"What happened to Anon?" Evelynn asked. "Isn't he going to show up?"
"No, he quit." Max said.
"Why?"
"I don't know," Max said, trying to figure out a way to explain what had happened. "I guess he just lost interest."
"I guess that makes sense."
Evelynn looked around, then leaned in.
"Don't tell anyone I said this, but I think it's too bad that Anon left. He was actually kind of cute. His hand was all sweaty when he said hi to me. I think he likes me."
"Really, you think he's cute?"
"Yeah. He looked sexy in that suit."
—
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
It was that alarm again.
Anon tried to hold on to the dream, but it was slipping through his fingers like sand.
His will to live was at its breaking point.
In the past, it was at times like this that Anon had looked to Zero Two for comfort. But now, even she could not console him.
It was all over.
Anon spent the rest of the day contemplating how he would do it.
A rope would be too painful. Jumping off a building would be too terrifying. Drowning would be too uncomfortable. A gun would be great, but getting one was going to be a pain. He would have to pretend like he was mentally stable, and he wasn't sure that he could do that right now.
Eventually, he settled on pills.
"What kind of pills will kill me?" he typed into the search bar of his laptop.
He was about to hit enter when there was a knock at his door. A nurse walked in.
"Good news, Anon!"
Really, good news? That struck him as somewhat unlikely. The last time the nurses had said that they had "good news" for him was when they had told him that his burns were only 3rd degree.
How delightful.
"Anon, you have a visitor!"
It was probably his mom.
Anon instantly sat up in bed, and organized the shitheap on his nightstand as much as he could. His mom thought that he was organized, so he had to keep up the image.
But what if it was Aidan at the door? What if he had come to say that he was sorry, and that Anon was back in the D&D group?
Anon gulped down the knot in his throat.
After 15 seconds or so of suspense, the door opened again, and Anon's visitor walked in.
It was Evelynn.
To be continued...
