Suicide Note

The article in the paper said that she killed herself by jumping off an eight-floor apartment block. He felt that something was off there. Not in the gesture itself, but in its details.

Her mother told the journalists, crying, that she wasn't the sort of girl who would do such a thing. Her best friend said that she had her depressive episodes, but nobody could possibly have expected this. But he? He didn't find her taking her own life all that surprising. Still, something wasn't right. No suicide note, no sort of message to him. No strange actions, no frantic love-making or dispassionate 'my head hurts' statements. Everything had been normal prior to her death. It nagged at him.

When three days after her death he stepped out of the shower in the morning and prepared to shave, he was only mildly surprised to see that there was finger-writing on the steamed-up mirror.

'It wasn't me. I didn't kill her,' it said.

"I know," he replied out loud, then wiped the mirror clean and shaved. That afternoon, he went to the funeral, still pondering. Her body would be cremated. He felt that it was only right it should be so, despite it not being at all what she might have wished for.

The next morning, a new message appeared, written in the grease of an unwashed plate he was just reaching towards in his kitchen. 'Intentionally.'

He just shook his head and washed the dishes.

On the third day, it was a post-it note on his computer. 'You trust me, don't you?'

"Of course I do."

On the fourth day, he watched a car with a plate ending in 'EXX' leave the parking lot. He read the plates of the other cars. They spelled 'YOU DOB ELI EVE MER IGH TAN DLO VEM ARS.'

He read it. "I do believe you. And I don't love Mars."

On the fifth day, his wall was moldy in the shape of two short horizontal lines, following each other at a distance, and a lower, longer horizontal line.

"Sorry," he said. "But really, love Mars?" Then he cleaned the mold away.

On the sixth day, he found one of her old messages marked as 'unread'. It was dated two years before, but it had somehow found its way among his new mail. He opened it and read it.

'I'm a dramatic person,' it said. 'I like doing things with a huge bang. Drama, my love! Drama! The entire world is a stage and men and women can dance and laugh and sing and throw fireworks around. Hopefully not catching fire. There's days when I can't even recount shopping groceries without making it sound like an adventure. If terrorists attacked a place I was in, I'd beg to be allowed to add soundtrack. I'm the sort of person who randomly screams 'PANCAKES' in the middle of an argument to see what happens. I love kittens. And I make myself omelets with cheese and tomatoes and onion. You like onion, right?

I'm sorry. I'm going to be all over the place. Thanks for asking me to move in with you and all.

Love you.

P.S. I'm psychic. Hope that doesn't bother you.

"Ah. That was what didn't add up," he said. "Your suicide was much too tame. I knew there was something."

On the seventh day, he found that his bookmark had been scribbled on. 'Beside the point, actually. Listen, I didn't want to kill her. If I wanted to kill myself, I'd look down before jumping.'

"I know that." He threw away his bookmark and got another one from a bookstore that day. "Who killed you anyway?"

On the eighth day, a madman caught him on the street and shook him violently, screaming: 'IT WAS THE BUTLER THAT DID IT!'

He picked himself off the sidewalk, swore profusely and declared that, honestly, she had no taste, it's never the butler that does it and they didn't know any butlers, for that matter. Then something clicked. "Oh. Your cousin's husband, Michael Butler. Say, can you testify?"

On the ninth day, he was minding his own business walking through a square when he heard a preacher of some sort speak in a loud voice, intending to turn people towards Christ, heaven and donations. 'And she rose the third day after dying and walked again as alive as any other man...'

"What do you mean, third day?" he demanded, loudly.

"What do you mean she?!" the small crowd that had gathered wailed, turning very fast into a mob that could probably materialize torches and pitchforks for the man who accidentally called Christ a 'she'.

He suddenly realized that the question he'd just asked was dangerous in the contest, so he rapidly made himself invisible among the other passers-by, just in case they decided he should be jumped, too.

On the tenth day, he met her in the park. Her hair was short, straight and dyed a violent red, as opposed to the mysterious, long, dark curls she used to have.

"Third day, eh?" he asked.

"Meh. Why did you burn my body, by the way? Creating one of these things is murderous, I'll have you know. The sinews are horrid."

"Revenge for Egypt. And advance revenge for leaving me hanging for a week, thinking you were still dead. Nice haircut."

"Thanks. I'll have to kick Butler's ass."

"You do so."

"And explain to the girl's parents how come she's alive."

"Fine."

"I told her the same story I'll tell them. She was much more ready to believe it rather than the truth. Anyway, I said that the government did some fucked up experiment regarding human cloning and then tried to get rid of the problem of there being too many of us. They faked our deaths, but messed up by forgetting we were alive and thus couldn't be both dead and alive at the same time."

"That's complete and utter bull on all levels."

"I know! Isn't it awesome? Let the buggers deal with it. I can't stand them. Let them look like complete idiots."

He opened his mouth to say something, found nothing to say, closed it, then opened it again. "You know, when you said you were psychic..."

"Yes?"

"I think you meant psycho."

"Same difference."

"You're a handful. You're never gonna stop."

"I know. Why don't you take the day off from work? Tell them your girlfriend came back to life, that's always a good excuse. Let's go home."

He shrugged. He didn't need to call in advance to give that excuse (he'd learned his lesson in Egypt), so he didn't bother to do it and just took her arm.

"Marry me," she said, out of the blue, turning towards him with dangerously sparkling eyes. "You're the only man who could live with all this."

"Alright." They took a few more steps, before a new thought occurred to him. "Why are you asking me now?" And it had better not be something crazy.

She shot him a dazzling smile. "I wanna hear you tell your parents you're marrying your suicided, cremated girlfriend. That's all."

"Oh." He let out a relieved breath. "Very good."

They made their way home without haste, walking together down the alleys, chatting comfortably, just like any other normal couple.