Way Out - Part 2 - Choose Your Ending

Hello.

Remember me?

You do. Why wouldn't you?

I am glad you're back, I can't say the same for you.

I would now like you to move on to story number two, where you will meet Brian. And the conclusion of these tales.

Do you know what is wrong with him?

If you know any sixteen-year-old boys, then you can probably visualize what Brian’s bedroom should look like. He shall have the smallest room in his house. We shall not call it a home for now if you don’t mind, but you don’t have to listen to me.

Anyway, please visualize a small room with a double bed shoved into one corner, and an array of posters of any sort that you like, but I will ask you not to visualize posters of naked women. Anything else will be appropriate for this situation. Also, notice that his room should be suspiciously clean, there is no laundry basket of clothes. No laptop, plugs, his bed is not even creased, and the sheets are ironed to perfection. Everything is suspiciously in its rightful place. Apart from the boy on the bed.

You can create this boy in your head. What hair colour does he have? How short is he? What about his weight and skin tone? The only thing that must stay faithful to the story is that he wakes up in a fit of confusion.

What does confusion look like to you? For Brian, he jumps out of his skin. He shakes his head wildly, looking around his setting. He gets up and presses his bare feet to the ground as he tries to gather his bearings.

He looks down at his hands and shakily up his arms and down his torso. He runs his hands through his hair. He puts his hand against his chest, however he feels nothing. He checks his pulse quickly but still feels nothing.

Do you know what is wrong with him?

The door opens quickly and in walks his mother; she is also equally dishevelled. Her eyes are also very red. As if she has been drinking heavily, or crying, you pick.

Brian gets excited, he jumps up to hug his mother only for his arms to go through her torso, and end up on the other side. He jumps back, frightened. And he tries again, trying to touch his mother’s face, hold her hands and hug her again, only to fall right through her and for her to not recognise her son’s touch. To not even flinch.

Can you imagine the devastation of a boy whose mother doesn’t even recognize him?

I am going to interrupt this story again because I would like your input. Remember when I asked if the mother’s eyes were red because of crying or drinking? Well, I would like you to choose which one. And this one determines where the rest of the story goes, and Brian’s relationship with his mother.

Option 1: Crying:

Brian gulps as he sees his mother’s eyes fill with tears, he has never seen his mother cry before in his sixteen years of life, but he has heard it, through the walls late at night. He tries to reach out for her but she walks through him again, shivering slightly as he attempts to move his body away from the sensation. When she walked through him he felt like white noise was overcrowding his thoughts and his eyes and ears.

She goes to sit on his overtly neat bed and grabs his pillow, pressing her face to it, breathing in the smell of dust. It is then that we see a note clutched in her hand, slightly wrinkled.

It is then that Brian remembers; he remembers jumping-

He shakes his head. That couldn’t be right, he woke up in his bed-

“I had to see your body today.”

Brian gulps, the sensation tight against his throat. I would like you to imagine his thought process during this millisecond before his mother continues speaking. There are an abundance of thoughts in his mind, however one stands out. So it worked.

He had killed himself. And yet he had come back as a type of apparition. Dare we say it, a ghost?

Can you believe the irony? A suicidal boy attempts to kill himself, he succeeds, only to come back as a ghost. Doesn’t the world work in mysterious ways?

Anyway, back to his mother.

“I had to see your body today.”

Brian gulps, the sensation tight against his throat. He really did it. He killed himself. And he had left a note. His mother continues speaking.

“I had to see you, my beautiful baby boy, my flesh, and my blood look like-” She sobs.

Brian doesn’t cry, he is unsure if he can. Are phantoms supposed to feel emotions?

“Your face Brian, it was so perfect and handsome-” Well, all mothers are biased are they not, what does Brian look like for you? Is he handsome or just ordinary?

“Why did you jump? Brian. Why?” As his mother sobs again and Brian kneels in front of her as if his phantom self could be a comfort.

This is where you will learn about the effects of drowning. Whilst Brian had hoped that drowning would allow him to die peacefully and there would be no repercussions, he had obviously not done his research. Drowning is not the same visually as you would see in films and television shows. Instead, Brian went through ‘Instinctive Drowning Response’, to put this in layman’s terms, it was highly undramatic. Voluntary movement becomes impossible.

I would like you to visualise Brian motionless in the salt water, his head thrown back, mouth level with the water. Are his eyes closed or just glassy? His legs do not kick and his arms are held laterally against his body.

Now imagine his mother, falling asleep every night, having to keep the light on because her son died in the dark. Imagine her lying in bed and wondering where she went wrong, imagine her visualising her son motionless in the salt water, his eyes glassy, his face becoming corroded and disfigured. Imagine her regret, because she did not even realise he was missing for four hours. Drowning in salt water only takes around eight to ten minutes.

“I miss you so much- why did you have to leave me!” She falls into his bed and stays there, the note held close to her heart. All Brian can do is touch her head, whisper his apologies and leave the room.

He walks downstairs, looking at his dog who is yapping at him, he feels elated because he is actually being seen by someone, he bends down to pet the dog and is surprised to find that he can, despite his mother going through his body he finds that he can hold and touch things. As he wraps his head around this paradox, he looks at the dog’s food bowl to find it empty. He goes to fill it, knowing his mother is not in the right state to do so. Can you imagine a box of dog food hovering in the air? Well, keep that in your mind if you please?

Not knowing what to do with himself, Brian goes for a walk. What would you do if you discovered you were a ghost?

He walks towards his school. He had had no problems there, he just felt an aching unhappiness that became too difficult to shift and grew so much that he-

Brian makes his way into his school without difficulty and hovers over his friend Joy’s shoulder. She keeps staring at the new history teacher, who Brian can admit is very handsome. Almost too handsome, almost unreal and plastic. He wanted to go up to him and stretch his face, see if the skin would peel and stretch and come off like a mask.

Brian is obviously a wanderer, he loses himself in his thoughts sometimes if you couldn’t tell.

Brian does not realise that his perception of time has changed, suddenly it is the end of the class and he sees Joy run out. Lost for ideas of what to do with himself, he follows her.

He feels strange wandering down the corridors following Joy, with none of his classmates having any idea that he is there, that he is with them. He walks past his locker, there are no flowers there yet, no mourners, his mother must not have been allowed to release the news of his death, does everyone still think he is missing? Does anyone miss him? Does anyone feel like a bit of them is missing now that he is gone?

He follows Joy to a corner outside the building; he finds that he wants to hide behind the brick as if he is still visible.

“Ashley, you will not believe what just happened-“

Brian remembered Ashley. They were mutual friends of Joy, and sat next to each other in Maths, but outside of class they barely talked to each other than a smile. He had no complaints, however. It was much his fault as well as hers. Are you guilty of doing the same thing?

“Ashley? What’s wrong?”

Are you also guilty of eavesdropping on conversations that you were not a part of?

“Doctors?. What’s wrong?”

Do you recognise this conversation?

“Did you call the police? Did you-“

Can you imagine Brian’s confusion?

Brian watches as Joy checks her phone, floating over to her shoulder, he sees the message lit up on her phone:

You looked beautiful today, can I see you later? Xx

He watches Joy place the phone back to her ear, “Ashley, it’s going to okay, I’ll meet you at the doctors, what time is the appointment?”

“Okay,” she continues, “I’ll meet you there, you will be fine, and I love you okay?”

You must be wondering why this option has taken so long. Well, I am afraid you are going to have to bite your tongue and wait.

I would like you to imagine a cliff’s edge, the same cliff’s edge that coincidentally Brian jumped from. With waves crashing angrily against the cliff wall, and a young sixteen-year-old girl standing over it, with these voices in her mind telling her so many different things, jump, this is your fault, what were you wearing, what do you mean this happened to you?

We need a premise to base this on, imagine a crying girl running out of an appointment room, crying because she needs an abortion and she cannot afford it and if she told her parents, they would kill her. She has no coherent thoughts in her mind other than the fact that she can’t sleep at night because all she can see and all she can feel is that man on top of her and inside and touching her.

Is that too explicit for you?

She does not think about the friend she has left behind in the appointment room; she does not think about the fact that her friend could be next.

She just runs and runs, with a temporary solution in mind.

Now, fast forward to the cliff setting, I hope you have not forgotten about this story’s protagonist.

Brian had just managed to gather the gist of the situation. If he was alive he would have vomited. However, if anyone understands what Ashley is experiencing, it is he. And it maybe you reader, you may understand the utter devastation, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the overwhelming need to end it all.

He runs to the cliff; he gets there quicker than Ashley, due to his perception of time being odd.

He knows Joy is on her way; her fear not allowing her to think unable to know how to stop Ashley. Does she call her parents, the police, what resources are there?

Brian has somehow accumulated a sheet, whilst he was in the doctors room with Joy and Ashley, one of his abilities being able to walk through walls, he does not understand how he can grab things, only a poltergeist can move and control things according to the horror films he has watched. Maybe he is a poltergeist?

With no malicious intent? He was drifting away in his thoughts again. Ashley was standing at the edge of the cliff, the same cliff he-

He throws the sheet over his form, feeling like Harry Potter. He walks up to Ashley and utterly clueless, he waves his arms under the white sheet madly shouting: “Woooooooooooooo!”

Apparently, despite his voice not being heard, the floating sheet gained her attention.

“What the fuck?” she shouts, tripping over her feet and nearly falling off the cliff in her state, small stones falling to the depths below. Brian quickly grabs her through the sheet and she screams again, unable to understand how this apparition can grab her and touch her, trying to kick him away.

“Wooooooooooooo.” He says again as more of a comfort to him than anything else.

“Ashley stop!” Joy has arrived upon the probably hysterical scene, are you visualizing it? Can you imagine a young girl, stumbling here expecting to find her friend dead, only to find her fighting and screaming at a floating sheet?

She starts, her mouth wide open.

“Joy, get this fucking thing away from me!” Ashley screams, still kicking and punching thin air, whilst Brian pulls her further away from the cliff.

Joy runs up and pulls the sheet, shockingly cold, from Brian’s head and letting it drop to the floor. Brian’s grip on Ashley dropped, and he moves away from them.

Joy takes Ashley in her arms, who in the shock of these last five minutes begins to cry. She sobs into Joy’s shoulder. Joy however cannot stop looking at the fallen sheet on the floor, thankful that something so unusual stopped her friend from dying.

Brian looks at them, hoping that Ashley is safe now, however unsure of what to do next. He has done what people could not do for him, despite knowing how unfair that sentence is in his head.

What does he do now? Does he go back to his house? Does he go back to the school? What do ghosts and poltergeists do after the credits roll or after the book is closed? I would like you to decide.

However, I cannot let you go yet.

Here, finally, is option two:

Brian gulps as he sees that his mother’s eyes are red, her face red too; she stumbles on her feet until they are planted in the entrance of his door, her body sways slightly forward, she has the grace of a man who has spent six hours at the bottom of a bottle. This, given her loss, can be an acceptable way of mourning, can she be blamed? She has lost her only child.

However, this is option two, not option one.

She belches. Brian pulls his feet up onto his bed and scoots hurriedly to give her room to sit down. “I had to see your body today.” She belches again, her tomato red face slumped into her neck.

Brian gulps, the sensation tight against his throat. I would like you to imagine his thought process during this millisecond before his mother continues speaking. There are an abundance of thoughts in his mind, however one stands out. So it worked.

He had killed himself. And yet he had come back as an apparition. Dare we say it, a ghost?

Can you believe the irony? A suicidal man, attempts to kill himself, he succeeds, only to come back as a ghost. Doesn’t the world work in mysterious ways?

Anyway, back to his mother.

“So, my child, blood from my blood, you died, leaving me with your decaying body, but not leaving me with any way to pay for it.”

Brian grips his knees tighter, gulping again. If he was alive, his heart would be jumping like a jackrabbit, his stomach fluttering with nerves. However, he is unsure if he can feel emotions?

“You piece of shit!” She punches the bed, and gets up, pulling the duvet from his bed and throwing them across the room, knocking over a lamp from his desk. He jumps up from the bed and away from her. Watching as in her drunken anger she tears his room apart, throwing his desk and all items on top of it to the ground, letting them smash.

“How am I supposed to face my family, knowing you’re fucking dead, knowing that they’re probably going to make me out as the monster? Well, not today you selfish piece of shit!”

She tears apart the note in her hand, letting the torn pieces of paper fall to the ground, finally getting a framed picture of them from his desk and throwing it somehow in his direction. When the frame goes through him, he feels white noise crowding in his ears, as if his body is tormented with pins and needles.

He runs through the wall away from her, down the stairs and out of the door of his house. Leaving behind the broken remnants of his life, he runs past his school up to the cliff where he jumped and he stays there. He does not move for a very long time. He does not stop Ashley from jumping; he sits there whilst Joy screams, whilst they drag her body from the depths below, whilst the police drag tape across this cliff, calling it a crime scene. He could still be on that cliff just sitting there.

And that was option two. Which one do you prefer?

Were they unsatisfactory? Were these stories fulfilling? No?

I am sure you will get over it.

However, I have one last question for you.

What would you pick as your way out?