The Suicide Sun

"Um..."

"That sort of thing. Are you having an affair?"

Down laughed at this.

"Whereas just us, with no capital 'U' simply means you were thinking about us. Which is what you should be doing, considering today is our anniversary."

"Um, no, I was just thinking about us."

"Hmmmm. What about Us? Do you ever think about Us?"

"With a capital 'U'?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Oh."

"Do you?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I think a lot about Us."

Down nodded. He thought it was expected of him. But George didn't notice because she had her eyes closed.

"One reason I've never given you a key, for example," George said, "is because you would be guaranteed to lose it, or probably even never bother to use it."

"Um..."

"That sort of thing is precisely what a girl takes into consideration when she thinks about Us."

"That dog over there..." said Down, not because he was keen to change the subject (though obviously he was), but because he had noticed an alarming-looking dog.

George opened her eyes, looked at Down (in suspicion) and then followed his gaze to the middle-distance.

"What dog?"

"By the tree. That big black dog having a piss against the tree."

George struggled to see what Down was referring to. There was a tree. There were, in fact, lots of trees. But she couldn't see a dog.

"I can't see a dog."

"Over there... by that Elm tree."

"Nope, I can't see a dog anywhere."

Down turned to her, slightly exasperated. "What do you mean you can't see a dog? It's..." But when he turned back to look at the dying Elm tree, the big black dog had gone.

"There's not a dog anywhere near us, James," said George.

"No," said Down.

#

There were days where Down simply couldn't bring himself to do anything.

Days spent in bed, sweating under the sheets, not sleeping (sleep wouldn't come), but not exactly awake, either. Dead days. Days that drifted into weeks, weeks that dragged into months. Lying there, unwashed on rumpled sheets, the telephone unplugged, the T.V. neutralised, the radio silenced, all communications unwelcome, Down would feel nothing except a slow-burning rage at himself, and at the world, at life. Then the rage would die away, as it always does (rage can't handle long distances; rage is strictly part-time), to be replaced by self-pity, by sickness, by madness (or thoughts of madness, which were worrying, which were bad), by boredom.

Bad days... Everybody has bad days. But Down had them by the calendar. His bad days had anniversaries. Bad days...Oh get over it!

What did it take out of him, what was the cost of all this? The cost was high. And it was getting higher. Optimism he could live without (you try living without optimism --it's surprisingly easy, after the first year). His health, which had never been that great anyway, had deteriorated alarmingly: some days he felt like a plague victim; he felt medieval. Aches and sores, hot flushes, headaches (bad ones, naturally), diarrhoea, stomach cramps, vomiting... Add to this all the jobs he had lost, the friends he had turned away, the relationships that he flushed down the sewer... And all that wasted life, those unfulfilled dreams, those memories he never made for himself. No wonder he was depressed. Depression? Depression was depressing.

#

Night was falling (night had nowhere else to go but downwards) as Down let himself into his home. He lived in a council house on a council estate in an area that, frankly, needed counselling. Or demolishing.

Working class regions of big working class cities invariably develop inferiority complexes (as opposed to development, and office complexes), so to make up for the dog shit and the chip shops and the muggings and the graffiti and the discarded syringes and the problem kids and the high unemployment and the oppressing awfulness--to make up for all that, working class areas were given high-culture names, such as Chaucer Lane (where there was no progress), or Wordsworth Avenue (where there were no daffodils, or even trees).

Down lived on Shakespeare Road, which, in keeping with the hierarchy of these things, was a Tragedy.

On the street corner stood a gang of ten year olds who looked to be already prison-educated. They had bullet-shiny heads and violent eyes. They drank Special Brew and talked casually of arson, of burglary and rape. Down was invisible to them because he was dead already and worse, he was broke.

Down let himself into number twelve Shakespeare Road. In the hall, he ignored the small mountain of brown envelopes that lay unwelcome on the welcome mat, he passed unreflected by the wall mirror, he ignored the door to the living room (he didn't feel like living) and made instead for the kitchen.

He filled up the kettle and switched it on, rescued a cup from the sink, plopped an economy teabag into it before drizzling over the milk, and sat down at the table while he waited for the kettle to boil. Then he removed his jacket and fished inside the pocket for the white paper bag that housed the solution to all his problems.

In the gloom of the kitchen, Down sensed that something wasn't quite right. Oh yes... He stood up and switched on the light. That was better. He sat down again, and opened the bag. A tiny brown bottle with a white childproof cap now sat in his hand. The kettle screamed as Down unscrewed the lid with steady hands and red-rimmed eyes.

#

For the first night in a long, long time, James Down slept soundly, and deeply, and with no nightmares.

#

From the diary of James Down:

Saturday, January 21st.

Not so bad today. Not really very bad at all. But I refuse to be lulled into a false sense of security. I know that tomorrow will be awful. If not tomorrow, then the day after, or next week, next month. There are shadows on the walls, long and black, and they are moving towards me, like determined spiders, weeping venom. They have fangs.

Additional to all the other medication I am taking (not to mention the vast amounts of alcohol, to drown out all that medication), I am now on heavy fucking tranquillisers, which tranc me out, and make me sleep. This is good news! Soon, I'll be taking medication to get me through all the medication I'm taking. And I'll be in such a state that life will seem illusory, a constructed phantom, easily ignored.