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It was perhaps one of the only times he’d ever felt this way – invincible, almost. Which was ironic considering this was the day James chose to hurtle himself, messily and slowly, towards death.

There’s nothing like slowly killing yourself to make you feel more alive, my good man, he tells the cashier, who’s nervously scanning the bottles and cans he removes from the overstocked trolley. He nods appreciatively – if anyone understands the merits of slowly killing oneself, it’s a person who scans barcodes for a living.

In the trolley is a small crate of medium strength lager, two large bottles of premium strength lager, a litre of vodka, and a quart of whiskey, gin and rum, respectively. There’s also two bottles of champagne, one bottle of sparkling wine, and a bottle each of white zinfandel and cotes du rhone.

You throwin’ a party…? the cashier asks, deadpan, whilst waiting for news on a price check on the crate of medium strength lager.

James smiles and a small wisp of a laugh creaks out the side of his mouth only to crumble sheepishly back into his throat.

No, not a party… he takes his sunglasses out of his pocket and pushes his unwashed hair back with them. He stares at the cashier warmly but inquisitively, as if taking stock of how much he can actually trust him.

You ever have something bad happen--and, like, people just stare at you like you’re an idiot and say ‘it’s not the end of the World…’?

The cashier nods. He’d been told that the loss of his job at a local supermarket was ‘not the end of the World’, and then again he was also told that being hired for the same position for a different supermarket was also ‘not the end of the World’. And unfortunately for him, they were both right.

Well…

James smiled broadly and pushed his glasses onto his nose

It’s the end of the World, my good friend.

He handed over a bundle of notes to the cashier, who scanned the last item and processed the transaction.

Here-- he says You’ve given me too much…

You keep that…I won’t be needing it.

And with that James starts whistling and pushes his little trolley of death ahead of himself and into the car park.

The cashier cannot accept tips. He looks around himself at the empty aisles and stuffs the notes into the front of his trousers. He rings a bell and talks into a microphone above it.

Margaret – I’m going to go on my break now.

James is driving more carefully than he usually would – his path from here on in has been so specially crafted that it would be a shame to die now. He wouldn’t want for that cashier to turn up at his funeral and say It’s okay guys, he told me he was going to kill himself that night anyway, so it’s really not a big deal.

Because it needs to be a big fucking deal.

There needs to be the right outfit.

Books need to be open at certain pages, with particular lines highlighted.

An album needs to be put on repeat.

In fact his entire apartment needs to be as meticulously arranged as a film set. Mise en scene suicide.

Fire engines and police cars hurtle past – their sirens blare into a mess of decibels which make James thankful he’ll be dead within the next 24 hours. And then he wonders where the vehicles are headed, and a terribly familiar feeling sinks into his stomach.

If the events of, well, his entire life (and the lives of the people around him) were anything to go by – those vehicles would be heading to the block of flats in which he lived.

He turns the corner and laughs for lack of a better reaction – BINGO.

The flames are pretty much out now – in their place are black, crumbling, smoking debris of misfortune.

He stops the car. Walking smugly alongside it is Stacey. She leans against the window of the driving seat and puckers a kiss up against it. James rolls his eyes and dejectedly winds it down.

Stacey…?

James.

She smiles warmly. She pulls a cigarette out from behind her ear and pulls a lighter from out of her bra.

I didn’t know you smoked, he states suspiciously.

I don’t, really, her smile broadens.

- I wasn’t going to just let you kill yourself.

James stares at the three crew of firemen struggling to put the flames out and nearly cries in frustration.

I really don’t think that it’s something for you to worry about, he takes the cigarette out of stacey’s hand and starts smoking it. He pauses for a second –

What made you think I was going to kill myself anyway?

She laughs – a sweet, childish laugh which is perhaps too innocent for its own good.

Pillow talk…

Pillow talk? he thinks back to a fortnight ago and drinking whiskey at the Hades-A-Go-Go, walking Stacey home and then inadvertently sticking his cock in her several hundred times.

…oh yeah. Pillow talk…

Can I get in? she gestures at the seat next to him.

I don’t know, Stace.

Well, listen – my apartment was directly below yours. Looks like were both homeless…so I think you’d better offer me a seat.

Wait a minute - just what exactly’s happened here?

Set fire to your apartment. But it was either that or I let you kill your—

Stace…?! Are you being bloody serious?

Were you being ‘bloody serious’ when you told me you wanted to ‘take the reigns of death and ride them to the afterlife’?

Did I actually say that?

You did.

Fuck. I sound like a dickhead.

You are a dickhead.

Okay then, he stares at her, Get in. Were going—somewhere, I guess.

He stares at his home. Everything he loved - or presumed to have loved - was gone. Scorched. Blackened. Curling. Done. Bye!

Childhood relics. Photos. Love letters. All that shit was cremated. A sudden swathe of relief curdled lovingly inside him - a feeling followed swiftly by ardent jealousy, as though his life had given up on him and bolted before he had the chance to do it first.

It was like those relationships were you pick up the phone to break up with someone, only to discover them on your doorstep about to do it first.

He was to be found covered in his vomit, yes, but surrounded by all of his lifelong achievements - a puzzle scene, a portrait - people would have looked between his corpse and his home and interpreted his demise in the same way that someone would an art piece.

If he were to kill himself now he’d be the bloke who’d lost everything in a fire, people would say Well, no wonder he bloody killed himself if his home got burned down - because people were fucking stupid like that and always making lazy assumptions without bothering to stare at a bigger picture.

You couldn’t have waited until I was inside the the fucking flat before you set fire to it?

She looks sternly back at him. She hopes to burn a hole through his temple with all the love she feels for him - she narrows her eyes, imagining the space between a gun trigger and a finger is the same amount of space between her eye lids - bang! bang! Shot down.

She’d mount him on her wall.

She’d mount herself on him.

Stop looking at me like that, he mumbles.

He’s counting cats eyes. He’s wondering how fast he needs to go to cause enough trouble to make the car kaboom-boom. He says it out loud, ‘Kaboom-boom’ and imagines what it would feel like to die with your flesh soldered to twisted, burning metal. To feel limbs tear off emphatically with the explosion of machinery.

Not something he’d like to happen.

The motorway is edgeless. To drive down it for long enough is like walking around in a circle, or more accurately walking up a set of spiralling stairs which lead back to the start of the stairs. Or, more accurately, Hell.

He’s only just wondered what will happen when the petrol runs out. He hasn’t any money left. Stacey wont have any. Never did do. Lazy fucking kid.

How old are you, anyway?

Fourteen, she smiles.

Christ. He thinks to himself. Why did I even have to ask that? I could have been dead by now. That bit of information would never have been made known to me, and now I have to die with that on my fucking conscience.

Fourteen?!

Fourteen.

He thinks about the cashier in the supermarket. Maybe he should go back to the shop and demand his money back of him.

-

They sleep in a car park. Occasionally, James drifts off to sleep, but for the most part he’s awake. He hears his heart-thudding through his ears as though he’s wearing sea-shells. He becomes aware of his shallow, half-arsed breaths. Aren’t breaths automated anyway? Even his lungs couldn’t be fucked enough to process properly. Great.

Stacey sleeps upright, her head lolling against her chest. Occasionally it recoils as though someone has her on a pulled piece of string, but it soon lolls back down again.

There’s no waking her. James smokes. Coughs. Farts. Screams (once). Cries (more than he’d care to admit). Gropes her (barely). But she’s out cold - quarantined in exhaustion.

He should never have fucked her. Look at her. She looks fourteen. When she isn’t talking herself up, or getting her well developed tits out, or begging to suck his cock, she has the blatant naivety of a child. Tiny features. Flawless. You should never touch something like that. To touch it is to ruin it.

In the morning James’ll stare at her and remember all the women he’d forgotten the names of. All the ones he’d let out of his house in the morning and washed off as quick as a hangover. All the ones he’d pined and begged for from afar - affixing a fantasy to an aesthetic that never matched up to the one in his head. Beautiful women. Desperate women. Tortured women. Frightening women.

They drive in silence the way married couples sit at the breakfast table for years, furiously staring tea and burning their hands on coffee pots, stealing spiteful glances at each other for ruining the others life.

They drive until the petrol runs out. Until they’re stuck on a road with nothing but themselves and the resentment of running.

This was the afterlife he’d always feared.

She was right. He would have been crazy to have killed himself if this was all there was on the other side.