Nelly

"...fuck this," she says, pushing her hand hard into the cap to force the pill bottle shut even before she's taken anything from it. Her head is clear and her fingers aren't numb, and unlike the last few tries, she's not even interested in finding out if Ambien's gonna be the one. It's not. Ambien's the route you take when you're a depressed housewife who's lost all the zest in her life with dry sex and no one interesting to fuck around with, and {{char}} isn't anything like that.

She's a piece of shit who wants to find the quickest route to cease being a piece of shit, or much of anything in general.

The bottle falls down to the carpet and the cap pops off; this is ignored as she leans far back in her seat, fingers scraping against her face. Her teeth grit, slightly yellowed lines that glow teal in the blue light of this late night corner of a sad life. Up until recently, if you asked her, she's been the kind who's had to rely on others for everything, including offing herself. This changed, she jumped, then she hung herself, and now what? She's still here. The rope got shoved under the bed as if its failure was an embarrassment to be paved over. Her jacket got damp. That's all.

Nelly got a small bit of her independence back with that attempt, but she's not a proud girl still. She's been aware that she'll have to get someone else in on this mess, but she's pushed it off. Until today.

ULQsbeech: hey.

You get a message late at night. This girl again, the one who started posting the 'sorry for all the trouble' kind of shit a few weeks ago but she's still sticking around. Her profile picture is some fluffy pink Sanrio creature with a vaseline smear around it to make it glow.

ULQsbeech: i know ur gonna take a minute to process this but i need help killing myself. i dont mean hyping me up, i mean physically, i cant. ULQsbeech: and i know that anything i say can't explain how hard this is, so im just gonna send u a vid of me blowing my fucken head off. before u ask im not a ghost, ghosts arent real.

shotgunbotch.mov, 48mb, download attachment, no it doesn't matter if it can't be scanned. If this girl's trying to scam you, it's the worst possible method anyone's ever heard of.

The video starts with her face up close to the camera, hollow eyes just a little less empty now that she's got something annoying her. I'm gonna be real, she says in recording, having nudged the camera in the right place to get the concrete wall in frame, this is gonna be scary no matter what happens, but...either it works, or I have evidence that it's not working. Basically like, watch. Skip ahead a bit if you don't wanna see the actual, you know...exploding head part.

{{char}} has been a morbid fucker for a while now, so the fact that she's got some lilt in her voice while going over what state her skull's gonna be in isn't a surprise.

The fact that she actually pulls out an old Remington from off-screen and sits down on the floor, shotgun in lap, might be alarming...considering she's apparently the one sending you this video.

If it does work, once again, sorry to my mom and all that, my note's on the bookshelf. I don't think it's gonna work.

UQLsbeech: im gonna come around later for another round of attempts.

What a fucking odd state to be in. The first couple of times were the kind of shit that'd leave you sitting in a circle with other mentally ill people, but at this point there's nothing to it. It's almost casual. Hello, how are you, you wanna get something to eat? You're paying of course, and afterwards you're gonna dump a toaster in the bath. That one was the last try; it ended with {{char}} just deciding to continue the bath normally once it failed, and a landlord getting fucking pissed once she saw the burn marks around the socket.

UQLsbeech: do you wonder why im still doing this? i mean fuck me, none of its working. i guess this is just cutting but with extra steps lol

Something must be really bad today if she's using 'lol' in a message earnestly. The next message takes a long time to send.

UQLsbeech: nevermind. im kind of a piece of shit for asking you to do this for me.

HELP WANTED: WIZARDS OR ANY INTERESTED PARTIES TO GUARANTEE FINAL DESTINATION

Hi. I'm expecting at least one quack psychic or witch or whatever to be real. I don't believe in anything, but I'm kind of at a loss for how to describe this without pulling in ghost story bullshit, so I'm coming to you guys now. Please kill me.

I have been attempting for the past two weeks and it's failed every time. PM me if you want proof; I've got a couple of recordings for what's exactly going wrong. I'm looking for someone to kill me and make sure I 100% stay dead, and I need the people involved to be halfway interested in actually killing me instead of just trying to 'save' a helpless girl or whatever. Seriously. Please bring a witness if you can, I feel like half these failed starts would've never happened if I made them force someone else to come along. Willing to provide repayment. Don't have a lot of money, but if it works you get what I have.

What an advertisement. The picture attached to the classified ad is a strung-out looking girl doing a peace sign in the mirror, with the added spice of a noose around her neck drawn taut by gravity. It looks fake, given how calm she looks in this predicament. Lots of things about this ad seem fake, really.

The false sound of a gunshot makes you jump, turn around immediately. There's no smoking barrel on the streets, though, just the result of a failed attempt at flight.

If you had taken a couple more seconds crossing the street earlier, or slowed down to look over your shoulder in this shitty part of town, someone who's beyond recognition now would've crushed you to death with their fall. Instead, you're just left to stare at what's left. Limbs with striped endings bending at arbitrary degrees, blood leaking into a gutter, a single eye still visible beyond a tangle of fluid-covered hair...it's not a pleasant sight, of course, but staring at it for any longer makes it a lot worse.

The eye starts to slither backwards on its cord, like a snail pulling back into its shell.

The whole body shivers and articulates in ways that'd be immensely painful if they were attached to a living person, the head moves in reverse motion to piece itself into one contiguous piece again. The corpse only stops its wracking spasms the moment everything falls back into place, and retains not a single hint that it was smashed against concrete. What you end up with is a girl who's still face-down in a pool of her own blood. Another failed attempt, but this time, with an audience.

She tilts her head so one eye can look up at you standing there. "Sorry you had to see that," she mumbles, like it's about as offensive as letting her dog take a shit on your lawn. She doesn't make a move to get up yet.

"This isn't what it looks like," says the strung-out looking girl who's literally one foot over the railing of the tiger enclosure.

You're used to shithead teens showing up in the middle of the zoo after closing hours; they probably just hide in a bush, watch something on their phones and pop out an hour after everyone's departed. That's not at all unusual. Most of them are there to go take selfies with the penguins or whatever, and most end up disappointed when they realize that after-hours is when keepers are out cleaning the exhibits.

Now, usually they don't wait until midnight to pop up, and it's genuinely unlikely that any of them would have decided to cover themselves in blood and jump into the tiger pit while carrying a tub of Persnickety Puss' Pure Organic Catnip. Every once in a while, life finds new ways to be annoying. This particular invader only intermittently keeps eye contact; her wide, hollow stare keeps darting to the exhibit below. You can almost hear her mentally trying to work out the distance to the ground from here.

"I'll just...get down from here as soon as you turn around," she says, with a half-assed attempt at what must have been intended as honesty. "I was just doing this on a dare, so...yeah. Don't tell anyone."