Scary Movies and Suicide Notes
By: Bryan Phillips

 I used to lie to myself and say that I only told the truth.

            Not even I believe that now.

            It started with nothing more than a white lie; but a lie is a lie, no matter what color it is.

            From: timmy, received 4:58pm

            hey man, u think we can hang out later?

            From: me, sent 5:17pm

            nah, sorry. i have homework to do

            That's it. That's where the lying began. I promise, if that means anything to you.

            I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Will, and I’m seventeen. I'm a senior at a high school that you've never heard of, in the middle of a town called Au Gres, which you've also never heard of. It's small, there’re maybe 1,500 people.

            If you knew them, you'd think the other 1,499 people were far too many to be living in this tiny town.

            Perhaps it doesn’t help that I’m the only person who doesn’t fit the norm. But the thing is, I only don’t fit because I’m a liar. And let’s face it, no one likes a liar.

            But now that you know a little bit about me, I guess I can tell you what I lied about.

            No, that's a lie too. I'll tell the story and you can figure it out for yourself.

 

 


 

Tuesday, November 13th

It started with a note.

            mom,

            im sorry. this isnt your fault. it isnt anyones fault. i just cant do this anymore. 

                                                                                                                        love,

                                                                                                                        will

            Folding the piece of paper in half, I tear it in two and throw it in the trashcan beside my desk. The clock stares at me from above my computer screen, the red numbers looking back at me as if I’m a blemish among the things in my room. Between the shadows my bed casts and the bonsai weeping willow I keep in the corner of my room, the room feels like it’s getting smaller, almost like it’s folding in on itself. 11:56pm. “You should go to bed, doofus. You know you’ll be too tired to get up in a few hours if you don’t get any sleep,” I whisper to myself. Loneliness has this way of snaking its way through your bloodstream in the earliest hours of the night, and the call of sleep is louder than the whisperings of loneliness, begging me to stay up and bask in it just a bit longer. Too tired to fumble with my clothes, I crawl into bed. Lying on my back, spread eagled, I watch the ceiling. Noting the different shades of black; how where I train my eyes, the black almost seems to get darker. Rolling onto my side, I close my eyes and wait to fall asleep so I can watch scary movies on the back of my eyelids.
 

 

 

 

Friday, November 16th

Ugh. 6:04am. Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I reach over and slam my hand down on the alarm clock in hopes that it will shut up.

Morning routine; get out of bed, step toward the door to the hallway – right foot first, its bad luck if you step with your left foot first. Walk down the hallway, into the bathroom. Look in the mirror, rub sleep from my eyes. Run my fingers through my hair; it’s getting kind of shaggy.  The faded brown is kind of getting boring. Again. Get in the shower, get out of the shower, brush my teeth, go back to my room, get dressed, grab keys, and go to school. 

I’m a creature of mundane habits.

            Life can get pretty boring when you live in a hell hole in the middle of nowhere.

            My school schedule is pretty standard; Spanish IV, Government, English IV, Psychology, the basics. At least the day goes by quick.

            Upon arriving home, my mom greets me in the kitchen and says she plans on setting up a psych evaluation for the 22nd. I suppose I should’ve told you that my mom thinks I’m a psychotic convict.

            Who knows? Maybe I am.

            “Honey, I’ve noticed recently that you mope around a lot, and you don’t really talk to any of us. You know you can talk to me, don’t you?”

            “Of course, mom. I know.” Maybe if I reassure her of that, she’ll leave it alone.

            As if I can get that lucky.

            “Well, okay. But I still want you to speak to the psychologist. She’s very good at what she does, dear. Maybe she’ll know what’s going on.”

“Alright, mom. If you insist.”

            My room is my cave. Storming up the stairs, I slip into it and shut the door softly behind me. No sense in disturbing my mom; I’m disturbed enough for the both of us.

          

 

 

Thursday, November 22nd

            “Call me when you’re done with your appointment, alright?”

            “Okay, mom. If you want.”

            Stepping into the office building, right foot first, I walk up to the secretary at the front desk. “Hi, uhm, I’m here to see Dr. Ivy Abel? I’m her two thirty appointment.” She looks at me like I’m crazy.

            Maybe I am.

            “Straight back, second door on the right,” she says.

            “Alright. Thank you.”

            Well, that was simple.

            Going down the hallway, and following her directions to the office, I knock twice before I hear a voice from behind the door yell for me to come in.

A mousy woman of maybe five foot three sits on top of a chair much too big for someone of her stature, curly locks spilling down over her shoulders with a pair of plastic-rimmed glasses sitting atop her nose, staring at me as I enter the room; right foot first.

The office reeks of impersonality. There are no pictures on the walls, no sticky notes with quickly scribbled notes attached to her computer screen. A too-fake plant sits in the far left corner of the room, against the window where the blinds aren’t open enough to let in any light.

            “William, I presume?”

“Yes, that would be me.”

“Okay. Well, have a seat.”

I sit.                                                       

“So, William, why are you here?” she squeaks.

“Will, please. And because, I have to be.”

“Oh. Well, Will, your mom said some things on the phone about her feeling like you couldn’t talk to her. Is there any reason why that might be?”

“Yes. She doesn’t understand.”

“She doesn’t understand what, Will?” she asks.

“Me.”

“Hm… okay. Do you ever feel depressed? Like life might be too heavy for your shoulders? Or… do you feel like sometimes you may not want to wake up?”

Yes.

“Sometimes. Not normally. Most of the time, when I go to sleep, it’s for the sole reason of waking up to go to school the next day. Unless it’s the weekend. In that case, I sleep in. And by sleep in, I mean all day.”

            “All right. And how about friends?”

            What friends? “What would you like to know about them?”

“Do you speak to them often? Do you hang out with them? Tell them anything?” she asks.

            Never. “I speak to them often enough.”

            She writes some things on a piece of paper. “Okay. Well, what do you speak about?”

            “Things. School. Homework. Games. What pizza joint has better pizza. The normal.”

            Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.

            “Okay. Well, Will, I’m going to ask you a question and I’d like for you to be honest with me. Have you ever had suicidal thoughts?”

            Yes. “Once every blue moon, maybe.”

            Reading from her papers like a script, she asks, “Have you ever attempted to commit suicide?”

            No.

            “Yes.”

            She seems unfazed, but the surprise is evident in the subtleties. Her pupils dilate slightly, her eyebrow raises; she looks from her papers to my face.

            “You realize that I have to tell your mom this, right, Will?”

            “If you must.”

 

 


 

 

Friday, November 23rd

At 9:48pm, I hear my mom crying in her room.

At 11:54pm, I can still hear her crying.

I shouldn’t have lied. I didn’t even begin to think of the consequences.

My mom is just as depressed as me, now. Maybe more. She’s heart-broken over the fact that she thinks I wanted to die. Maybe I did want to die, but now?
            I don’t even know what I want anymore.



 

 

 

Tuesday, November 27th

            If I said to you that school’s the same, I’d be a liar.
            School is the same. We all know I’m a liar, anyway.

            My classes are the same, but the people aren’t. They look at me funny now. Like I have some kind of disease.

            I do. Depression, after all, is a disease. But they don’t care about that. All they care about is the limitless ideas of how I tried to do it.

As if that defines a person.

I can’t go anywhere in this God-forsaken town without stolen side-glances and silent conversations between groups of friends as I pass them.

If Au Gres is London in 1665, I’m the plague.

 

 
 

Friday, November 30th

I’m still failing psychology. I’m still wonderful in Spanish. For whatever reason, the teachers seem to have turned a blind eye to everything that’s going on in front of them and have turned a deaf ear (...is that even an expression? Whatever) to everything everyone is saying about me.

I know they believe it, though. I’m not the only liar in this town anymore, I’m just the worst.

They up-turn their mouths and pour sugar all over their lips in hopes that maybe I’ll believe that they’re actually concerned for my well-being; that they might actually pretend to care if I have some heart-wrenching realization that I need to speak to someone.

I hope they realize that their sickly-sweet smiles are the equivalent to pouring confectioner’s sugar on a pan of mud and calling it dirt pie.

 



Monday, December 3rd

The problem with living in a small town is that everyone knows everything about you, even the things you don’t want them to.

            Now they all believe I’d tried to kill myself. I can hear too-loud whispers of their theories. Pills, razors, toasters in the bathtub.

            I may have believed at one point that everyone should hate me as much as I hate myself, but now, they do. It’s too obvious in how they act around me. Turning away from me to whisper to one another when I walk past, snickering as they try to hide the fact that they’re looking over their shoulders – at me.

            It’s okay, though. I know. They have no need to hide.

 

 
 

 


Tuesday, December 11th

            The whispers only get louder. Only now, they’re more extravagant. Cyanide, throwing myself in front of a train, attempting to swallow dynamite.

            I appreciate the creativity. Really, I do.

            However, I can’t take this anymore.

            When I get home from school, I find my mom in the kitchen.

            “Mom? Can I ask you a favor?”

            “Of course, honey.”

            “Can you phone Dr. Abel and schedule an appointment? As soon as possible.”

            “Oh.” The shock is evident on her face. “Of course. I’ll call her right now.”

 

 

 

Thursday, December 13th

            “Hello. I’m here for Dr. Abel?”

            “You know where to go. Down the hallway, second door on the right.”

            “Okay. Thank you.”

            I walked down the hallway and knocked on the second door to the right.

            “Come in!”

            Opening the door, ducking under the doorframe, I stepped in – left foot first – and closed the door lightly behind me.