I am.

08:00 am

I am dead. Dead as per the definition we seem to accept. My body is hanging from the rope I tied to the fan. The chair I had used to stand on while orchestrating my death had wobbled unsteadily on my unmade bed, now it lies astray on it. I had tossed and turned on that bed the entire night, convincing myself to continue existing. I had stopped living the day I thought of ending it. Life had never excited me, I used to go through each day without any hopes or wishes. Mom, Dad, Tessa everybody tried their best to make me look forward to the future. They alternated between encouraging my dreams to cursing my state of nothingness. I didn't react to either. Tessa, is, was my girlfriend. At least she thought so, she was one of those people who liked to fix things, especially people. She wouldn't care for a stray dog unless it was injured, she wouldn't smile at a baby unless it was crying. She wanted to fix me and that is why she was with me. As for Mom and Dad, I was all they had, except for each other, their jobs, their hobbies. Somehow, just my existence had made itself the reason for theirs. I had never wanted that. I had never wanted anything in my sixteen years of being. I was about to turn seventeen in about sixteen hours. Somehow the thought of ending this farce at the age of sixteen, sixteen hours before the number changed had seemed sweet. Sweet sixteen.

08:43 am

“Wake up Kevin! It’s almost 9, you will be late for class again!” Mom is yelling, as the door opens. She stops yelling. She falls to the floor, looking up at my body. It must be a terrible sight, for it looks as if her eyes have stopped seeing. Grey-brown wisps of hair flutter over her unseeing eyes as she holds on to the floor for support. “Walter! Walter…Walter… my son... Kevin… Walter… our son!” The cries reverberate in the empty room, they bounce off my body, down the stairs, down to Dad who is munching on his buttered toast. It drops as he runs up to my room. “Janet what happ…?”

He clutches at the door frame as he sees. Too shocked to react, too shocked to comfort Mom.

“Trrriiinnnggg… Trrriiiinnnng…” My alarm for 8:45 goes off, setting off the tears that were still in shock, or denial? I should have remembered to remove the alarm. Somehow, these gadgets, social networking accounts, these remnants of the dead are crueler than their memories. Howling, mom grabs at my feet, her tears warm against my cold, placid feet. I would have felt bad perhaps, when I was alive, Mom and Dad were the only reason why I had been a bit hesitant to die. They are kind, loving parents and fate has played a cruel joke on them by giving them a child that was born to die.

Dad can’t look at the two people he loves the most in this state, dead and dying. He turns his head and his eyes fall on my study table, on my photograph in the black wooden frame, on my perpetually unsmiling face, listless gray eyes and messy black hair, on the neatly arranged stack of books next to it, on the note propped against them. He knows what it is. It seems as if he can’t bear to look at it, but he has to know right? I knew they deserved an answer, even though they wouldn't understand it, which is why I wrote that letter. His feet carry him to the desk, as his hand reaches out for the note. He begins reading it out loud, in a tired, old voice. My dad seems older now, older than the fifty-three year old man he had been ten minutes back.

“Sorry. I had never been able to tell you this, but I had always wanted to kill myself. I knew if I would have, you would have tried to make me visit a shrink. You would have always kept an eye on me. You would have not let me had my own room. You would have suffocated me further. You would have killed me. I did not want you to be the killers, I wanted to take my own life. I know you will not understand. How can you? I could never understand why we were living. I could never understand why you wanted me to study, to learn the piano, to read, to laugh, to eat, to exist. I never understood life, I never understood death. Yet Life bored me while Death lured me. I know you have always been worried for me. Why I didn't smile or play with other children. Why I always stood first in class but never displayed any interest in my past, present or future. It is not your fault. This is how I am. Ever since I was three. Ever since I saw Sasha lying dead in mom’s arms. A day old. I wanted to be that way too. Remember the time I was not waking up, when I was nine? I had eaten mom’s sleeping pills? It hadn't been a mistake. I kept saying that in the hospital, when I woke up. You both kept trying to calm me. Over the years I kept imagining how it would be and now, I am finally doing it. Sorry Mom and Dad, it is just me. There is nothing that could have been fixed, there is nothing that anyone could do differently. This would have happened, sooner or later and exactly this way. Take care of yourselves. Goodbye.”

9:29 am

Dad has stopped reading, I am not sure when he did. I had stopped listening to him some time back. I am trying to now figure out how long before I stop existing. This is what I had wanted to feel. I try to look at my fingers, I can’t. I am unable to move my body. I am not even in it anymore. Without the act of turning my head I can see my mom sobbing, half-spent, my father down on his knees behind her, my grotesque remains still hanging from the fan, my exam time table pinned on my almirah behind me. I can see it all, yet I am unable to move my head, to lift my hand. I think I don’t have either anymore. I can still feel the urge there, just not the response. I look at the mirror, I don’t see me. I feel panic gripping what was earlier my heart. This can’t be futile. I have no voice, no flesh, yet I feel the urge to scream. It is like one of those states I read about. Sleep paralysis. Is this it? But, I am not asleep. I am dead. This is not a dream. The silent sobs, the deafening silence, they both are real.

11:11 am

I am not moving. I am not going anywhere. How can I when I am not anywhere? Yet, the sobs have become distant. The wails are but an echo, an empty call from far away. I can see the frantic calls by Mom and Dad somewhere far away, still in my room, yet very far away. They seem blurred, as if they are fading away. Or maybe I am. Yet it is they who are blurred, the ache in my unresponsive muscles is still piercingly clear. Muscles? Where? I see no skin, no bones and no muscles. I can feel something else, a gnawing emptiness. As if my innards are shrinking, this is a familiar feeling. I have felt this before. Hunger? This is wrong. I am not there anymore. A dead body cannot feel the need to scream, the urge to move, the pangs of hunger? But, I am not a dead body, am I? The blurring has stopped, so has the sight. It is not that I do not see, there is nothing around me. It isn't black, it isn't white. It is simply nothing. I cannot say what it is, simply because none of the languages I know have a word for it, none that I can think of. Think? I am thinking. I am thinking what went wrong. I am thinking if this will end. I wanted an end. That is all I had ever wanted. That is all I had existed for. Now, I exist without reason. Now, I exist beyond reason. The gnawing grows, the urges pain, I cannot bear it anymore. I cannot scream, I cannot eat, I cannot run, I cannot stop being. Dead, but more alive than I ever have been. I can only feel. This must be a nightmare. This must be one. I need to wake up. I need this to end. This cannot be. I cannot be. I cannot be… I cannot… I can… I…

I. I still am. I don’t know the time. I don’t know where I am. I don’t see. I don’t move. I don’t. Is this how it is? Is this what happens when Death does not take you after you leave Life. Is it because my time hadn't come? Will this stop when it does? Is this some sort of limbo, before rebirth? Is this some wait, for Death to accept me? Is this Hell?  Will this stop when I am buried? Will my funeral end it? Will it end? Will I know?

I can feel the claws of realization grip my being, I can sense the silence scream the answer at me. I can feel the nothingness take over the emptiness around me, inside me. “I know now, hence I am. When I will not be, I will not know.”