Short Termer

Larry Kincavel was thinking of offing himself. He was 31, and at that age as well as several others, it can seem like a possible option. A permanent solution to all difficulties, including the temporary. He was convinced that the world was in dire peril, that humanity was a scourge, the planet was aflame, his good efforts were all in vain and that it might be best to relieve the world of his own, personal intrusion. He’d just read that suicides had gone up after a seemingly level famous actor had killed himself. If he too could only find a way to make the act fashionable enough so others would follow his example and truly lighten the load on the planet. They need be willing though, he wouldn’t want to force the issue on anyone. He was in shorts, barefoot watching Mr. Ed reruns on the classic tv channel. The peanut butter speaking horse cracked him up and that Wilbur was such a shmo.

Circumstances otherwise were ripe for his own gloomy mood. There had been a parting of the ways twixt he and his sweetie, never mind the details, Larry’s business is his own and the chances of a rapprochement were nill. He had no job, much of his past being spent in crusading for reduction, repurposing, recycling and tolerant vegetarianism. He was likely unhireable. He was showing an early middle age spread. He wasn’t much to look at, had no particular interests, even his crusades were more along dilletante lines. Not always did his pop can go to heaven. And his hairline, as had his dark haired softly mustachioed mother’s, was receding and showing a friars patch in the back. So on this quiet afternoon he was sipping a frosty, heady lager, watching classic television, munching cheetos and thinking of ending it all.

All his affairs were in order. As much as anyone’s are. At 31 he had nothing, save his moped, which needed work, backpack and some nice sneakers. He had owned a car, the beater Kia, but maintaining the crusade had negated that, no money for repairs. Still he fondly remembered those pleasant days, his forearm in the open window and the purposeless road ahead. Now he couldn’t afford gas, or insurance or another car for that matter. He wasn’t bitter, didn’t blame the system. It was just a system. He had just enough to pay his share of the rent and the cable bill. It would only be right.

He wondered if streaming a video or live texts would draw more emulators. Probably the video, the texts might be difficult. It shouldn’t be gory, although he had or could manage the means. Gory sells to the wrong audience. He thought it all for naught if no one got it. People had to see that with time being relative and no one immortal that the logic would sink in that now was as good a time as any and it would make the world a better place. He could see it, sorta. The system had been in balance once. On television a very emphatic lawyer was shouting that he wasn’t afraid of any big heartless inurance company, bring em on.

He saw large blue irredescent butterflies, like the ones from the Amazon gamboling over treed meadows, clean beaches, pristine peaks and the excessive metropolitan blight falling in ruin, being overgrown as nature reclaimed the earth, entangling it in lush forest, repaving it’s streets in green dandelions and shasta daisys. But it would have to be almost everyone for it to work. Fertilizer was needed. He took a sip, licked the salty yellow from his fingertips, scraping with his incisors where it was thick.

Of course nothing would be forgotten. Technology would adapt to the smaller scale and permit the more sustainable population left behind to live in comfort and harmony with their world. Offing yourself would only go so far, even if it was immensely popular, the birth rate would need to decline as well. That would be tricky, people would still want to, well want to. Maybe technology would solve that too, robots and AI and such. But the choice would have to be theirs he thought.

Anyway, back to the movement. The dew from the brown bottle.was cool on his hand. If he just drank some drano and left a note it wouldn’t inspire anyone, he thought. What’s needed is a grand gesture, and something positive, compelling, catchy. Sell the clean healthy earth policy. But what good was that, if one wasn’t sticking around to enjoy it. No that wasn’t enough. The idea was for it to catch on, go viral. There was something missing. Something lighthearted and motivating. Something striking, as addictive as junk food.

Maybe it should be like a club, like a club where the goal wasn’t to wear a red fez with a gold tassle and drive around in a little car honking and beeping and tossing candy taped to a business card. Not a club with secrets and oaths and dares and such, just a happy little group that now and then held events that diminished their number in a way that made more want to join.

How would he like to go, quietly off to sleep, in stunned surprise, alone in the endless sea, at blistering speed, devoured by beasts, falling falling falling, a small puff of smoke in the orange throat of an active volcano? He wouldn’t want to hang. And what if he took the wrong dose and watched from marbled eyes as his nurse emptied his bedpan and chose the prettiest flowers from the windowbox to take home knowing he couldn’t say boo about it because he couldn’t say boo or anything else having taken the wrong dose and now just a human blob that got everything he needed through tubes. Guns, knives, walking out in front of a bus all left a mess. He didn’t want to leave a mess. He wanted to leave an inspirational example for others to follow. To make the world a better place. But what would that be?

He noticed his toenails were long, got the clippers and clipped them, setting them neatly near the ring of water from the beer bottle. Why do my toenails smell like cheese but not my fingernails, he wondered.