Brainpop: An Origin Story

TIM

I glance at my watch.
10:37 P.M.
The sidewalk below me is dirt-ridden and grey. Cigarette buds and weeds fill the crevices. I watch a soda can topples past my feet like a tumbleweed would in a 1970's cartoon desert. I look ahead of me. The sky is pitch-black and the road ahead is empty. The only store within my field of vision is an old gas station with some junkies smoking what smells like pot in the parking lot.


A few minutes, maybe 30, later, I'm at my destination.
I sit down at a nearby bench. I'm at a cliff, nearby a Publix grocery store.
I look around, and make sure to take in all of my surroundings.

A long time ago, mayhaps 8th grade, the guidance counselor of my school had sat me down and told me that if I ever felt like ending it all, I should take a deep breath and think of everything I would miss, and everything that would miss me.
I've been doing that a lot.
And I'm doing it now.
I look down towards the bottom of the cliff. I'm nearly 300 feet in the air, I would say.
I look down at my wrists. Scars pattern them like fancy tablecloth.
I look down at my feet. My thrifted, dirty brown sneakers stare back at me.
I think for one last time.
One thing I really loved to do was learn. It sounds silly, but going to school and learning, and acing my classes, and studying in the little public library, it helped me get away. It helped me forget home, it helped me focus on other things. It helped me feel better.
But it doesn't help anymore.
I will never be happy.

I finish my deep breath, stand up, and look at what will be a scene completed with a bunch of paramedics and my dead body, and-

CLANG.

Honestly, the sound almost scared me into falling off the cliff.
I look over my shoulder and see that the dumpster in the back lot of the grocery store has practically exploded. I mean, there's no fire, but there's trash and green dumpster metal everywhere. When the smoke from the explosion has almost cleared, I see what can only be described as a tall, robotic figure walking towards me. I know that sounds like something from some kind of action movie, but I swear, that's what happened. I stumble back a little more, catching myself before falling.

"Beep."