A story of one soul during two lives

Suicide suddenly seems very attractive.

Guns are for psychos; hanging and wrist slashing for halfhearted gestures. I’ve always been terrified of heights and there’s no way on Goddess’s green Earth I’m spending my last seconds watching a sidewalk or ocean rushing up on me. I’ve gotten plenty of that in cold-sweat nightmares.

Drowning is out of the question. Self-asphyxiation seems unlikely to succeed. Carbon monoxide has potential, but it’s such a cliche, bringing to mind salesmen and brokers ending it all over some stupid money-related disaster. That’s not a message I care to send. This is not about defeat, but taking control of my destiny, having a say in the one matter which really concerns me.

It’ll be drugs, of course; but how to choose? Resolution to take up smack notwithstanding, dying with a needlewound seems inelegant, as well as hypocritical in light of my lifelong opposition to intravenous injection of recreational drugs within the counterculture. Don’t poke holes in the spacesuit, I warned, wagging my finger, snorting my Ketamine. It would hardly do to leave such a poor example. I’d better smoke my heroin.

Oral overdose of opiates is an option, but eating death brings with it the danger of barfing it back up. Also, I want to minimize the lag time between ingestion and unconsciousness. I don’t fancy my thoughts will be too pleasant about then. That’s probably a shitty attitude, but what, really, can be on your mind at such a time? I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die…

Death by nitrous oxide is an appealing possibility. I can’t see that it would be much different from phishing out on a balloon, except that when you went for some air, you’d just get more laughing gas and never wake up. A small room could be flooded with an enormous amount, or I could use a gas mask hooked up to the tank. It would work even if I was on acid and K. A pretty nice way to go.

Didn’t I read somewhere that NO2 was discovered by adding nitric acid to iron filings? It’s given off as waste from the reaction. Mixing enough of the two should do the trick.

Thing is, how do I get nitric acid, without some clerk calling the FBI and bringing the Bomb Squad down on my head? Pretty sure, it is also a component of nitroglycerin. I can’t exactly explain to the SWAT team, “No, look, fellas, it’s all a misunderstanding. What I’m actually trying to do is manufacture enough nitrous oxide to off myself.”

For that matter, making a bomb and detonating it to some political or social purpose is also worth considering. While it brings the same hazards of getting caught, it has the redeeming virtue of making my death meaningful and significant. A bona fide suicide bomber would be hard to stop, particularly if I targeted an unoccupied building at night from the outside. Don’t want to kill anyone, of course; I’m still a pacifist. But the terror that would strike the hearts of DEA workers when they arrived the next morning to the spectacle of their beloved headquarters, reduced to rubble in the wee hours by a drug-crazed madman with a vanload of high density plastic explosive.

Let them have a nightmare or two.