I, Death

Friday August 24, 2012 - 10:52 PM

I see that someone named Jane has posted a comment asking me why I stopped. I've held the details of what happened the night that Jagdish died so deep down inside, that it's difficult for me to get it all out. I needed to take a break after writing in such detail about it the other night. But it's not only that. It's that I pretty much went blank immediately after what I'd described.

Laughing, my entire body shaking as the laughter forced its way past my lips, was the last thing I remember about that night.

The rest is just darkness.

Pitch black darkness.

Immediately after releasing the laughter from the depths of my bowels, I passed out and fell onto the ground immediately beside Jagdish.

Neil told me this. And this was just last week, because other than school and Jagdish’s funeral, I hadn’t seen either Neil or Harley because I’d been grounded. Anyways, Neil told me that as I fell down on the ground beside Jag, that they thought I was dead too.

Neil admitted that he thought maybe Harley had poisoned us in some sort of bizarre “end of school, end of friendship” death pact. I know it’s something he would never tell Harley, likely because it’s the crazy fucking kind of thing that Harley would come up with, and we both knew it.

Anyway, talking about all the mind-fuck kind of things that Harley is capable of is not the reason I’m keeping this journal.

No, I want to get on with remembering the sequence of events from that night.

Neil said that I’d fallen down right beside Jag.

When he checked for my pulse he could feel it. Said he’d only ever felt a pulse stronger once, actually. It was the pulse he’d felt on a wounded moose just moments before it bled to death. He said my pulse was something like that.

In any case, he knew that I was still alive.

He told me he hesitated again a moment before leaving for help, uncertain as to whether or not Harley could be trusted with our bodies — Jag’s dead body and my unconscious one — with thoughts that perhaps he might come back to find Harley had rolled us both into the fire to see who might burn up first, or maybe dragged us over to the river to see if our bodies would float away or just sink into the murky depths. Yeah, Harley is that kind of strange fucker. I’ll never forget the time that I came upon him when he had two poor frogs pinned down by the arms and was slowly pulling a single leg off of each of them. He’d been planning on seeing if there was any difference in the way that each frog hopped afterwards, claiming it was a scientific experiment.

No, Harley didn’t do anything with our prone bodies. Neil ran to get help. When Neil returned with his older brother and father (and a quick 911 call put in) he said he found Harley sitting cross-legged in front of the fire and singing “Koom-Buy-Ya” or however the hell you spell it.

So help returned — I was rushed to emergency and treated for alcohol poisoning. It was later determined that that was what killed Jagdish.

But, dear reader, we both know by now that no matter what the medical report says Jag wasn’t killed because he had too much to drink that night.

No.

Jag was killed because of me.

I did it. It’s this fucking curse surrounding me.

Everyone who gets close to me dies.

And now Jagdish is dead.

And it’s my fucking fault.

– 1 Comment –

Kim said...

Curses are only true if you believe in them, Peter. It’s possible that with all the unfortunate things that have been happening, you've begun to believe that you're the cause of all of this.

Stop believing in a curse. You’re much too remorseful to be a killer.

You’re just unlucky right now.