For all you might ask, it was not the truck.

Neither did I commit myself to the valor of saving someone’s life at the expense of my own. No. Also I was not a soldier. Not a mercenary nor a Yankee bent on hell’s revenge. No.

I was not stabbed, shot, burned, crashed, kidnapped nor drowned. No. No such extravagant happening played with my trifle life.

And for God’s sake it was not a suicide. No. Nothing good ever comes from a suicide.

It was simple. It’s always quite simple when an invisible hand twists and turns our fate inside out.

There was no light at the dark tunnel. There were no voices in the dark. No pan-dimensional entities made request for the help of mine. No. Nothing of such happened.

For all I know, I was “there” and then I was “here”.

It was as simple as that.

I will not bore you with the details of my previous vegetative existence. I graced this world with my presence in a loving family, somewhere in a rural hospital accompanied by less than civil cries of my mother. Father lost a tooth that night and needed stitches on his broken nose. Nothing out of ordinary.

Add few happy years and about twice as much messed up years and you will have a perfect image of me in a low paying, paper-pushing job overseen by a sorry excuse for a boss. He made his sole purpose to make our work as miserable as humanly possible and then even worse. End of story, sorry to disappoint you.

Actually, no. Now that I think of it, maybe if I had changed myself a little bit, none of this would ever happen?

One of those days when you’re running late with everything, I spend more time in the office than I should. My clock shown ten past midnight when I’ve somehow managed to scrape together a passable rapport so if my coworker did her part we should be able to make squeeze in within the deadline. I’ve hit print and hauled my bones to the printer, strategically placed near the management box. A tiny aquarium for the low level management. A corporate way of treating people not important enough to earn an office on the upper floor. A dumpster for the lost souls.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Luckily or not, I could see light coming through the blinds. Did she stayed behind as well? I’ve picked up still hot paper, knocked on the glass doors and entered.

I wish I could say how many heroic things I did when I entered and… No. I was no hero.

With a heavy sigh I closed the doors behind me. She was sitting in her underwear, probably crying. Beside her a hastily written good bye note waited, scrawled so poorly that hardly any of made sense. To her apparent frustration I’ve thrown the note into her portable paper shredder, waiting patiently as it chewed the page while the precious seconds trickled by.

She was just sitting on her chair, her breathing becoming more and more labored, watching me with a shock mixed with pain in her eyes. Her petite, porcelain white hands played with a box cutter.

I came closer and crouch in front of her so our eyes met. A thin rubber membrane was plastered against her face every time her lungs forced her to inhale. She had put a condom over her head and taped it round her neck with some duct tape. What a stupid way to go.

I extended my hand and after a second that seemed like a whole eternity, she obediently gave me the knife. I put the knife away, safely out of her reach and begun working at the tape round her neck.

When I finished, her lips were already turning blue but she still made no attempt to free herself. She just stared at me with her soulless eyes, begging for something I could not allow.

I wedged my finger beneath the rubber seal and ripped it off her head.

“Why? “ was the only word she had spoken since I’ve found her.

“Nothing good ever comes from a suicide” I said but all I’ve got in return was more silence.

True, those words alone have no meaning. I’ve unbuttoned and rolled up my sleeve, exposing the long white scar exactly where the knife sliced in. That little piece of flesh spoke more than a thousand words. She started crying, I took her home.

We spend the next three days in bed. Sleeping, eating, fucking, crying. She did a lot of that. Crying. I am no noble hero. I made few calls off her cellphone and kept the girl occupied with whatever put her mind at ease.

On the fourth day, her sister came from new York to pick her up. They did even more crying together. That night I slept on the couch. In the morning I bid them good bye. It was the last time I ever saw her or my old hoodie she wore. I still am impressed how her sister coaxed her into wearing anything.

Without anything better to do, I went out for a walk. I wish I could say I run that day. I didn’t. I am more of a “walking” person. Without a goal I’ve wandered through the streets, parks and shopping centers. My body needed to walk it all off. To walk off the memories I never wanted. Memories which came back with the girl’s blank stare. I kept on walking.

When I came back a day have passed without me noticing. I just shrug my arms and went to the kitchen for a drink.

I poured myself a glass of water and sipped it slowly with my eyes closed to the evening gloom. And then it happened.

When I closed my eyes I was still “there”, safely within the confines of my old yet comfy kitchen. When I opened them again, I was already “here”. Standing knee deep in sharp bluish grass, surrounded by the people I never saw before, in a place I did not know, I stared at the black, star-riddled sky in the night that basked in the glow of two waning moons.