Far, Far Away

I remember my gut clenching at his rushed words, “I’m going away, now”, said with such alarming despair as he walked across the room. I remember to this very day the second hand on the clock reaching past the five and the audible click as it moved forward in its never ending cycle. The room was shady and silent, reflecting the inside of a cocoon without all of the wrapped warmth and care. Vertical blinds were drawn closed to repel the light of the sun, reducing the glare on the computer screens that lined the room from wall to wall on rows of tables.1

I had been leaning over towards my neighbor, Carla, asking some irrelevant question about our particular computer assignment when he stood from his northwestern corner of the room and made his announcement with that flicker in his voice. It wasn’t the first time that Willis had made such a proclamation; however, it was the first time that his words carried with it so much heavy melancholic weight.2

I remember thinking that something wasn’t right. I had paused mid motion from holding my paper over for Carla’s appraisal, as if I had gazed into the eyes of Medusa herself. Carla and I, both frozen with apprehension, raised only our eyes from the wafer-thin paper, riveted as he shuffled across the room. 3

Under the iridescent glow of the fluorescents Willis’ burly body looked cylinder in the oversized, checked shirt. His lumbering footsteps echoed in the static room, parroting the huffing of his breath. 4

Now I think more of how Willis was before than I ever did then. Now I can recall all of the bestiality that he had endured and that had been witnessed by so many people. All of the times that fat Willie had come to class late with red welts blistering his skin. Cruel jokes that made the childhood rhyme the classic lie as I found out that words can hurt you. But none of that matter at that moment, at that time I had yet to learn that lesson. 5

What mattered at that particular moment was that Andy, who himself had been constantly flamed for being imperiously gay, and who was as close to Willis as anyone could claim to be as a friend, looked disturbed, shivering in his sallow skin. After Willis had made his way across the room and into the bathroom that joined in the eastern corner of the room, Andy, the melodramatic thespian of the school, and his fellowship of three, rose and as one walked across the floor with trepidation, following Willis’s path to the bathroom, murmuring amongst themselves. They kept saying something was not right. Repeating the mantra as if in conspiracy with themselves. This I watched too as Carla, disinterested, returned to her own work. I remained statuesque, still holding my paper away from my body, my eyes trained on the front of the classroom.6

As they passed midway across the room is when we heard it. We all heard it. In the span of several crawling seconds, everything that I had previously witnessed came to pass. And then time deferred, choosing only to continue on in its’ own cessation of measured velocity. 7

Andy collapsed to his knees, clutched by the grasp of his friends to keep him from pitching forward on the floor. As I rose from my seat and came around the end of the table, I remember glancing at Andy’s sunken face, phantom-like, as he held his trembling hands to his face, breathing so fast his body couldn’t cope with the intake of oxygen. 8

I remember absolute silence, the grating sound of that horrid second hand. No one approached the bathroom door where that hollow sound had erupted. Andy, the friend of all outcasts, lips blue with terror, couldn’t move to reach the door. So I went instead, me, who hadn’t spoken to Willis since third grade, when he was still just the chubby kid everyone ran circles around at the playground. 9

I can still feel my pulse accelerate just remembering when I turned the rounded, brass handle. I can still feel my heart jumping into my throat when the door swung open and my eyes feasted upon the horror of what lay on that cold ceramic tiled floor. My ears thundered as if a hundred horses had stampeded across the prairie that was my eardrums. My heart throbbed so painfully; lodged in my trachea I could hardly pass the oxygen that I was now sucking at through a gaping, arid mouth.10

Willis lie curved on his back on that numbing floor, his heavy legs drawn up, his knees pointing towards the ceiling. His hands stretched low, clutching, grasping at his large abdomen covering a now cavernous, blood soaked hole. The pistol lie to the right of his body, pointing away from the door, dropped carelessly upon his self-infliction.11

I remember his eyes colliding with mine over the expanse of several feet. The boisterous sound of the clock was now drowned by the convulsing, wheezing rattle that worked its way past his larynx to spurt out in rumbling puffs of blood-soaked carbon. His dark brown eyes filled with such pain that they overflowed with emotion, leaving glistening streaks down his milky cheeks. There was something else there, reflected in his veiled eyes. I couldn’t recognize it at the time, but it was there, even then. 12

I had a kaleidoscope of jumbled thoughts, all colliding in my mind at the same time; it’s the only part of my memories that are not exact. I do remember certain thoughts that would hurdle their way past the static mush that used to be my brain as I knelt in blood that had pooled beside him. Using my hands to help cover his blood drenched ones a fugitive thought of gloves escaped the bedlam. I imagined that of all the defective ways to kill oneself, this had to be the most piercing and raw way to go. I remember telling myself to breathe before the turbulent rollercoaster of thoughts lurched to another conclusion that Willis, through a life of torment had taken his vengeance out on the one thing that he saw to be his enemy and the cause of all his misfortune. I remember hysterically thinking that he was literally trying to kill the fat that had caused his misery. What other reason could there have been?13

I don’t remember how long I knelt there beside Willis or for how long I screamed for help. I remember huffing and cursing when help arrived. Cursing them with every foul word and sacrilegious thought that I could comprise at that moment. I remember watching Willis, strapped down and wheeled out on a stretcher with four grown men surrounding the gurney to lift it. I remember the look in his eyes when he seen them, the last insult he would ever suffer. 14

Now, one year later, I still remember the events of that day. I relive the moments, loathe to think of them but bounden to. I haven’t paid attention to what people have said of that day or why they think Willis would have killed himself. He always talked about it to Andy and his friends; anyone who would listen, really. He was so unhappy, despondent to life. 15

I recognize that other look in his eyes, the one almost devoured by pain. It was startling when I first realized it, unnerving really. It was staring back at me, as I knelt there with him, when he could do no more but push air in and out of his body. It was quietude that dared to shine in the recesses of his soul, amidst such violence. His eyes were quiescent, as if through the waves of pain, his sea of a mind had found the repose it so longed for under the flickering caress of the fluorescents.16