The Suicide King Read online

  The Suicide King

  Vanessa Marie

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Copyright © 2019 by Vanessa Marie; All rights reserved.

  Publisher: House of Attitude

  Content Editing: It's Your Story Content Editing

  Editing: Finishing Touch Editing

  Final Proof: Tulip Editorial

  Cover Design: Amy Queau ®

  ASIN: B07RZDTRV1

  ISBN: 9781074748814

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Created with Vellum

  To anyone who has ever suffered, this is for you.

  To anyone who has ever felt alone and not enough, this is for you.

  To anyone who has ever felt like they don't matter, this is for you.

  You Matter.

  Contents

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  This book contains heavy subject material that may be triggers for some readers.

  It contains graphic scenes and covers topics like suicide, abuse, the loss of a child, funerals, and uses strong language. Read at your own risk.

  Prologue

  Some theories suggest life started with a big bang. Mine ended with one. I lied to my wife. In all actuality, I lie to her every time I look at her. The lies continue to pile up each time I open my mouth. I'm happy. I want to live. I'm grateful to be alive. Those are the biggest lies of my life. In reality, I'm suffocating with each breath I take. The shadows from all my past traumas never get solved, always hanging over my shoulder. They only add layer upon layer of heaviness I can't seem to escape no matter what I do. I need to leave before it affects my wife and my daughter the way it's pulling me under. Before the only thing they see and feel is this veil of darkness.

  The back of my head hits the headrest as I catch Grace's and Maggie's smiling faces staring back at me from a picture tucked in the mirror of the down-turned visor. If I had the guts, I would have said goodbye in person, but Maggie would have tried to talk me out of this. There is no going back. So here I sit, alone on a secluded dark road. It'll be a while before anyone finds me. By then, it won't matter.

  "Gracie, my sweet girl… I hope you get everything you want in life. I know you will. I wish I could have been the kind of dad you needed. I wish I could have been there for you in all the ways you wanted me to be. I tried. I really did, but you deserve better than what I'm bringing to the table. I'm broken. Pieces of me can't ever be fixed, and I don't want that to damage the good in you."

  The weight of my pistol feels heavier by the moment as it rests on my thigh, my palm sweaty against the grip.

  I know what's going to happen after I pull the trigger. I know how messy the scene will be. I've been on so many of these calls over the years. The mess is going to be horrendous. The very least I can do for Maggie is make sure she knows why. Make sure her note is kept clean. I take the gallon-size ziplock bag from the passenger seat and slip the envelope addressed to my wife inside, and zip it shut. If only there was a way to make sure no one else reads it, but there isn't. If I left it at home, in a drawer or a random place, there's a chance of Grace finding it. Or Maggie not finding it at all. Plus without a note, the investigation will linger, and I don't want that. Couldn't have that.

  "I need you to know, Mags. This was never about you. Or us. This job, it has a way of ruining your life. It ruined ours. It ruined me. I can't stop the dreams. I can't get away from the calls that haunt me. I'm over everyone telling me to just get over it. Not when I drive past all the places and I can still see the bodies. They expect us to walk around this city and pretend nothing ever happened here. Pretend everything is okay as if we wear the same rose-colored glasses as the rest of the world. Like we don't suffer from trauma night after night. Hell, we can't even sleep in the same room because I'm afraid I will hurt you in my sleep. Everyone mocks me, and I'm done with it. I don't want to pop a bunch of pills anymore just to function. I can't live like this. You deserve someone who doesn't have these problems. I want you guys to be happy."

  A low sob escapes my throat. My eyelashes are wet with beading tears.

  This is the best way.

  I've weighed all the options.

  This is the only way.

  I don't want to go, but I can't stay.

  "I'm sorry."

  1

  I didn't know what I expected when I finally pulled the trigger. All I knew was everything stopped. Time. The noise in my head. My heart. Everything just stopped. I never was much of a religious person, but I guessed a part of me always believed in a heaven and a hell. I mean sure, who doesn't want to end up in heaven? An eternal place where you got to spend forever with those you've loved and lost along the way. Sounded like a place most people wanted to end up.

  Only I didn't think that was where I ended up. Instead I ended up here—wherever "here" was. I wasn't sure if I was expecting the blinding lights of heaven's gates or the smell of singed hair in the pits of hell… What I wasn't expecting was the mist of confusion.

  As I glanced around, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end due to the vast and never-ending space surrounding me. A vast expanse of nothing. The deafening silence was its own kind of hell. All I'd ever wanted was peace and quiet from the noise inside my head and now that I'd gotten it, I didn't know if that was what I wanted anymore. You know the saying, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it? Well, I was pretty sure it was biting me in the ass right now, and I didn't think I'd been here for more than a few minutes. Then again, I didn't even know how time worked in this place.

  "God, where the hell am I?"

  "We don't use that name in here," a deep voice rasped from behind me.

  Whipping around to see who the voice belonged to, I stumbled back, and for the first time, I realized I was still me. I still had a body. It functioned. My jeans and red shirt were still the wrinkled mess I'd picked up that morning from a dirty pile. Fear gripped a hold of me as my pulse drummed and sweat beaded on the scruff of my upper lip. I was alone moments ago and now this thing stood befor
e me. My voice shook with trepidation. "I…I… Where the h-hell am I?"

  "Well, you're definitely closer to hell than you are to you know who." His tone held a bitter bite to it.

  At six feet one, I was no slouch; however, I found myself tilting my head to look at the monstrosity who stood in front of me with a black cape draped over his head and body, obscuring his identity. Tension and hostility rolled off him, making me shrink back in intimidation.

  I blinked my shit-brown eyes dumbly a few times, trying to get a grasp on what was actually happening. What was reality and what was my mind playing tricks on me?

  "Okay, I don't know how much longer I can do this. You look like you're going to shit yourself." He pushed back his hood and removed the rest of the cape, revealing dark hair, eyes so pale blue I had to avert my gawking stare away. He had olive skin and wore a perfectly tailored black suit.

  I didn't know how to make heads or tails out of anything. My mouth hung open a bit as I stared in disbelief. Why his being a normal man with creepy eyes in a suit was more unbelievable than an actual grim reaper was beyond me; however, my mind was racing to catch up.

  "Wow, you really do have zero sense of humor." He looked at his nails and rubbed his thumb against them like he was positively bored.

  "Where are we? What are you? What the hell is going on?"

  "I'm Luke." He lifted his arms wide and gestured to more of the mist and the nothingness. "Welcome to purgatory," he deadpanned.

  My brows knitted together. "You're Luke. This is purgatory? What exactly are you? What in the hell is purgatory?"

  He dipped his chin in a quick nod as if that explained everything I needed to know. It didn't. I waited for him to elaborate. He didn't. So we stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for the longest minute of my life or rather my un-life, until I finally broke. "Can you explain this dammit?"

  Luke rolled his creepy eyes and sighed in the most exaggerated way I'd ever heard. I had been a cop in my former life, so I was more than familiar with every form of a sigh.

  "Purgatory, this lovely wonderful place is the in-between. It's the place you go when you're not good enough for heaven, but you haven't screwed up enough to send you straight to hell. So you're stuck here to live out your own little special version of suffering and hell with me. It's like a little gray area." Sarcasm oozed from his tone.

  He gestured around to more of the immense mist and nothingness that surrounded us. No end and nothing to see. Only gray clouds that looked and smelled like rain. His little play on words—"the gray area"—made me want to smash his face in, but whether I wanted to admit it or not, I'm sure he could drop me.

  I sucked in a deep breath as tears welled in the corners of my eyes. When I was alive, I'd tried to do right and always hoped heaven existed, and I hoped that was where I'd end up. And then this being told me I'm not? I kind of figured I wasn't in heaven when I got here, but guessing it and having it confirmed were two different things.

  This realization was like a searing stab to the gut. "So…so you're saying, I'm going to hell… Who are you then? The gatekeeper?" My voice held a bitter edge.

  "For now, let’s say I'm more like a tour guide."

  "A tour guide of what?" I wasn't sure I really wanted the answer.

  "Your life. And everything you left in your wake."

  Bile burned at the back of my throat, along with every sinking feeling I thought I'd left behind. "I can't go back. I won't go back. I did what I did to end my suffering. Now that weight is finally gone." Or is it? I wondered as my chest felt heavy once again.

  Those almost colorless eyes narrowed at me, his mouth pulling into a hard line. "This was your problem while you were on earth, Jason. You never stopped to realize what your suicide, your absence, would cause. What you did was far-reaching. Your death touched more people than you can even imagine, and I want you to bear witness to the lasting effects you left behind, because I'm here to tell you, it doesn't end with you. The pain and the suffering never ends, like every single one of you suicides seem to think."

  "What is this? Some kind of a Christmas story? Where you'll show me all the ways I was loved, and I'll get some magical do-over once you show me the way? I hate to break it to you, Luke, but I was fighting things you'll never comprehend and dealing with crippling anxiety. It doesn't get better just because you show me 'the light.'" The look he shot me when I made quotation marks made me lower my hands but not stop my tirade.

  "It's not going to go away because someone wants me to talk or because some dickhead thinks I have all these reasons to be happy. Your little science project isn't going to work. I don't want it. I made my choice, and I stick by it."

  Luke tugged at the sleeves of his suit jacket. "Unfortunately for you, it doesn't matter what you want anymore. That decision was already made and now we just follow the ripple effect."

  2

  Luke and I stepped out of the break in the woods where an old, half-rotted oak had fallen during a storm. The air smelled of pollen and turning leaves. Everything was just starting to bloom, but the twigs and branches beneath our feet were still brittle from the winter and snapped under our weight. We were behind a familiar truck. A pristine, red Ford F-150 nicknamed Optimus Prime. I knew this for two reasons. One being it was once my truck, and two it was always looked after with meticulous care. The kind of care that was causing me to squint as the sun reflected off the paint, momentarily blinding me from the glare. I held up my forearm to shield my eyes, using the back of my hand as I continued out toward the truck. From my vantage point, I could see brain matter and blood splattered all over the inside of the windows and windshield. I knew without getting any closer exactly what it was. It was my blood and my brain matter. My nose twitched as I remembered the smell and taste of metal as it poured in my mouth. I let my gaze drift away from the truck back to the side of the road, where an uncomfortable burn filled the back of my throat.

  In my almost nineteen years as a police officer, I'd worked more scenes like this than I could count. And at a certain point, I'd had to let myself become numb, until I couldn't anymore.

  However, standing here from the outside looking in—seeing my own body slumped over and my insides sprayed all across the inside of something I once held so dear—I ran through a gambit of emotions, and I couldn't figure out which one to grasp on to first.

  What I didn't expect to pull me out of my head was the sound of someone vomiting—sobs escaping in between every dry heave of her hunched-over, spandex–covered, shaking form. She was on all fours, the black-and-green running tights covering her lean thighs down to the neon green running shoes that dug into the grass.

  "Who is that?" I whispered, afraid she'd hear me.

  "One of your ripples."

  I raised a brow. "We should go help her." I started forward but his ironlike grip closed against my biceps and yanked me back.

  "She can't see us."

  I threw my arm back and shook him off, watching in horror as this poor woman, this poor stranger, tried to pull herself together.

  The woman sat back on her heels and wiped across her mouth with the forearm of her neon dry-fit shirt. The spit hung from her mouth the way it only could when you were dehydrated and sick. It was a cool morning, a brisk dampness in the air. A bit of dew on the grass. Things I didn't think I'd ever taken the time to notice before, but I noticed now. When it didn't matter. When my corpse was ten feet from me. When a stranger was vomiting after finding my body. I never considered an innocent could find me where I was or what effect seeing my dead body might have. I expected it to be a hunter. Someone who was used to dealing with bloody corpses. That was why I'd chosen the spot I had. They were used to dressing deer. Finding me wouldn't have bothered them like this. And now I could see this traumatic moment might forever change her life. Altering a part of her she would never get back. With shaking hands, she pulled out her phone, dialed, and hit speaker.

  "Nine-one-one, what's your emergency?"

  "
I need to report a…a… Oh my God…a body?" She let out a strangled sob and covered her mouth.

  "Ma'am, can you give me your name and location, please?"

  "My name is Alecia Thomas. Oh God—I can't believe this is happening. I just wanted to go for a run this morning. That's all I wanted."

  "Alecia, can you tell me where you are?"

  "Um… I'm in Dearwell County. Off Highway 122. I think I'm off Highway 122. There's a farm with a big red barn about a mile back on the right. I don't know the exact address, but there's a red Ford truck. That's where he is."

  "Thank you, Alecia. Can you give me a phone number for you in case we get disconnected?"

  I turned to Luke. "My discovery wasn't supposed to happen like this."

  "Well, who did you think was going to find you?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know, but I didn't think it'd be some random chick out for a fucking run!"

  Guilt gnawed at me in a way I was very familiar with—a way that had led me to this exact place. Guilt, fear, and inadequacy. Three of my constant companions. All part of the reason we were standing here.

  Turning to Luke, I tried to explain. "I left a note. I took the time to explain why so there wouldn't be questions or blame or guilt. I left my truck here for a reason. Off the beaten path so someone like this woman wouldn't find me. I thought it would be one of the guys during hunting season. Not now. Not today. This wasn't supposed to happen."