I have been reading everyone else's stories and finally decided to write my own. This took me about half an hour to write so it might be able to be improved some. I would love some feed back and suggestions on what could improve it. Thanks
Despair
The ceiling had been scraped away to expose the boards and beams. Hanging as the dominant feature of the room was a noose. The noose would serve both as his escape from his current misery and the doorway into the unknown. Every time that Riapsid looked toward the noose, the room started to spin and the noose grew larger and larger until he would look away again in terror. The noose seemed to be calling him but he was afraid.
Riapsid sat staring at his shoes. He sat on the ground in his bare apartment. The four white walls rose about him like condemning ghosts of his past life. His hair stood as a tangles mess clawing at his forehead. His face looked like the remains of a deserted battlefield with stubble standing out on his chin and empty eyes starring past his hollow cheeks. Looking at his clothes, he obviously had not moved from that position for the last three days. His hands hung limp at his side, he was powerless to move them. His mind was a blank mess of memories and thoughtless thoughts. He stared at his shoes because every-time he looked away he saw images of his life and he saw the gateway to his future life. Against the walls strange shadows played against the walls as the fought to come through the remaining tatters that hung as curtains. His curtains were his old sheets hung up to keep out prying eyes. Cobwebs and dust only added to the images, which multiplied on the walls.
He had called his sister four days ago to inform the family of his passing. It had been over 15 years since he had last talked to anyone of the family and this conversation was not the sweetest to leave with. The conversation had started out calm, Riapsid coming to the point quickly just stating, "Good bye I am killing myself."
“ Hello? Who is this?”
His sister at first thought it a prank and was happy to hear his voice once he told her it was he. She started talking about the family telling him everything that had passed in the last 15 years. It seemed like she had not heard him. She also fired back many questions at him as to where he had been and how he was. She was talking like a chipmunk and Riapsid had a hard time getting back in.
“STOP! I said I am killing myself. I am only calling to say good bye.” Riapsid repeated with emphasis.
“Why would you call to say that you are killing yourself? We have thought you were dead for over 12 years now. Why put the family through the misery of you dying again.”
Riapsid was puzzled at his sister’s sudden change. “I thought you would want to know.”
“What you wanted was sympathy. You don’t need to terrorize us just come back. You have made some bad choices but that is no reason to kill yourself. Just come back.”
Riapsid wondered why he called. Was it to terrorize one more set off people before he died? Was it to complete his list of pain that he had caused in the world? He had thought it was just to have one set of people to actually morn his death, as he did not want to go unthought-of. The idea of just disappearing frightened him. He had never thought of the pain it might cause. He kicked himself for his stupidity. Yet he had had a great desire to hear a familiar voice just one time before he died.
“Where are you? I can wire you the money for a ticket. You can be home by tomorrow.”
“What you need is to have Meg on your lap to see life at its best.”
He had hung up.
Riapsid heard her yet he did not want to hear her. Or did he? Why had he called? Was it only to hear a familiar voice or was it because he wished that she would convince him not to do it. He hated the appearance of weakness in himself. In an attempt to clear himself of his own accusation, he repeated his brief farewell and hung up. On his way back to his apartment from the payphone, his mind continued to run over his sister’s invitation and his reason for refusing.
Three days had passed. He still sat on the floor of his apartment unable to take his final step but also unable to turn from his chosen path. Finally, he started to move. He had made the choice long ago to take this final step or leap so he was not going to wait anymore.
The final preparations did not take long. He fixed the rope about his neck; gagged himself and even duck taped his hands together. Finally, he made the last move kicking the stool from under him. As the rope tightened, choking out his life breath, the room started to rotate around him. His world went dim. The final sound he heard was a knock on his door. The landlady he thought. She would go away soon but would come back with someone and be in time to find his body dead. The letters were in his pockets with stamps. She would mail them. Everyone would know that he was actually and finally dead. They could even morn over him if they wanted.
* * * * * * * *
Riapsid seemed to regain consciousness. The first thought was 'I was unsuccessful.' They got me before I fully died. Yet no, he could not feel his body. He could not see anything either. 'Is this what it feels like to be dead?' There was no answer. With no body and no sight, he was left only with his mind? His one remaining part from his past was his past, his memories. Those memories, which had driven him to suicide to escape them now, still followed him to haunt him. Like numerous ghosts the memories attacked him some coming in one at a time others massing up for a full-scale charge. He tried to fight them off yet there was no time and they did not weaken. They came at him again and again like lifeless fiends tireless and determined.
Riapsid tried to summon up good memories yet either they had run too far away or they did not exist.
He saw his brother falling from the tree after he had pushed him. It had been a petty fight over which branch who could sit on. The fall broke Jerry’s arm and the branches in the way down had ripped up the flesh bad. Yet years later, a simple statement from Jerry had Riapsid crying. He hated the story because it was always his fault. Yet Jerry always made sure everyone everywhere knew Riapsid had broken his arm, which because of complications and infection had caused the loss of Jerry's arm. The nagging sight of Jerry’s empty sleeve made the story come up every time they were together. The sight of Jerry's empty sleeve had even haunted him in his dreams for years after the incident. In reality, it had been the fact that Jerry got pneumonia, which had eventually caused the loss of the arm, but for some reason it always seemed that the start of the events was Riapsid’s fault.
Riapsid was playing in their tree house. He was laughing at his genius he had filled up a bucket of water balloons and had lugged them up into the tree house using a rope. He had placed the bucket on the wall of the tree house and waited for a victim to walk by. His first victim was a little girl who lived down the street. She had teased him a lot so he wished to get her back. Picking off the largest balloon off the top, he leaned way over the edge of the tree house to drop it on her. His aim was terrible. The balloon missed by miles yet the bucked, which was knocked off when he pulled back after dropping the balloon hit straight onto her head just as she was looking up because of the sound of his "look out." It was a heavy wooden bucked with a metal rim which along with the weight of the water was about 60 pounds. By the time he got down, she was laid out cold on the ground. He thought he had killed her. Panic rose in his body and he ran. Years later, the sight still haunted him.
While he had not killed her, he had broken her neck. She recovered yet never regained full movement of her legs.
As he grew older, it grew worse. In his teens, he got angry with his parents for being so restrictive. He ran of with their car and was in a car crash. It had started as a racing match between two teen driven cars and escalated to the point that the second car had lost control and caused the crash of both cars. He knew it was just as much his fault as the other kids yet he was never blamed. The other kid died.
Two years later at 19, he ran away from home. He was free. He could do, as he wanted. Until he hit the rocks. He was too shiftless and unsettled to stay in one place for too long so he built himself a reputation for quitting jobs. Yet he would move somewhere else and start again. Moving every few years, he learned how to cut ties quickly and establish new ones.
He traveled some overseas. Visited Paris experienced the world. Yet finally, he did land on the rocks. Too much debt he could not stay afloat any longer. It was either sink or die. He was just about to file bankruptcy when he found his last group of friends. They taught him a few tricks and got him the money to pay of his debts. He only had to sell their secret merchandise. It had plenty of names yet it did not matter it brought in money and also established a connection with the underground allowing him to be more secretive and requiring him to move more often. Having experienced the world, he enjoyed the job of hiding from the police. The only draw back he could come up with was that no one got to see his close escapes and his daring maneuvers. He never once thought that what he was doing was ruining others lives.
He never touched the stuff because he wanted to keep his mind as sharp as possible and only looked at it as slowing ones own abilities down to cope with life. Then he found a more profitable business. Burglary he could make up to five grand a night working in the big city. He was rolling in dough. He even made some friend with cops just to clear out his tracks and clean off suspicion. He would party during the weekends and during the weeks; he worked as a "computer consultant." Yet every weekday night he would hit up to five apartments.
As of yet he had not been caught. Then he caught one of his working buddies going to bail out to the police on him. He made short work of it killing him and ditching his body in the river tied to stones. He quit the burglary and returned to the US. This was his first time back into his home country after many years. He tried to start up fresh and clean yet his memories followed him. Finally, he was on anti-depressants and nothing really helped because they were not attacking the real problem. That was when he had bought the empty apartment. He had given the landlady a false name. Her suspicions had been allayed by money but he knew it could not last. However, know it was over. He had made a killing in investments before he had passed away and had always kept a list of the names of the people he had robbed. He had made large investments hoping to loose the money to clear his conscious. He marveled at the fact that nothing worked the way he wanted it to and felt that God was mocking him. Right before he died he had relocated all of them using Internet and a few old friends he still had connections to in the police and he had sent them back the money he had stolen and much more. It had been over a thousand people yet all had been relocated because he had kept identification of each one of them in a box at his real apartment. It had been a hobby of his to collect business cards and other things with which he could identify those people from whom he had stolen. In the letters was a key to that apartment so everyone in his family who wished to know his story would be able to learn from his mistakes.
He again went through his death. He watched from out of his body as he walked up to the noose and slipped it over his head. He watched as he kicked away the stool and his body snapped down his toes only hanging less than an inch away from the ground. He watched as his body died, as his body struggled for its last breath of life. Then he watched, as his body was found many hours latter and cut down.
Yet that was how it was supposed to happen.
The door burst in to find Riapsid still sitting on the floor. His sister obviously pregnant and her husband entered the room right behind the paramedics who had knocked the door in.
The paramedics where the first to reach his body. After a check over, they came back with the report to his sister. The room went still for a few minutes. Finally, the silence was broken by a subdued weeping...
