Micah warbles at the convenience store counter like a lost elementary schooler waiting for his mom. Bleary-eyed, he scans the sea of endless colorful boxes like he knows what he’s looking for.

The pot-bellied cashier blinks at him with deepset, downturned eyes. Can he tell Micah is gonna kill himself? Shit. Micah quickly looks down at the counter. If he gets the cops called they’ll haul him to the psych ward, fat chance in Hell he’ll have the opportunity to do anything there. Fuck, they might even call his parents. Micah shivers at the thought. No, present normal— you’re a normal guy and you love life and you don’t have a suicidal bone in your body. You don’t even know what death is.

The cashier grunts, clearly prompting him to pick the damn thing, a vape or cigarettes or condoms or whatever the fuck his degenerate ass has dragged himself here at 3:44 in the morning to get— Micah gestures stupidly, barely registering what he’s pointing at, and a double-size pack with rib for her pleasure is slapped into his hand.

As he stumbles out the convenience store, a mocking, cheery jingle from the front door following his footsteps, the night air stings his face. It’s cold as all hell out, as if he needed the reminder that he has severely underdressed for the occasion. He’s out here 80% on impulse, 20% on intent— and 5%, maybe, on seeing that crazy guy from the forums in real life.

He shouldn’t say guy. Lots of girls use the internet. More girls wanna kill themselves than guys, he’s pretty sure. It’s actually statistically more likely a girl.

“Yo! Hey.”

Micah swivels. There’s someone standing on the sidewalk across from him. Baggy sweatpants, a gray, faintly-stained hoodie.

The figure points. “You’re mxj?” She pronounces it letter by letter, not ‘mixjuh’ or something stupid like that the way Micah probably would have.

Micah struggles to recall the first three letters of his keysmash username and concedes that it’s probably accurate. He nods.

She stares at him for a few seconds, then glances down at his hand.

“Why do you have condoms?”

Diener098, as it turns out, is indeed a girl.

She looks normal. A little short, maybe, and a little… greasy. Micah isn’t one to talk, a thin sheen of oil covers his skin at all times, but she’s definitely more blotchy and pimply-faced than a lot of the girls his age. Not that he knows any girls. He has no idea how old she is; she could be anywhere from 16 to 30, which makes him a little nervous— what if she’s a kid, or what if she’s one of those police sting guys that look super young who bust dudes like him over online-negotiated meetups. Oh god.

“So, like,” Diener’s voice cuts through his frantic inner monologue, “have you made up your mind yet?”

He blinks. “Huh?”

“I mean, how you’re gonna do it.” There’s a glimmer of eagerness that shines through her nonchalant tone— something in the split-second grin she flashes, exposing yellow teeth. “Have you decided on the method?”

Micah jams his numb hands into his pockets. “Um. I mean, maybe. I’m still leaning towards the building, I don’t really have anything for other stuff.”

Diener smiles. “You can do a whole lot more than you think with just what’s in your house. Like, shoelaces and a shower curtain rod. People are really ingenious, you know?” She shrugs. “But a building is totally fine. Just pick one that’s high enough.” She swivels on her heel as they pass a McDonald’s. “Oh shit. Dude. Last meal?”

Micah’s stomach flips queasily at the thought of food. “Not really hungry.”

She shrugs again. “Suit yourself.”

A piercing wind stabs through Micah’s threadbare t-shirt and he shivers violently.

“You—you know a lot about this,” he stutters out. Diener’s strange smile only grows wider. He side-eyes her warily. “W—why did you want t—to come with me?”

Sometimes on the forum there are people derisively called lifeguards, idiots who go onto a suicide board with the express purpose of “it gets better”-ing users’ ideation away. These people are pretty summarily mocked— some users purport to speeding up their processes out of sheer spite. Micah accepted this girl’s invitation because he’s going to die and doesn’t give a fuck anymore (and because he is quite inebriated) but what if she’s here to try and talk him out of it?

Diener’s smile splits into an honest-to-God Cheshire cat grin. It’s grotesque, spanning from ear to ear.

“I just want to watch.”

Micah is not really a forward-thinking guy. He’s planned this escapade out well enough, though.

The department store is this towering high-rise abomination jutting from the asphalt. Micah works there as a retail employee. There’s this air freshener store on the third floor that he’s supposed to be customer support for. Mostly it’s him standing there stupidly while crazy bitch customers scream at him. It’s only crazy bitches buying air fresheners on a third story floor on a weekday, after all. Micah is not great at being customer support. Micah mostly spends his time there slack-jawed, idly wishing he could kill himself.

Luckily, his shitty dead-end job grants him the privilege of rooftop access, at least with the keys he’d pilfered off the janitor ages ago. It hadn’t even been planned, the old fuck was just sitting there in the food court eating his lunch and there they were. Micah had pocketed them without thinking. He never got in trouble for it. That hadn’t been the start of his ideation, but it was the first step in those plans becoming concrete. The first time the possibility became something more than an errant thought.

Micah feels a little like throwing up as he lugs himself up the stairs, but he doesn’t. Maybe if Diener wasn’t with him he’d give less of a shit, but it seems somehow embarassing with her there. She’s keeping up with him easily, actually outpacing him somewhat; his throbbing nausea is not doing him any favors in keeping his newborn-fawn limbs straight. The spiralling staircase worsens his vertigo, every few steps he has to lean against the wall heavily till the room stops spinning.

He’s beginning to regret not eating— then again, would he regret it any less if the last meal he stuffed down his gullet was a putrid Happy Meal? It doesn’t matter if he deserves it, that’s not what he’s doing. He would want a big ass pizza pie for his last meal. Just the greasiest, cheesiest shit, pepperoni and stuffed crust, so much oil he’d die from eating it before even being marched to the executioner’s block. That’s the sort of shit he used to eat in his hometown at late hours like this, frittering his teenage years away. He was stupid and depressed then too, but he hadn’t given up hope entirely yet. He thought if he waited long enough, life would prove its own meaning to him. Now he’s here.

Diener is skipping up the steps like a god damn kindergartener filing in line. Just so happy to be here.

Micah pulls himself past the stairs with the railing and stands there huffing and puffing, trying not to shit or vomit. God, he shouldn’t have gotten this drunk. He figured he’d need an elevated state of mind to get through this, but it’s honestly more of a hindrance. He should have taken the chance that sober Micah wouldn’t bitch out and do the deed, just like those fuckers on the board said he would. Are they still betting? How much is in the pool now? Micah wonders if he can bet on his own suicide without getting caught or if they’ll send the mafia after him before he can even collect.

“Hey…” he grunts, burping back a wave of bile, “um… how… how did you find me?”

“Oh, your IP wasn’t hidden at all,” Diener replies casually. “Pretty easy to track. You didn’t even have one of those dinky dollar-a-month VPNs.”

“Huh…” Micah huffs.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” she grins. She’s so smiley, it makes Micah… not pissed off, exactly, more unsettled. “Where you’re going, you won’t need internet safety ever again. Unless you believe in reincarnation.”

“I don’t. I mean.” Micah’s eyes slide shut tiredly. “I hope not.” In his 23 pathetic years of age, he’s been mostly indoctrinated with Christian bullshit, but he’s heard about reincarnation from Buddhist hopefuls, and that honestly sounds worse. Being chewed up and spat back into the sea of nothing over and over and over again until his damned soul learns the secret to disappearing forever, which his stupid ass will surely never do.

Diener beams. “I can say a prayer for you if you want.” The way she says it somehow passes magnanimity straight into being threatening.

“Nuh,” Micah’s tongue is heavy and refuses to obey him, “thank you.”

The rooftop door opens with a loud creak.

As soon as he steps out, the wind stings Micah’s cheeks, piercing him to the bone with fingers of ice. The sky is black and yawning and empty— no stars to be seen with this light pollution. The moon hangs full and round like a skull.

Below, a million cars file through the streets. Their headlights become little pairs of eyes leading them through the dark, through a complex network of tunnels like crawling ants, weaving in and out of an industrial sea. How they know where to go is a mystery. Why they’re going so late is another. Micah watches them for a while, forgetting that he’s anything.

Diener clears her throat behind him. He startles when he remembers she’s there, but she just leans back against the wall and says: “take your time.”

“I…” Micah hesitates. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“Sure you can.” She flashes him a thin-lipped smile. “23 years, right? You want another birthday to pass like this one? Just waiting to die?”

He shakes his head.

She gestures. “Then go ahead.”

Micah swallows and turns back. The edge of the building is open, unguarded. It’d be easy.

It’s easy.

He shuffles closer, toes numb in their decade-old sneakers, intimately feeling each scrape of concrete and loose dirt beneath their soles. At any moment he feels as though he’s going to lose balance and trip, in spite of his glacial pace. He just knows something embarassing like that will happen, and every second he draws it out only heightens the chances. He feels the hungry eyes of his voyeur on him every step, spotlighting him under her gaze. His hands are clammy with sweat.

The tips of his shoes dip over the edge, swooning into empty air. He almost topples then and there but catches himself. His heart is going a hundred miles a minute.

Why didn’t he let himself go just then? Fuck. Just let go. But the world is spinning around Micah and the ground below swims. Micah’s not sure he’s ever breathed air so crisp, tasted a night sky so cold. He feels more present in his own body than he has for the past five years. Why? Why now?

Just do it. He tries to push himself forward by force, but he can’t. It’s like when he’s lying in bed, rotting on the mattress, on the precipice of movement but unable to move his limbs a single inch. He wants to go— his body won’t. He closes his eyes and gulps down air.

Come on. It’s just like falling down, falling asleep. If he keeps his eyes shut he won’t feel anything. Oh, god, who is he kidding? He’s going to feel every bit of it. He’s not drunk enough. Not numb enough. It’s going to hurt, his skull is going to hit the concrete and explode into bloody soup, every bone in his body will shatter.

It’s going to hurt.

He deserves it.

It’ll hurt.

Micah’s eyes fly open.

He’s almost forty-five degrees to parallel with the ground, one foot sunk past the threshold. His stomach twists violently. On instinct, Micah throws himself back with all his might, reversing the momentum at the last second it would have been to possible do so. He lands hard on his back and, unable to control his body’s faucets, spews a fountain of vomit that arcs a respectable half-foot in the air before landing on his shirt.

Now his face is cold and burning. Micah groans.

“Aw, man!” exclaims his spectator. “You almost had it. It’s okay. It happens.”

Micah slowly scrambles to his feet, head spinning, not bothering to wipe the bile off himself because god fuck dammit. He feels somewhat like a hamster that’s been put through a blender. Neurons in his brain are firing at all cylinders to communicate information he has no chance of deciphering except the animal instinct to go, to run, to leave. Escape escape escape. He begins to stumble away.

“Hey,” says Diener, “where do you think you’re going?”

“I uh,” Micah struggles to form words from the primordial soup his brain has become, “I’m, I’m gonna… I’m going. Sorry.”

“Dude.” She lifts her hands up in disbelief. “I came all the way out here to watch you jump, man.”

“I’m sorry.” He really is.

“Come on. You fail one time and that’s all you give? Where’s your sense of determination?” She takes a step towards him. Suddenly her eyes have a certain menace to them, the way a great white’s go glazed when they’re about to rip into their prey. “Why are you changing your mind?”

“I— I just—” He doesn’t know. He’s sorry about that too. “I don’t…”

“Come on. Try again.”

“I—” Micah swallows. “I can’t.”

“What are you going back to? Where?” Her tone is ten degrees sharper than before, despite the lack of change in her expression. “What, you got a girlfriend? Boyfriend? Anyone to go back to?” She barely waits for a response. “Of course not. No one’s waiting for you, so jump already.”

“Why— why are you so fucking insistent?” splutters Micah, now sincerely baffled. What is with this girl?

Her black eyes shine. “Because I came all this way to watch a worthless fuck die. I wanna see your brains splatter on the pavement. Do it.” She walks up and shoves him. “Do it.”

She hits him again, this time in the stomach; he spews a little more involuntarily. She steps back in disgust, cursing.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you an idiot?” She fixes him in a furious, wide-eyed stare. Even now, her face is more blank than it should be, the only contortion a rigidness around her eyes. “It’s people like you who piss me off the most. Crying so much about how bad you want to die, and when the opportunity comes, you don’t fucking take it.”

She reaches into the recesses of her hoodie and pulls out something rectangular— Micah’s eyes widen— it’s one of those X-acto style box cutters, the ones that can cut through drywall like paper. The blade comes out with a quiet snick.

“Just commit to something, you fucking pussy.”

Micah lifts his hands instinctively and feels a hot, piercing pain lance through his clavicle, the cutter wedged in him before he can even react. He wails, shoving at her blindly, managing to dislodge it as he stumbles back. Blood immediately begins seeping through his t-shirt. Diener lumbers towards him, eyes wide and glittering.

She lunges again, catching him by the arm and spinning him to face the skyline, pressing the blade tip right up to his jugular. She’s surprisingly strong, and his body strength leaves much to be desired. Hitting him in the back of the knees, she forces him to march to the edge of the building, death getting closer step by step.

Micah stares down at his trembling front, silhouetted by the harsh light below, the blade tip bobbing ever closer to his neck. His heartbeat pounds in his ears. Many stories down, the anthill of cars swirls. When he hits the ground, maybe his body will crumple over one of their hoods. Maybe he’ll remain intact, or maybe the force of the impact will send his organs out of his body.

In panic, he swings his head back as hard as he can— a starburst of pain explodes as he catches his skull on her nose, Diener’s head snaps back with a cry. This loosens her grip just enough to allow him to wrest the blade from her grasp, wrenching it in a random direction away from him. The box cutter goes circling in an arc over the edge, whipping into the dark and disappearing. Presumably it hits concrete below, or maybe it lands point-first into some bystander, causing a new inexplicable incident for true crime fans far and wide.

“Fuck!” spits Diener, her voice thick with blood. Twin rivulets of red are running down her chin. Micah limps to the wall, hot tears streaming down his cheeks. His side is on fire; he hunches instinctively and presses his palm to the stinging wound.

He braces for another rush from her, but she just stands there, staring at him furiously. Her nostrils flare as she pants, her chest heaves. Finally she steps back and barks—

“I know where you live. I know where you live, dickhead. Watch your back.”

—before turning to the rooftop exit and hobbling down the stairs. Micah listens to her heavy footsteps echo, and eventually fade away.

His shoulder hurts so much. Everything hurts so much. Micah hollowly thinks he should go to a hospital. He doesn’t know if he’s even going to be able to walk without passing out. The distant sounds of traffic echo as he stands there, breathing raggedly, trying to think.

He laughs mirthlessly. All this mess because he wanted to chuck himself off a building? Seems like a lot of trouble now that he’s gone through it.

Technically he could still do it. The building, apathetic to the struggle that just took place, remains static. The lip of the rooftop edge looms.

Micah braces against the wall. With a pained grunt, he begins the long climb back down.