Chelsea sat in the tub and pressed her wrinkled fingertips against her collarbone. She traced the map of freckles peach fuzz down to her arm before she laced her index finger and thumb around her wrist. It was a new game, seeing how high up her arm she could pull the ring of bony fingers before the tips of would force themselves to separate. Half way up her forearm, that’s a new record. She held her breath as her spine sunk down vertebra by vertebra until the rope of bumps was flat against the bottom of the porcelain tub. Her eyelashes fluttered as she pushed each little orb of air out from her lungs.

This would be an all right way to go.

Chelsea watched the small spheres of air as they raced towards the surface of the water, shattering one by one. She rose above the overflowing sides of the tub and coughed up what was left in her lungs. Somehow, even here, even in this world of despondency and dejection, the will to live survived. At least, that is, until you reached lethal levels.

Another lipstick tally on the bathroom mirror and another failed attempt to add to the list. Chelsea wasn’t worried though; her end was inevitable. Sometimes it seemed to her like she was the last one left. Sure, some of the people she thought about each morning as she laid in her bed staring at the ceiling were truly gone. Their levels had risen faster; their disease was more volatile and infectious. But others were just like Chelsea, hidden away in their homes, unable to go outside and face the unrelenting sunlight – not to mention the scattered bodies below high-rise windows, the accidental dams of floating corpses in the rivers, the gutters full of drunken, human-shaped waste. One day soon Chelsea would join them. The only thing stopping her was that vexing instinct, that undying urge to keep breathing, keep moving, if only to see one more desolate day.

The news reports had started about a year prior. Psychologists, therapist, psychoanalysts, “dysphoria authorities”, whatever the talking-heads wanted to call the head-shrinkers, were all on television trying to decipher the unbelievable. Nearly one thousand suicides in the first week lead to nearly ten thousand in the first month. These were the ones already close to the end, the ones who had already proofread their suicide notes months earlier, just waiting for the day that would cement them in their decision to leave everything they loved behind. But then, the sickness began to spread, digging its roots deep into the communities that felt the first wave of deaths. Police officers, coroners, funeral directors, husbands, wives, and children of the deceased all began to add to the overwhelming amount of fatalities.

“Suicide Contagion” became the talk of the nation. GMOs, global warming, technology dependence, eschaton, there was no discriminating when it came to theorizing possible origins. Eventually it didn’t matter. The infected pool grew so rapidly that it became impossible to not know someone affected. Six degrees of separation became five, then four, winding down until one day each unfortunate individual on this forlorn continent woke up and realized they didn’t feel like living anymore. The scientists working on cures, the nurses and doctors caring for the destitute, the talking heads and dysphoria authorities all sunk out of sight and the news channels began playing daytime talk show repeats until eventually they played nothing at all.

Chelsea stared at herself in the mirror. Her cavernous cheeks did nothing but accentuate her clouded, dim eyes. Don’t worry, she told herself. Soon. You’ll be nothing soon.