A lady with a lantern at the end of a pier (Patreon)

(novel excerpt, in form of suicide letter draft,)

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People are going to tell you I was selfish. That I took the coward's way out. You are going to overhear their voices at the funeral. In the next room. Down the stairs.

Lately, I find myself living in the past. Telling myself stories about when I was young. Which makes sense. I mean, there's no sense dwelling on the future. (I'm going to kill myself. Shhh.)

I shouldn't joke. But you will be fine. As fine as anyone is in this world. I won't miss you. I won't miss your father. That's the whole point. I've loved you. That won't ever change. It will wait in the past, and you can reach out whenever you need it.

When I was young I believed that there were places in this world where nothing stayed dead for long. Ponds where bodies would resurface and cough themselves awake. Ground where you buried anything only temporarily. It was such a romantic idea to me then, like a woman in a long night skirt, standing with a lantern at the end of a pier on a foggy night. A safe warm idea of meaning and permanence. I never really took the time to think it through, eh?

Because if there is an afterlife, if our souls live forever? It means we're trapped.

If we can't choose to die, we don't have any choice at all.

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