Today, it was raining during my walk home. I stepped in a puddle, and the edge of my jeans got wet and made me cold the whole way home. Even when I arrived, I discovered that the heat wasn't working, so I was still chilly indoors. I took off my shoes and socks, and then my pants, and put on a dry pair. Then, I paused, sitting on my bed, which sat perpendicular to a wide-facing glass door that opened out to the balcony. As the rain continued to fall, it occurred to me that there had been something I had meant to do today.
I pulled out my phone and checked my calendar. In my notifications, I could see messages from my boss and coworkers. Just the sight of these made me shrivel inwards. After dismissing work-related messages, there were none left.
I walked over to the glass door and slid it ajar, so that the sound of the rain could enter the room. Then, I slid my desk chair to the spot beneath the ceiling fan, stepped up to it, being sure that my position was slightly adjacent to the fan, so that there would be elements of force in the x and y directions as I descended. This would be more likely to grant me what every person wished for, which was a brief death due to the breaking of the spine. However, if it became prolonged, I would be able to listen to the sounds of the rain to quell my boredom.
I removed my belt and attached it firmly to the base of the fan. After very little delegation, I strug the open end over my head and pushed the chair aside at a sideways angle.
The effect wasn't totally instantaneous. Although it was somewhat painful, I could sense that my neck was unbroken, but the blood was already beginning to stagnate in my brain. Very soon, alongside gentle pattering rain, my lungs had completely given up hope of reaching air, and I was dead.
In the instant that I had died, something strange suddenly began to happen.
In my life before dying, I had been moving through my life without much direction. Or, rather, that direction had become unappealing. Now, though, I sensed myself moving in a definite direction, although which direction it was, that could not be discerned.
I slowly began to be aware of an aching in my neck. Despair filled me, as I was not wanting to go back to that moment.
But, instead, the moment that awaited me as I awoke was quite different!
I first sensed that my hands had been crudely pressed into what felt like paper. And, my face was also embedded in this surface.
I was able to move easily now, with some kind of grogginess remaining, so I lifted my head, and another kind of despair quickly took effect instead. I was in a classroom, and much worse, I recognized it as my grade 12 Physics classroom!
Vivid, dreamlike memories flooded my mind. Here was where I had first begun my descent into reaching the lower bound of the great American wealth despairity. That is, I had become doomed to become a depressed and suicidal and even worse very lame accountant in this very classroom!
My eyes focused and refocused on the paper. Falling asleep... I would never fall asleep in an important class like this! No way I would do something like that. Surely this had to be one of those things like in movies, where your life replays as you die, except that I didn't really remember this, so it would be a pretty weird memory to waste my final moments on.
Looking down at the notes I had been taking, my brow furrowed. "Ohm's Law ... Parallel and Series Circuits..." I remembered these things, since even as an accountant I would still watch YouTube videos regarding simple physics properties. Everyone and their mother knows Ohms law. Except, I hadn't done any practice problems in years, so my knowledge about any other physics equations, like the diffraction of light or particles for instance, might be somewhat fuzzy.
Scrambling, I tried to focus on what the teacher was saying. The teacher.. His name was... "Mr One Pence". He was talking... I had to write this down...
After class, my classmates were looking at my kind of weirdly. They had always done that, since even in high school I was a miserable reject. However, I felt they were perteurbed enought that I could get away with doing something else odd, and perhaps not having them notice.
Slyly, I turned to Sophia, as I was putting away my calculator. My calculator... I had missed it a lot, but why had I gotten it out? It wasn't like we were doing practice problems, or anything.
I said to Sophia, with a bit of nervousness : "Hey.. Can you remind me of the answer, to this question.."
It was a very complex problem, which I had not solved on my paper at all, since I forgot to do it during the homework last night. But she had worked it out, I knew. However, it was so complex that I knew my brain could never guess the correct answer on its own. After she told me, I would solve the problem myself and compare the answers. If the number she gave me was indeed correct, I would know that this was real, since her that value could not possibly have been conjured by my own spasming brain's last breaths. If the number was false, well, she also could have gotten it wrong, but since Sophia had later ended up going to Cornell University, I thought that was probably not likely.
After recieving the number, I wrote it down and went home, being sure to stare at the number all the while. Then, I worked the problem out on my own, and sure enough it was correct! Thus, it was confirmed to me that what I suspected was indeed true.
I had really gone back in time, and now I was in grade 12 again. Although I had expected to die, this fate could be worse than that.. Or, if I was very hard-working, it might even be a better life than before. Perhaps I could change things for myself and avoid the future that made me want to die.