_It’s a new year, and that seems to mean that all sorts of things should be new too. Well, this story by Cesario came from last year and now I’m a little uncertain about this new year. Hopefully it will contain more writing like this.

Nymphetamine
By: Cesario

Prologue:
Black cataracts wouldn’t whitewash away
She burnt me like a furnace
For my future suicide…

_In the late night hours of Thursday, 27 January 2005, I emptied three bottles of sedatives and barbituates into my stomach, scribbled a note to my mother, crawled into bed, and waited for the end. I awoke four days later, disoriented and undeniably alive.

_On Tuesday, 22 February 2005, at 11:27pm, with the title track of metal band Cradle of Filth’s latest album, Nymphetamine, pounding out of the speakers in his room, my dearest friend and confidante Josh Steele loaded his father’s gun, placed it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. The sudden explosion startled his ten-year-old sister away from the television, and she trundled upstairs to check on him. They were alone in the house. When the ambulance arrived, he was pronounced dead in his room. He was seventeen.

I. Two tracks, bric-a-brac
Something passed between us
Like a bad crack…

_Josh and I met in our freshman year of high school. We attended a nearby vocational school, unique in that it was conceived as a school for those who did not intend to go on to college, and it has remained a magnet for such individuals—but the school has also received national recognition for its stellar, highly rigorous English and Theater programs. Thus, beyond the typical eclecticism of high school students, our school had future welders and writers, drafters and directors, studying side by side. We fell into the latter category and enrolled for the English program, hoping to hone our creative writing skills in preparation for college. In ninth grade, all students registered for three-week rotations of various trades, from floral design to carpentry. He was in my first rotation—Computer-Aided Design and Drafting. On 11 September 2001, when we were herded into our respective classrooms (which, coincidentally, happened to be CADD), the overweight, balding professor stared vacantly over our heads as he relayed the morning’s events. Several students gasped, and two broke into tears, sobbing onto their drafting tables. Josh, sitting next to me, stared straight ahead, never betraying the slightest emotion. I began to shake and thrust my hands under my table, rhythmically scratching my wrist until I felt blood— one of my self-destructive ways to keep an already-medicated anxiety under control. I felt watched, and turned to see him looking at me, brown eyes clouded with… what? Concern? Sympathy? Empathy? He shook his head almost imperceptibly, frowning, before resuming a stolid gaze toward the front of the room. Read the rest of this entry »