It was Friday, December 17th and it was the day the corpses piled as high as the Golden Gate bridge. The sun was blinding me and the warmth I felt was from a combination of the bodies below me and the sun above me. My skin was slowly turning red and I gathered I’d been here a while. I brought my wristwatch up to my face to check the time, only to realize it had fallen off and there was no way in hell I was going to try and find it. The smell of rotting, burning flesh was starting to sink into my senses. I was still trying to make my decision and being surrounded by death didn’t help.    

This is it, I’m finally going to do it. I quickly ran down the stairs, counting every step in my mind on the way down. I reached into my pocket before landing on the floor and grabbed my drumsticks. Open the door. Walk through the door. Shut the door. My mind raced as the memories of every good, bad, depressing, and humiliating moment of my life came back to me. My dad walking out on my mother and I, growing up to the age of eight with only one parent, her traumatizing  death, the dozens of foster families I had been a part of, the multiple schools I had been struggling to complete my high school career in. I couldn’t stop the thoughts running through my mind, as I myself, was running down the street. I had been planning this, since the year that I had turned 15. I slowed my pace down to a fast walk and started to notice the scenery around me. Something was off. No dogs barking, no children screaming at each other and their horrific, naive parents that thought it was funny to witness bullying first hand. Everything was just...quiet. Silence was all I had ever wanted since I started living here, but now I have it and  it was eerie. The houses were vacant and looked like they had been abandoned recently. I walked up the pathway to my neighbors house and knocked on the door. No answer. I stepped back looking up at the windows to see if there was any sign of life. None. I reached toward the door knob, hesitantly and pushed the door open. I cautiously stepped into the house. “Hello? Mr. Ferrel?.” I called out, but received no answer. “Is anyone home?” Silence. I slowly made my way around the house checking every room, but everything was in the right place, nothing was moved around or messed up. It was just perfectly set up. Too perfect. After I was assured no one was home, I walked into the kitchen and raided their fridge, but didn’t take long because I had something to do. I left the house and realized I had left my drumsticks in their fridge, but I’m too lazy to go back and get them. The silence was actually getting to the point where it was almost deafening. I continued on route, kicking rocks along the way. The sun was about to rise and I wanted to get there and get this over with before it did. I licked my dry lips and took a drink from the water bottle I stole, before throwing the empty bottle on someone's front lawn. Five more blocks. Just five. My legs were getting tired, but I had five more blocks to walk before I reached the city. Within thirty minutes I had reached the city, and my legs felt like noodles, the extremely flimsy uncontrollable ones. Screams. I jumped, looking straight ahead, where the ear piercing scream had come from. I was getting closer to the bridge and picked up my pace as I watched people running around with frantic looks on their faces. It was mostly middle aged women that overreact to everything so I only slightly took this seriously. Very slightly. I narrowed my eyes as I saw something fall from the ledge of the Golden Gate bridge. What the hell? Did someone just jump off of the bridge? Someone else followed right after them and I noticed there was literally a line of people waiting their turn to end their lives.  I quickly ran up to the line of people. “Stop! What are you doing! What’s wrong with you guys?” I screamed at them, desparate. I didn’t understand what was going on and me yelling in their faces wasn’t getting any reaction at all. I shook the first person I could get my hands on, I shook the six year old so violently, so desperately staring into his young, full of life eyes,  to get him to snap out of this and listen to me but no reaction was detected. I stumbled backwards tripping over my own feet and trying to figure out what was currently happening. It seemed timed, like these people just hit a certain time on the clock, and that was it. Their lives were over. Just like that. I continued trying to stop these women, these men, these children. Nothing was working, I was exhausted. The amount of people I’ve seen die right in front of my eyes is ridiculous. It was killing me that I couldn’t help them. I tried so hard, yet I still felt the guilt in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t until I reached up and felt the tears pourng down my cheeks, that I realized the impact this was having on me. The last person jumped, the very last person. A beautiful blonde teenage girl. This gorgeous girl standing right in front of me, the closest I’d ever gotten to such a beautiful girl and here she was in some weird trance, seconds from no longer mattering. After I watched her body fall, I walked over to the ledge avoiding looking down at the mountain of bodies. I stood up on the ledge and took a couple of deep breaths. I stepped forwards, this is it. I’m finally going to be at peace, free. I lunged forwards. It felt as if I had fallen ten feet if that, and I didn’t want to open my eyes, just in case I was still alive by some chance. I opened my eyes only to realize that I was about ten feet from the ledge I had just jumped off of and I was laying on top of this mountain of bodies. I had survived though, I hadn’t died.

So, here I was. I was still alive, all because the whole population of San Francisco decided to annihilate itself on the same day I wanted to die. I laughed to myself. What has my life come to? I just laughed at the fact that everyone that I had ever come across at some point in my own pathetic life, was underneath me. I had come across them walking through the city or they had been people from my own neighborhood and all of them have  just committed a mass suicide. I was laying on top of a mountain of people I had probably interacted with somehow, at some point in my life. I let out a deep breath. What was I thinking? Was ending my own life really the solution to all my mediocre problems? It’s not like there is anyone left. I stood up, cringing when my foot ended up in a corpse's open mouth. “Ew.” I mumbled, yet it sounded so obnoxiously loud because it was the first sound I had heard in the past hour I had spent laying here. I reached into my front pocket, feeling the cold metal touch my warm fingertips.