Mindtease

Chapter 2

The bench was warm to sit on, as Kirk sat down, ruminating about his life, and the current point it had reached. Kirk, actually Forrest Kirkland McKery, looked at his residence across the street--a homeless shelter. The wind blew slightly, and Kirk rubbed his nose as his allergies seemed to respond to the soft breeze.

How had it come to this? Kirk wondered to himself silently.

In front of the homeless shelter, many people mixed and lingered, smoked, drank, ate, and walked about the center point of their lives. Many Kirk had realized by now, were using drugs, alcohol, or simply mad with nowhere to go, nobody caring for them, and with no real purpose in their lives.

The sudden thought of being without purpose brought some tears to Kirk's eyes, and he quickly wiped away the tears, and fought to keep from weeping.

How could this have happened to him? Kirk pondered silently.

Kirk looked down at his shoes which were a donation that the shelter had provided him. His own shoes, and most of his original clothes were from winter, and now it was on the verge of summer. With the warm weather of late spring, the coming summer was sure to be an Indian summer--if Kirk was around to see it.

Kirk thought of his life before coming to the homeless shelter, when he had been just another college kid, an undergrad about to graduate and go on to graduate school at the same university. But it seemed fate was not on his side, and a series of events, bureaucratic bungling, and bad luck had left him homeless.

The tears came again to Kirk's eyes as he thought about his life, and the future. There was no future really, only empty, cold continuance as a homeless youth of twenty-seven. Kirk had nobody to turn to for help, and had nothing of his own to help himself.

"Why me?" Kirk asked in a soft whisper, fighting back the tears of shame. "What did I do to the deserve this?"

Kirk had been ignoring the traffic on the street which was intermittent at just after nine o'clock, when the shelter exited the residents for the day until later around four.

One thing Kirk had discovered about himself, was that he believed in God, and that belief had never left him. Perhaps faded or got lost in his thoughts, but Kirk did believe. Atheism was arrogant self-importance, agnostics were intellectually lazy, and many religions were just crazy.

Kirk knew why his mind lingered on the thought of God, because soon he would be out of his misery, hopefully in heaven. At least Kirk hoped that...for some religions suicide was the greatest sin. Soon Kirk would find out, because he had reached a point where life was not living it was slow dying.

Death, the end, oblivion. Kirk sat back on the bench looking at the shelter denizens mingling and lingering around the building. For that kind of life was one Kirk did not want to have, a life of pointlessness and futility.

The only question was the means of death...how. Kirk had been scared of suicide because of the fear of being a vegetable, not doing it quite right, and living as an empty meat bag of flesh on a hospital bed. Or worse, living enough but permanently damaged, crippled. Only that terrifying possibility had kept Kirk from suicide during some of the darker days of his life. But not now, for now Kirk saw life as empty, but in death was certitude.

Kirk crossed a leg, twitching it like an agitated cat wagging its tail, considering.

Stepping off a curb was one way...a single step into oblivion when a truck or bus collided with him, and ran him over like a feral alley cat. Also it could be considered an unfortunate accident, not suicide if Kirk stepped off at the right moment.

Kirk uncrossed his leg, and crossed the other leg, thinking with his foot twitching.

Another possibility was the free parking garage a block away. The garage was several stories in height, and free so always open. A jump from the top parking level to the ground below...actually the hard asphalt below or the cold concrete sidewalk...and the impact would be enough.