant forward and felt her waist, he rested his head against her and felt her cold hand run through his hair and then rest on the back of his neck. “I love you Bri, I’m so sorry.”

“We love you too, she says not to be sorry, it was an accident.” Jesse assured and squeezed against the two of them. Her voice withered like a radio signal at the edge of its range, her physical touch paled with it.

“Why can’t I hear her?”

“We don’t know, she thinks that children are stronger at these things.”

“I love you both so much.” Jack pulled tighter. He had a thousand questions but sensed the encounter fading. “Where have you been?”

“At home.” Jesse kissed his cheek. “We miss you, it’s quiet without you.” Home, as Jack knew it, didn’t exist anymore. Maybe it existed somewhere in some form of an afterlife just as it had in the real world. A perfect home.

“I’ll be there soon, I promise.”

“Not too soon, Jack.” Bri’s voice broke through the void. “You have a whole life to live.” Jack wept and pulled them as close as the gap between life and death would allow. They were fading more.

“Not too soon, I promise.” Jack’s arms collapsed against himself, and they were gone. along with the coldness in the cabin, like the last thin wisps of winter wind before the spring. The hallway door opened, as did the main door after that. Another candle burned, now out on the front porch. It called to him, he felt it. Back out of the cabin and back into the world.

“Thank you,” Jack said. “You saved me.”