Final Decision

I wrote this last year, when I was thinking about one of my friends who passed away.

 ~~~ 

    She pressed her foot harder against the pedal, levering it to the floor. Her eyes were rimmed with salty tears, and bloodshot. Her right eye twitched spastically, making her whole head yank in irritation. Her hands gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned white against the grey textured wheel.
    Her arms shot out straight from her body, and her elbows were locked into place, causing her body to be pressed against the back of the leather-covered driver's seat. Blue veins poked out from the stretched white skin on her hands and knuckles.
    The radio was playing – a soft, orchestral piece that featured what sounded like hundreds of whispering flutes. Strange music to die to, but she was ready either way. She momentarily considered switching the station to something a little more fitting, but her hands were gripping the steering wheel too tightly to pull one away.
    Kira had never thought of herself as someone who would commit suicide. It had just sort of happened that way. The pressure had built up around her ears until she felt as though her head were going to explode, and still it mounted. This was the only way out.
    It had all started at the basketball game. First there was the pressure of her coach to do it right and get her dribbling down with her non-dominant hand. He continued to drill it into her head that she had to dribble with her right hand as well as her preferred left hand, and she continued to forget.
    Then there were all those missed baskets, when the team was counting on her to gain them a few points. The worst was when she had stood and prepared herself for her teammate to brush by, and then her teammate threw the ball at her instead and it bounced out of bounds.
    Basketball wasn't the only thing. There was cheerleading. The world of cheerleaders is a brutal one, which was what Kira learned her first year in the sport. Every time she turned her back on the other girls she felt as though they were taunting her, ridiculing her big, orange freckles or the way her glasses slid down onto her nose when she was cheering.
    School was ever-rising, causing a constant source of stress for her. Whenever she wasn't busy, her mind immediately flipped to her schoolwork, and how there was still quite a bit to be done before she could graduate that year.
    Graduation was in forty-one days, but Kira wouldn't be there at the end. She had tried, really she had, but it was too hard in this world. It seemed that every time she thought she could trust someone, they turned their backs to her – or worse, stabbed her in the back. Either way, she couldn't live with the system. It was time to let go.
    The car careened towards the approaching cliff, running at full speed and well over a hundred miles an hour. The guard real loomed into sight and quickly grew near, growing both in size and in appearance, as she sat behind the wheel and watched it all happen. Scraggled, weather-worn trees flew by at an incredible speed, almost drawing her attention away from her goal. The patchy grass blended with the clumps of dirt to form a smooth, greenish-brown surface over everything but the badly paved road.
    It wouldn't be long now. The still, small voice that had been bothering Kira popped into her head again, asking that insistent, ever-annoying question.
    Do you really want to do this?
    It had asked her that question so many times now. So many times. Each time she had answered with a harsh yes, not even considering the possibility of a 'no' answer. She'd never been able to tell anyone no, least of all herself. If someone needed an extra hand to set up stage equipment for the school play, she was right there. If the new kid on the block needed help catching up, she was the one who helped him get on track.
    Helping came naturally to her, and she was sure that she would be helping a lot of people by doing this. There weren't that many people out there in the world who would miss her. She'd helped out with a few things, sure, but people weren't really going to remember her face when her obituaries appeared in the papers the next day. She thought of herself as kind of an 'invisible' helpful hand. And now the invisible would disappear. Since no one could see it anyway, it wouldn't make much of a difference.
    Do you really want to do this?
    Kira pressed down as hard as she could on the gas pedal, knowing that it was just about too late to change her mind at this point. She was at a sharp turn on one of the tallest hills in the area. People in her hometown called this hill a mountain, but it really wasn't. It just looked like one. Barren rocks marked most of the road, along with the scattered grass and few trees.
    The edge she was approaching was right at a sharp turn up the 'mountain'. It was the perfect spot to drive off. It would hurt her family too much to know that she had killed herself on purpose. They might think that it was something they had done, and feel guilty for the rest of their lives. Kira didn't want to cause anyone any guilt. She just wanted to slip away easily. Then she wouldn't have to worry.
    The last three seconds before her car went over the edge seemed to last forever in her mind. The car crashed into the railing and sailed out into space in what seemed like slow motion. The world spread out underneath her, an adventure just waiting to happen. She could see the town from here, hidden among the trees, and could even make out the roof of her own house if she looked hard enough.
    A wispy silver creek twisted through the landscape like a silver ball of yarn, cutting through the greenery. The world was so beautiful from here. It looked so flawless and perfect. If only it were really that way.
    The car began to tumble towards the awe-inspiring quilt before her eyes, and a pang of fear stabbed her chest. She had finally answered yes to the voice, and now she wasn't sure she wanted to. But now it was too late. She held onto the steering wheel hard and closed her eyes as her car rotated through the air, and slowly let go of the steering wheel. Her feet left the floor, and she felt as though she was floating lightly through the air, weightless in this strange world.
    She opened her eyes. The earth rushed up to meet her. She pierced the air with a frantic scream. This couldn't be right. Dying was supposed to be easy. She had read about it, and considered the best way to go while still making it look like an accident. She wasted a car this way, but it seemed relatively easy to do, and it would be easy to think that it was an accident.
    But there was no way this was how it was supposed to feel. All the articles and web pages she had read had assured her that suicide was an easy task if you did it in the right manner. The ground looked ugly now, cruel, savage, and lacking all the beauty she had thought she'd seen in it from up above.
    She closed her eyes again and hugged her arms to her chest, waiting for the crushing pain she would feel when the car crashed to the ground. It would be any second now. It was too late to finally say 'no' to the voice and get out of the situation. She had gone too far now, and there was no return.
    Kira licked her lips.
   “No.”
    The car hit the ground, crunching the front of the car up like an accordion. For one split-second a brutal pain swept through her legs, but it was gone before she could even realize she had felt it.
    The vehicle flipped in the air, and a second later it burst into a ball of flames that licked the starry evening sky. The flames completely engulfed the car, collapsing around it like water collapses around a brick. It was over, and there was no going back now.

    A bottle of pills sat on the desk, the label peeled away. He stared at the bottle, thinking over all the times in his life when the world had just seemed completely against him. Now it was against him again, and he was sure that it would never turn back again. He was only sixteen, but there could be no more life in this world. Not with all of the pain he suffered through every day.
    Not for him.
    Do you really want to do this?