Immobility

Chapter Nine

I slip my arms into the sleeves of my saturated sweatshirt, the beleaguered right side of which is stained with my own blood, and pull the zipper up toward my neck, closing the gap and combining the two segments to form one. This causes me to—for what has to be the hundredth time—think of something contained within my mind that is considered a "one," and that one is a goal that I must achieve. My goal is to hold some kind of funeral for Heather and inhume her body in the form of sinking it to the bottom of the unencumbered waters of Cedar Lake, but instead of simply lowering her into the water and letting it disappear beneath the choppy surface, I will sink into the knifelike cold and asphyxiating lightlessness with her, my fingers intertwined with hers as if I am clinging desperately to a lifeline. Both of us will mix together and form one. We will amalgamate with every dead human in Cottonwood Springs and form one. Every single human that has existed and every one that currently exists and every one that will soon exist and every one that will never exist will unite and become one. One. We, mankind, are all one, and will forever be one. My deceased counterpart and I are the grand resemblance of a legendary sculptor, and humanity is that of the stone, and we will both mix together and form his greatest masterpiece.

My mind is beyond everything. Every existing emotion contained within my mind has melded together to fabricate an acute case of clinical depression that unrelentingly vacuums every last splash of color and life out of the world, turning it into this gray globe of pure unworthiness. My mind seems to have collapsed into this disgusting pile of an example of uninterrupted decomposition and vomited me out, landing me in this abhorrent pit that I am incapable of climbing out of, no matter what I try, no matter how I perform these methods of escape. I have absolutely no desire to continue my endeavors to survive the flood. The best thing I can do now is simply end it, descend to the lightless bottom of the flood that was once a quiet neighborhood by the name of Cottonwood Springs with my deceased companion and let the darkness of anoxemia to sweep through my mind and subsequently render it extinct, but not simply because it is my only option, but because I have an indescribably profound desire to perform this action that, once completed, can never be reversed. With every second, I keep plummeting deeper and deeper into a bottomless gray funk, and my only form of escape is vacuuming all of the life from my mind and body and transmogrifying it into a nothingness even more deeply complex and impossible to understand than the blankness preceding the birth of the universe.

I entwine my fingers with those of Heather and haul her to a standing position, managing to keep her limp cadaver upright, then stand near the edge of the mattress. In just a few seconds, I will start the anticipated process of preparation for my own dispassionate, soundless demise, a lengthy bridge of minutes laced with impatience that will immediately be followed by the aqueous inhumation of myself and my symbol of death, as well as my departure from my physical organism and journey to my immaculately smooth meadowland of mentality.

Step one—the final session of hydration. I turn my face to the sky and gulp down as much water as I can possibly take, to such an extent that it feels as though my stomach has swollen slightly—but not enough to induce discomfort—and the euphoric sensation in my throat expands tenfold, seeming to replace the inner walls with satin.

Step two—the expulsion of as much carbon dioxide from my respiratory system as possible, intermittently called "purging." The process involves prolonged phases of assiduous and excessive hyperventilation that flushes the asphyxiant gas out of the body, which stimulates the unpleasant tightness within the chest and the increasingly urgent need to breathe—and the subsequent reflexive inhalation if not remedied by resurfacing—experienced while holding one's breath for extended periods of time. This effectuates an unmitigated shutdown of the body's warning system that consequentially forces one to discontinue the session of apnea. In other words, rather than palpitating uncontrollably as a result of struggling to resist the urge to inhale and subsequently staring directly into the eyes of my own death in a frenzied fit of oxygen-deprived convulsions, I will peacefully disappear into the lightless nullity of unconsciousness; I want my death to be painless and serene, as though I am simply falling asleep. I perform this method for several long minutes, purging as hard as I can, expectedly becoming lightheaded, but this is normal.