So this was how it ended Andrew; sitting in what looked like a hospital waiting room, with dozens if not hundreds of men that wore his face with him. All waiting for something. At some point he began to converse with the others there,

I burned myself to death. Was after that time I fought with dad. I guess mom stopped you from lighting up the gasoline… I pulled away. You’d think it’d hurt more but honestly all I remember is just thinking… Finally, it’s over. I just wish mom didn’t have to see it.

Mom and dad gave me a bottle of scotch and a noose for my birthday, a week after I dropped out of university. It was my favorite scotch too. Guess they wanted to make sure I was at least comfortable when I hung. Didn’t even feel it.

At first he had been almost uncomfortable hearing them speak of their deaths. Not because of their circumstances, but because of how close they mirrored his own.

‘Car accident.’ Mom and dad gave everything for me. I couldn’t just leave them with nothing, but I couldn’t really bring myself to stay living. Made it look like I feel asleep at the wheel and went into a tree; just had to pull a few all nighters.

Nitrogen bag. I used to play paintball so was easy for me to rig up an N2 tank with a regulator to a zip lock bag. Figured it was the best way to go. Just fall asleep and never wake again, ya know? I mean… I lost count of the times I’ve gotten up in the morning just cussing at the fact something hadn’t killed me in my sleep. 20 years like that… Almost every morning…

After all, how many of them could’ve had the same circumstances he had?

I uh, froze… to death. Wasn’t very good at being homeless thing after dad kicked me out, so just found a nice corner downtown one night and just let winter do its thing. No one was going to miss some nameless street bum anyways.

Threw myself into the river on Christmas, a few days after cancer got dad. He made me promise him that I’d do everything to outlive him. Biggest regret of my life, that promise. Some days I wanted to kill him first so that I could finally die too… Some son I was. He deserved better.

And on and on it went. One story that had no happy notes after another. Each time Andrew asked a single question at the end: Did you regret killing yourself? Each time the answer:

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

“Andrew?” Everyone was Andrew, there in that waiting room. They all heard the call but only one turned towards the hospital door; the one the voice had been calling for.

The doctor standing there was odd, or so Andrew thought. His first impression was someone that seemed both old and not old at the same time; the face was fairly young and yet there was an air about the doctor that spoke of someone that had been in his field for far too long. Andrew fell in step behind him as they walked down the sterile corridor.

“…Who are you?”

His guide didn’t respond to that. There wasn’t a need to. Andrew had died for sure; the bright flash from the back of the shotgun barrel as he squeezed the trigger was still fresh in his mind. A few moments later he spoke again.

“Did any of us die normally?”

“…No. You always took your own life. In a few cases your death was able to do some good. But most of the time it was just a meaningless.”

Andrew fell quiet after that, his face as empty as he felt. Part of him thought that he should feel disappointed, but the thought was little more than a distant foreign echo. He almost didn’t notice as his guide opened a door to someplace else that should’ve been impossible and yet it still existed. He hadn’t ever been inside of a log cabin before in his life, a new experience that made him to take it in. A small fire lit in a cast iron stove lit the room, casting playful shadows on the wall and bringing and comfortable warmth into the scarcely decorated room. Snowflakes drift lazily outside the windows, glittering in the setting sun that gave an almost eerie glow in the featureless landscape outside.

“How about you get some sleep, son? I know you’ve heard it before, but I promise it’ll help.”

The word help caught Andrew’s ear more than the others, as he stood staring out the window into the unending snow field. Not a promise that he would feel better, only that it would help. He understood at once; there was nothing here for him but oblivion. And yet… as he ran his hand along the comfortable looking bed, it was more substance than any of the other fake promises of relief that he had been told his whole life. He didn’t bother taking off his clothes as he climbed onto the comforters, as more and more of his mind began to slip away, memories of his life blinking one by one out of existence. He heard a voice that he thought he knew, though he could not recall where or who he was anymore.

“You want me to stay, son?”

“….please….”

And somewhere in the universe, the last thing Andrew’s consciousness knew before it faded into nothingness was a kind hand holding his own.