Painting The End--a short story

WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS SUICIDE! IF YOU GET TRIGGERED BY STORIES ABOUT OR MENTIONS OF SELF HARM OR SUICIDE, DO NOT READ!!

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The small bottle of pills rattle in my shaking hands. My breath comes hot and heavy while I shake some of my mom’s description sleeping pills into my palm. I am going to sleep and never wake.

It’s midnight, and no one knows what I’m doing. They’re all sleeping peacefully in their room across this empty house.

As if it were just another night.

sweat streams its way down my skeleton-like spine, in between my breasts, beading on my hairline. Seeing myself in the mirror is like seeing a ghost: just a faded mirage of what used to be. There are bags under my eyes from the nights I’d spent sketching, sketching, sketching. I drew angels and demons, kids playing and rain falling. I drew every thought I ever had. every memory I had ever stored.

I drew magnificent flowers. And then wilted dandelions.

Of what I was supposed to be. And what I am now.

I shake more pills out. More and more and more, until there are none left.

I think about my dad. How he always made sure mom had food first at dinner. How he would fight with me over my quickly diminishing grades. The way he cried when grandma died, mom comforting him.

I wonder if he’ll do that for me.

Mom was always good like that. Caring. When I was younger, she used to be able to take away any sorrow. Take away any pain. I believed she hung the moon, alit the stars, and whistled with the sun. she was the sunbeam in my pit of shadows. But sometimes, she would dim to a flicker. And when she did that, I couldn’t swim to the surface. I was trapped under miles and miles of anguish. Great lengths of water, settling on top of my chest, making it impossible to breath.

But ever since the incident, I could never breath. Mom could never find time to right the crooked trees, to water the roses outside my bedroom window.

They’ll be dead soon. Just like me.

While the pills slide down my throat, one at a time, a thought comes to my mind that makes me look away from the mirror.

Would they even miss me?

I push the thought away. if they didn’t need me, didn’t miss me while I was here, what makes me think they will when I’m gone?

My room is covered in art, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. All done with my very own hands.

It is a very dark room. But every once in a while, every five feet of dark, demented drawings, will be a colorful rainfall or a happy ending.

I can’t remember the last time I made one of those.

Will they burn them all?

yes, they will. They will burn and trash and scrap every drawing, sketch and painting I ever put my heart in.

And that’s okay, I think as I lay myself down on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. Tears leak from my eyes, sliding down my temple, dampening my hair. I focus my eyes on the blue unfinished clouds I tried painting on the ceiling. I was going to make this bathroom a castle in the sky. A cloud kingdom.

but I never finished it. And I never will.

My bones are heavy.

my eyelids aching.

my heartbeat slows as I close my eyes.

#sad #PaintingTheEnd #suicide