JUST KILL ME ALREADY

I once saw a poster that hung in a priest’s office. It read, “God put me on Earth to accomplish a number of things. I’m still far from finishing, for I have a long way to go before I die.”

Cute, I thought, as I loaded the six-shooter with a single bullet, spun the cylinder, and pointed the muzzle at my head. I didn’t want to know when it would happen.

Before you judge me, please know that my life sucks. I have no friends. I have no family. Everyone hates me, and I mean everyone. Even animals hate me. When I ran track in high school, birds would shit on my head as I ran. It never happened to anyone else, just me. I’m the poster boy for Murphy’s law.

Click. One bullet down. I exhaled. Wow. This is much worse than I thought it would be.

Click. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Click. You know, this is actually kind of exhilarating.

Click. Oh no... I think I left the fridge running.

Click. Ok, this is it. One round left. “I love you Vanessa!” I professed.

Clunk. The gun jammed, as Vanessa, my roommate’s girlfriend, walked in on me. She looked at me with a ‘I wish I weren’t here’ kind of stare.

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. I pulled the trigger three more times, all jammed.

Vanessa set my mail on my coffee table and quietly backed out of the room.

“It’s not what it looks like!” I called out, as she closed the door behind her. Like I said, everyone hates me. 

I looked up at the stairs to the rooftop of my apartment. Stairway to heaven I thought as I climbed.  

I walked to the edge of the rooftop and closed my eyes. This was it. I leaned forward, and for a moment I felt the wind breeze through my hair as I plummeted to my supposed demise.

Thump. My plummet lasted only two seconds, the happiest two seconds of my life, before I fell onto a window washer’s platform.

“Hi,” I said with a nervous laugh. “How’s it… hangin?”

The man shook his head. “Pendejo loco.”

I grabbed the rails and jumped again. To my disappointment, I fell onto another window washer's platform. This occurrence repeated twenty times, between twenty window washers, lined across twenty stories of my apartment complex until I found myself face first, back on solid ground. From the street level my incompetent attempts at suicide must have looked like an elaborate parkour stunt.

I picked myself off the cement, and with determination, I charged toward the busy New York City intersection. A traffic accident incurred, explosions ensued, like it was ripped from a scene of an action movie. Trucks and buses soared through the air with grace, as if composed by Beethoven himself, but I–I was unsurprisingly unhurt.

I grabbed a broken glass shard that had fallen beside to me and attempted to stab myself in the neck, only to have my hand cramp up at the last minute. “Ow, ow, ow…” I said as I dropped the shard.

There I stood, arm limping, tears streaming down my face–the man who could not die.

***

To be clear, I'm not immortal. For whatever reason it seems fate would not let me die. So I decided to do what any reasonable person would do in this situation, I became a street performer. It was better than my previous job of delivering catheters to elderly patients of St. Methodist Hospital. There, they called me the angel of death, an ironic nickname, given my circumstances. Street performer felt somewhat more dignified. Plus, as an added bonus, it might actually kill me.

I started my day with a sword swallowing act, without any training of course. Went off without a hitch. But people are more demanding these days.

“Boo!” cried a little girl from my four-person audience.”

Eager to impress, I knelt down, smiled, and patted the pouty girl on the head. "Then, how about this?” I took out a small tank of gasoline and doused my sword in it. With a lighter, I lit the blade on fire, and proceeded to swallow the sword. This would surely earn me an applause, right?

“You suck! Can’t you do anything else?” cried the little girl. 

"Fine." I sighed, as I effortlessly pulled the flaming sword out of my throat. “You want to see something new?” I slid a butcher's knife from my suitcase. “You might want to stand back for this.”

My audience, which had suddenly grown to five, took a step back as I tossed my knife into the air. And for a second, it floated high above my head, rotating in place. Then, as gravity set in, it began its decline. The audience gasped as the knife picked up speed.

Squawk. The knife landed. And lo and behold, caught between the blade and the dirt was a dead pigeon, which had flown into my knife and changed its trajectory, saving my life.

The audience clapped, uneasily.

“Thank you, thank you. I can do this all day.” I tossed three more knives into the air. Again, two more birds flew headfirst into my second and third knives, sacrificing themselves to protect me from otherwise certain death. The fourth wasn’t even a bird. It was some kind of flying squirrel.

“Mommy, I don’t like this anymore,” said the little girl, tugging on her mother’s dress.

“Is this even legal?” asked another woman.

...And that was my cue to leave.

***

“Wait a minute. I thought you said animals hated you,” the text appeared on my phone.

This was Abigail. We met a few months ago when she accidentally called my phone thinking I was her dead little brother. We started talking, and I learned that her brother had committed suicide less than a year ago. Since then, we’ve become each other’s support system. She helped me accept not being able to die, and I helped her get through the day.

“I don’t think it’s the animals,” I wrote back. “I think it's fate. I think fate isn’t letting me die.”

“I don’t believe in fate. I think life is what you make of it.”

“That’s a strange thing to say to someone trying to kill himself.” I replied.

“Haha,” she laughed. 

“How did you cope, after AJ passed away?” There was a long pause. "If you don't want to talk about this, we don't have to."

“Well," she wrote. "I guess we’re at that stage in our relationship where we start telling each other things about our lives, huh?”

“You don’t have to share if you don’t want to, and what do you mean by our relationship?”

“You’re cute,” she wrote, adding a smiling emoji. “When my brother died, I got into hard drugs. I ODed. I didn’t die, but it ruptured a blood vessel in my brain and caused me to have a stroke. When I woke up the next morning, I had lost control of the left side of body, and my face is kind of messed up now.”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

“No, it’s ok. I’m glad to be alive. When you go through something like that you start to appreciate the smaller things.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You asked me how I cope. I don’t cope. I don’t even smile anymore. I don’t know if I still can." There was another pause. "I don’t know why I’m remembering this now, but AJ had clubbed feet, and he was always stubbing his toe on things, and it always made me laugh. Sometimes I thought he even did it on purpose. He told me, from his hospital gurney the night he died, that he would make me laugh again. He promised he wouldn’t die until he did. That was the last thing he ever said to me. I sound like a selfish brat, don’t I? Maybe I deserve this.”

“No, no you don’t,” I wrote.

"I don't sound like a selfish brat, or I don't deserve to die?"

"Both, I mean, neither. You're not a selfish brat, and you don't deserve to die." 

“Thank you. What about you? What’s your story? Why are you trying to kill yourself?”

Me? Why do I want to die? I don’t even remember, it may have been what I've always wanted, just for this all to end. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to kill myself for months. But it would never work.”

“Right... fate won’t let you die?”

“Yeah, maybe, I don't know.”

“Maybe there’s something you’re meant to do, and you can’t die until you’ve done it. Or maybe you have a guardian angel.”

“I don’t believe in that miracle crap.”

“That’s ironic given your predicament, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” I replied. 

“Do you know how many insects there are in the world? I’d guess a google. That’s ten to the one hundredth power. Yet somehow you were born a human and not an insect. You were born you. That’s a miracle. You are more rare than the rarest lottery ticket. You’re worth a google bucks, you know that? Beinf alive is your miracle.”

“Whatever, you make it sound like it’s this big deal.”

“It is a big deal. Suicide is the coward’s way out.”

“Well, I’m a coward.” The truth finally came out.

“I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath. “I wish I was as brave as you. But I’m just not.”

“I’m glad fate won’t let you die.”

This made me happy. Happiness had become so foreign. “I’d like to meet you in person.”

“Are you trying to change the subject?”

“No, I’ve been wanting to meet you for a while now. I mean, that’s what people do in this stage of their relationship, right?”

"No, that's the next stage. This is the stage where we are honest with each other."

"I don’t think that’s a real stage in any relationship," I typed then deleted without sending. “I'll be honest with you, but let's talk in person, alright?"

“Ok, if that's what you really want. Then meet me outside my apartment tomorrow at noon. See you then!"

***

I spent about an hour getting ready. Going on dates isn’t really my thing. I put on a bow tie, bought a bouquet of flowers and went on my way.

As I was nearing Abigail's apartment, a glint of light from up above caught the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw in the apartment building across the street, there was a little girl playing with a toy sword near the window of her tenth floor apartment. It was the same little girl who saw my show the other day. 

It looked like she was trying to mimic my sword swallowing trick... and she was pulling it off. I guess it really is easier than it looks.

My beaming pride instantly turned to horror as I saw her take out a bottle of cooking oil and a lighter. Click. Click. Click. She lit the sword, a cheap imitation, but a consequential one nonetheless. She appeared to scream, as the toy sword erupted in flames. In shock, she tossed the sword at the glass window. To my horror, the flames quickly engulfed the curtains.

The fire ran up the curtains and grew. I ran toward the building to help, but the apartment exploded, bursting into flames.

I panicked. Sweat trickled down my forehead, as people ran for cover all around me.

Then something clicked. Maybe there’s something you’re meant to do… Abigail's words echoed in my mind. 

In that moment, I realized if there's anyone who can save her, it was me. After all I was the man who could not die. Perhaps this worthless life can have meaning afterall. I cast away my cowardice and lept into the building, as people ran for cover. I sprinted like a gazelle up the stairs, coughing out the smog, and trying not to trip over the rumbling concrete.

The fire reached the seventh floor. Some people were still evacuating, but I didn’t see the little girl anywhere. Suddenly a flaming pillar fell to my right, narrowly missing me. The stairs around me erupted in flames with each step I took. Eigth floor, ninth floor, with each floor getting hotter, I sprinted up the steps as the world seemed to crumble around me. Finally, I was on the tenth floor.

The flames howled at me and singed my flesh, but like a chained dog, could not devour me. I was suddenly reminded of my humanity. I may not be able to die, but these flames still seared my skin. Then, I heard a sound.

“Mommy…” The sound was faint. “Mommy…” The sound got louder as I approached a door. I kicked it down and caught a facefull of soot. I coughed, trying to rub the smoke from my eyes.

A little girl was crying beside the fridge. I picked her up and held her tight. Suddenly, the stairwell behind us collapsed, revealing a steep drop to our demise.

This is is. I thought. I'm finally going to die. “You’re going to have to trust me." I said to the little girl.

“Mama, I want mama!,” she cried. 

“Close your eyes.” I said. She did. I did the same. I opened the window and took one step out, clutching her as tighly as I could.

“Ahhhhh!!!” we screamed.

Suddenly, I felt something soft beneath my feet. It squawked causing me to open my eyes in curiosity. I couldn't believe my eyes. An eagle had soared through the sky to my rescue and now hovered beneath my feet, creating a step for me to walk on. One by one, the birds of New York descended. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of birds lined up to catch our fall, carrying us in the air on a staircase of birds.

I coudln't help but cry out in laughter. "Thank you birds! You can poop on me all you want!" 

I cried on our way down. And before we knew it, we were back on solid ground, in a back alleyway where no one could see us.

I walked the little girl over to where the rest of the evacuees were waiting, watching as their apartment complex crumbled.

“Mommy!” she cried out, as she ran to a woman in the crowd. "Mommy, that crazy man saved me," she said, pointing at me. "When I grow up, I want to be a crazy man, just like him!" That was the last I saw of her, my fancy bowtie now covered in soot.

I picked my flowers off the ground and walked across the street to 133rd Park Place Avenue. I wondered if perhaps following my harrowing deed, fate would finally let me die. As I crossed the road, I scavenged for a broken shard of glass. As I pointed it at my neck, my arm once again cramped up. “No dice,” I said beneath my breath, as taxicabs and buses honked behind me. I smiled as I slowly galloped across the street, finally content. 

Distracted by the sound of nonstop honking, I stubbed my toe on a pothole in the middle of the crosswalk. “Ow!” I cried out as I grabbed my toe.

Across the street was a young woman in a hospital gown in a wheelchair. The left side of her face looked a bit droopy, but she was still beautiful to me. 

The sight of me stubbing my toe made her crack a smile. It was an awkward smile, as if she hadn't smiled in a long time, as if she had been waiting all this time for someone to come along and make her smile again.

I smiled back and waved, as the speeding bus collided with my body, its driver distracted by the fire.

Maybe there’s something you’re meant to do, and you can’t die until you’ve done it. Maybe you have a guardian angel. He was always stubbing his toe, and it made me laugh. Sometimes I thought he even did it on purpose. He told me he would make me laugh again. He promised he wouldn’t die until he did. Her words echoed in my mind as I lay dying.

© Copyright 2025 Lincoln Chen. All rights reserved.