In the end, he decided on pills.

A gun was too messy; the bloodstains and pieces of brain would destroy a lifetime of effort in keeping the institutionally white carpet and walls of his bedroom meticulously clean. Hanging was out of the question; the salary of his immigrant fathers factory job put a roof over his head, but the structural integrity of the house was too questionable to support his 150-pound frame. At six-foot-three, his toes would just barely touch the ground, anyway. He couldnt jump; nowhere in the sleepy Pennsylvania town was over three stories, and on top of that, a police force with far too little to do would get to the scene before he was good and dead. They had an electric stove, self-immolation was far too flashy, and he couldnt ruin his mothers bubble baths with bloodstains in the tub. Aiden wondered why he hadnt reached that decision earlier. He had seen the orange plastic bottle countless times, resting on the white metal shelf behind his bathroom mirror. It had been kept as a precaution, a little white pill left over from his fathers back surgery just in case the pain came back. Of course, his burly Russian father was too much of a man to rely on pills to ease his pain. Aiden was not his father. Ever since he had returned from college for winter break, his body too tired to move far from bed and his mind too broken to want to, he had been thinking about the pills. Oxycodone. His mother had always gossiped in Russian about how the neighbor lady was hooked on the stuff. She had lectured him to never touch it, to never put any of those pills into his body. It will ruin your brain, just like neighbor-lady. How odd it was that she had no problem giving different pills to her own son, little blue ones, just because they started with a Z instead of an O. He had stopped taking them a year ago because they made him feel even more broken than he already was. As he had begun thinking more and more about the little white pills, he thought about the neighbor-lady, too. Maybe she was just as broken as he was. Maybe she

had realized long before he had that the little white pills could take away more than just physical pain, too.

The cold of mid-January bathroom tile seeped through the calloused soles of his feet as he stood before the mirror, thin, tan fingers pulling at the deep purple bags under his eyes. They were the last bit of color left on his face. You look like a ghost! his mother had exclaimed when he returned home in December. Do you eat at school? Do they feed you? Oh, you make me worry! He had faked a smile, or at least tried to, telling her he had just been busy with his studies and that he was fine. Even though every muscle in him tensed and he wanted to scream that he was not fine and that he was hurt and broken and tired and done, he just forced his cheeks up towards his eyes like someone who didnt know what smiling meant and eaten Borscht and told her that he was fine. He knew better, now, than to let people know he wasnt. He slid his fingers down his face and reached over to pull open the cabinet behind the mirror, tired of looking at his crooked nose and faded brown eyes. A click and a rattle and he held the orange bottle in his hands. Although a million people would tell you differently, he swore there was a warmth radiating from that bottle, leaking into his palms and trickling down through the countless scars that lined his arms like war-torn soldiers. For a moment the chaos in his skull quieted and peace overcame him, and he closed his eyes and brought the bottle to his chest and imagined the beating inside of him stopping and being replaced with quiet and black and nothing. The corners of his mouth curled upwards in a shape he had nearly forgotten.

Aiden ran his fingers through his thick, black hair as his left hand tapped the pen on the piece of notebook paper lying before him on his desk. Natalie hadnt spoken to him for at least a

week. He fucked it up, his head fucked the whole damn thing up, but he still loved her and could still picture her bright blue eyes and pudgy pink nose when he closed his eyes, so he figured he at least owed her a note. He took a swig of his parents pilfered vodka that stood next to the plastic orange bottle, both of them angels waiting to lead him to his salvation. The alcohol served to melt his brain enough for it to begin flowing from his pen.

He folded the paper tenderly and placed it on his desk. This would be for the better she would be happier without a broken man clinging to her like a leech. She would be able to forget him. She would be able to move on. And so would he. He took a last look at her name scrawled in fading black ink before he popped the cap off of the plastic orange bottle, threw his head back, and dumped its contents down his throat. The avalanche of pills was washed down by a river of

vodka and he dropped the bottle and staggered over to his bed and fell back and waited. And after what felt like an eternity of deep breaths and rumbling from his stomach it began. He stared up from the sea of his blue comforter at the bladesof thefan asthey begantoblurtogether untiltheyformeda bigwhiteballthat glowedlikethe feelinginhisheadand he r e a c h e d out for it and his fingers were m e l t i n g and so was his brain it was melting from his ears and pooling on his pillow like the white foam forming at his lips and his hands were
r m ln t e b i g and his body shook the whole universe and the black and the quiet crept in the corners

of his eyes and they grew and

grew and grew until they were everything and he

was nothing but black and quiet, too.