A guy was ready to end it all. It seemed like a good enough day for a suicide. 58° and sunny. The traffic was mild. The view was nice from atop the parking garage. There weren't too many people down there to splash with entrails. There was a homeless guy with a saxophone that has probably never been in tune. There weren't any kids around to traumatize. A few cars. In short, it wouldn't be too much of a hassle to anyone's day if the guy jumped.
The guy stood near the edge and he hesitated. The will to survive is incredibly hard to just conquer, he realized. As much as his conscious mind was exhausted with life, his knee-jerk instincts wouldn't let him make the plunge.
Maybe it's just like the diving board, he thought. Though I always was a nancy when it came to diving. Always afraid I'd hit my head.
A lot had to be weighed out. Sure, the guy's life sucked. He hated his job, his "friends," his apartment and its shotty wi-fi, and he hated the way his voice sometimes cracked when he tried to be authoritative. Sure, he'd be missing out on a lot more in life, but at least he'd never have to go to the Secretary of State's office ever again.
The guy was close, he finally got one foot off of the edge when he heard a voice from his left say, "Hey man, you think you could hold off on that? Please?"
The guy stumbled back and fell on his ass. He turned to see a hooded figure with a skull for a face, wielding a crooked, black lightning bolt of a scythe.
"Holy crap," the guy said, rising, "you're Death."
"Ooooh the man's a detective," Death teased. "Look, I don't have you scheduled for another 38 years. Can you please not jump?"
"What do you care?" the guy asked.
"It's, like, a lot of paperwork to fill out, man," Death replied with a sigh. "I got other shit to do. People to see."
"Yeah like who?"
"Okay, so maybe I just want to watch the entire series of 'Parks and Rec,' what does it matter? Why are you out here on this ledge, my friend?"
The guy took a seat on the edge of the garage. Death joined him.
The guy sighed, being forced to remember why he was out here. "I'm bored. And I'm tired. I'm so tired. When I was younger, I couldn't wait to be an adult. I thought I'd go to college and get a great job where I made my own hours, I'd marry the girl of my dreams and live in a big house by a lake. Now I'm working 9 to 5 in a cubicle, lucky if I feel energized enough to masturbate when I get home."
"Too much information, dude," Death replied.
"Sorry," the guy said. "That youth is gone from me. I dated this one girl in college, and I was gonna marry her. I never told her, but I had walked by Kay's several times and picked out the ring I was going to propose to her with. I almost bought it, but before I could, I caught her sleeping with this guy, Jeff."
"Damn... Somehow the name, 'Jeff,' makes it worse."
"Right? I haven't met anyone since her that really had that spark. She even loved nature as much as I did. We used to go for walks through the woods together. No one else is weird enough to like that."
"She sounds like a real Anna Kendrick, bro," Death said, pulling a small blunt out from under his cloak. "You want some weed?"
"Right now? Not really."
"It'll help take the edge off, no pun intended."
The guy sighed. "Alright."
The guy choked on the smoke a little, and Death laughed, "Come on, man, you can't jump over just one girl."
Clearing his throat, the guy said, "It's bigger than just one girl. I'm alone. At work, I laugh at things that aren't jokes. I have to repeatedly tell the girl at Subway to put more cheese on my Spicy Italian because it's never enough, and I see the same girl literally every week. I bought a set of dumbbells so I wouldn't have to work out in front of people. I used it once. No one does that. No one sees things the way I do. No one ever will. Even when I'm around friends or family or coworkers, I am alone."
"That's some deep shit, man," said Death, choking a little on some smoke.
"I think the reason I like walking through nature is because nature never lies. The ocean never pretends to be the sky. But people lie. People lie all the time, because like me, they have this need to survive. If they realized their own futility, their survival instinct would lie to them to keep them alive. I am convinced that you have to lie to be happy. And I'm tired of lying."
Death found himself at a loss for words. He couldn't say that he really cared about this guy. He wasn't all that funny, and in truth was just kind of a bummer. Plus, he smoked like 3/4 of Death's blunt. What the fuck, man? He said he didn't even want any. Death was having a difficult time trying to sympathize with this dude, but he really didn't want to fill out any paperwork this afternoon. Plus, maybe the guy needed a reality check.
"It ain't that bad, man," Death said.
"It ain't that good, either," the guy replied.
"So what? Grow a pair. That's life. It's better than death. I think I would know. You know how long it takes to get a pizza delivered to the afterlife? There's so much more out here for you to do. Shit, man, if I still had flesh, I'd be out soaking up the sun, not brooding in misery. You found common ground with the Harbinger of the Underworld, but you think you can't meet in the middle with your friends? You don't seem that weird."
"I'm not," the guy said, feeling a little defeated. "It's just--"
"Think about your friends and family. Your mom. You have one, right? A mom?"
"Of course I have a mom."
"How would she feel? How would everyone who loves you feel?"
"I--"
"Nut up. Life is tough, and it's long. But death is way longer. It's like having your flight delayed for the rest of eternity."
"That sounds terrible," the guy admitted.
"I can't stop you from jumping. But I can tell you that a brief period of lackluster is not worth sacrificing those peaks. I mean, think about when you lost your virginity. Wasn't that awesome?"
"That was pretty rad," the guy said.
Death went on, "Or when you scored the winning goal in your soccer game in fourth grade?"
"How do you know about that?"
"That's irrelevant. The point is that there's no guarantee you'll ever feel that way again. But if you jump, it is guaranteed that it will never happen again."
Death stood up and walked away. "See ya bro," he said, waving a bony hand.
The guy let his feet dangle over the edge for a little. They rocked back and forth. A family of three walked a hundred feet beneath him.
The guy got up off the edge and walked back towards his car. He'd hate to make Death fill out unnecessary paperwork. The guy knew how shitty that felt.
