A Christmas to Remember
This story doesn't contain explicit acts of sex, per se, but you can let your imagination do wonders! Due to the content/subject matter I put this as Adult. Enjoy!
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A Christmas to Remember
My name is Timothy McLyle, it's Christmas Eve, exactly two months after my seventeenth birthday, and I'm not going to go downstairs tomorrow morning. So I'm leaving this note on my computer because... Well, I don't know why I'm leaving this note on my computer. I guess it's a memoir. A quick collection of important memories that I can think of. Or maybe not memories at all, I'm still new to this whole note thing. So if I seem to babble or digress, warn me?
Heh, you're a computer. Of course you can't warn me. But to whomever may be reading this. I apologize in advance if you want to read the good stuff immediately. I'm not good at story-telling and I guess I never was. Not that I intend this to be a real story. I just intend on making this a quick brain spill where I can just get these last couple of things off my mind before my big day tomorrow.
Okay, so you may notice that I'm beating around the bush a bit. Here, I'll make a deal with you. If I tell you what it is and I decide to do it, then this note is all yours. Read to whomever you wish. Read it to everyone, for all I care. In fact, I want you to read it to everyone. If I don't do it, I'll just delete this note, okay? Alright. So that brings us to what I'm avoiding. And you probably already guessed it, especially if you're reading this.
I'm going to end my life.
Now, now. Don't try and convince me otherwise. I've already deeply thought about it and weighed the options. I'm not a dumb kid. I've been thinking about this for months. Maybe years. I can't remember how long, actually.
But tonight is the night. Tomorrow morning, Christmas, I won't come down the stairs to the rest of my family. They'll wonder where I am, why I'm taking so long. And first, Beth will come up the stairs to check on me and see what was up. She will scream. Loud. Then the rest of the family will also come upstairs to my room in order to see what happened. Only to find me, or the body of me, hanging from a noose attached to fan on the ceiling. In fact, the noose is there right now. It's just waiting for me.
Okay, so under any other circumstance, I wouldn't trust this rope to do the job. I'm not the best knot tier in the world, but I've worked on this specific type of knot for five weeks and three days. So it should hold up. I also wouldn't trust the fan to be able to hold me if I didn't keep myself as light as possible in the weight area. I don't know if one hundred three pounds and three ounces would break the fan down, but I'm pretty sure it won't. Okay, so I haven't necessarily been trying to keep my weight down, but it seems that whatever I do or eat, I just don't gain weight. At all. Plus, I guess my body frame doesn't allow for much alteration.
If you haven't noticed already, being this is a suicide note, after all, from my body hanging in this room, I'm a Rat. Just a regular White Rat. I've got pink pads under my palms and feet, but not on my chest. I guess my family line kind of evolved out of that. Because I do know two other White Rats and they've got furless, pink chests. The hair on top of my head is blond, which is somewhat normal for White Rats, and my eyes are blue, which isn't normal for White Rats. The other two White Rats I know have red eyes. Not that their eyes are completely red, they aren't blind - almost all of them have evolved out of that long ago, but the iris is almost always red. I think one of my ancestors married outside of the species and kind of threw a kink in there. Ever since then, though, my family has been keeping it quite pure.
I'm really short, not unusual for my species, I know. I'm five feet and two inches. Trust me when I tell you this; getting a noose up on the fan was a major bitch. I actually dragged my chest out from under my bed, then put a chair on it, then climbed on top. Hanging the noose from that point was just a matter of careful maneuvering and tip-toeing.
So yes, I've been planning this for a little while now. I know what they say, though; 'The more you plan the more chance you'll have of chickening out'. Well, I don't agree with that notion in the slightest. Okay, so maybe my plan isn't bulletproof. But at least I'm not dropping a hair dryer in the bathtub. That will not only bring the family to the location immediately, but it will also hike up their electricity price as well. And that's just being selfish.
Don't even get me started on what can go wrong with the wrist route. Imagine; missing the artery? Or what if I just pass out and not die? What if the family walks in while I'm passed out? I imagine there's a bigger time frame for blood loss than there is for air loss. Heck, I can't even hold my breath for a long time. But I don't think that's how the noose works. Or strangulation in general. I think it cuts off blood circulation to the brain and that's what causes the death. And I think I would only live through a couple of minutes of brain death as opposed to an hour or so of blood loss. Though, I don't think that's how long it takes, either. It probably only takes about a half hour to lose enough blood to die. Even then, that's still too long for me.
A bullet to the head? Come on, seriously? Not only will that be messy as hell, but it will draw the family quicker than a toddler in a preschool class. Sure it may be the most painless route, but I'm not looking for the most painless route, I'm looking for the best route. Leaving a bloody mess all over the place is just bad form. It's Christmas! I'm giving the family a gift. One that doesn't involve cheap chocolates or dumb Christmas cards.
I'm going off topic, though. See, I said I wasn't good at this. How about we get to some memories.
Well, when I was young, I didn't enjoy Christmas. I don't know why. I know it's usual for kids that are eight or nine-ish to anticipate it with each fiber in their bodies. But I guess you could really just say that I was an unusual kid. I remember this one year my dad got me a car model. It was a Porsche. It was one that I had to construct myself and it came in a box. I guess you could say my dad was a fan of muscle cars. I don't know, I never understood. In any case, when I started working on the car, opening it and looking at all the pieces, my dad said that it has to be made according to the instructions. "Down to a dime", He said. Something like that, though, I don't think that's how the saying goes.
Well, what he had said upset me. I wanted to find my own way of figuring the car out. Where's the artistic value in following an instruction guide? What if I didn't want to make a Porsche? I later found that there was no way I could make anything but a Porsche. It was also very difficult to do anything other than what the instructions said. I, of course, took it as a challenge. From that point on, I became a collector, of sorts. My dad was pleased, but he didn't know why I was actually collecting them. He may have thought I was collecting them because I liked cars. No. I collected them because I was trying to find different ways of breaking the instructions. For example, I would maybe skip a couple of steps and leave out the interior, or break a piece in half and see if it still worked. It was tough to do any personal modifications to them since they were all snap-ons. I was only successful in personalizing the cars half the time. The other times I was ashamed of the outcome.
I had kept that hobby even up until today. I kept every single car I made as well. There are some duplicates and I try to get every new one that comes out. I've got well over six hundred car models. Granted, they aren't all in my room, but this house is big enough that I've got them located in several different areas. Which makes me glad that my parents have such a strong income. They've been able to afford this house and keep my 'hobby' going as well.
Okay, so maybe I really do like collecting these cars. I still feel the need to try and personalize each one once I get it. It's just something I do. It's a natural urge for me.
This creative urge doesn't just affect my car building, though. It affects almost everything I do. From homework to, yes, even killing myself. Ever since I could remember I hated following strict guidelines, so I tried my best to tweak them if there was room. I still got the job done properly. It's that I'd just rather find a shortcut or go the long way around then sticking to the basics. I was in the third grade when I chanced upon algebra. I didn't know it was algebra at the time, I just thought I was being clever using letters instead of empty spaces. So there my class was, learning basic multiplication and division, and I was working on x, y coordinate graphs and functions. I was a little bit ahead of my time, I guess. But when the teacher noticed it, she didn't do what I expected her to do. She didn't scold me for not following her instructions. Instead, she said she was really impressed. Which really confused me.
It was at that point that I decided that it was okay to break the rules every now and then, much to my school district's disdain. I held perfect grades all throughout my schooling career. I made friends with almost all the teachers, even the bitchy ones that everyone hated. My extracurricular activities were stockpiled. I even tutored sometimes. The best part, though, was my behavior record. It had black marks all over it. I cursed out other kids, got in fights, ditched class a couple of times, got caught, I even yelled at the lunch ladies quite a number of times. Popular crowds stayed away from me, afraid, most likely. It's true I was never an easy person to talk to. It's the main reason why my best friend, Mat Hughes, was and is my best friend.
Mat got a sick satisfaction from talking to me, I think. He is pretty much the only person that can find topics that actually interest me. For instance; the beautiful shade of blood, or why Picasso's pictures are the most true to human form. He may not have been a straight A student, but he was definitely as smart, if not smarter, than me. He could work out logic puzzles faster than anyone else I knew. He played chess with himself in his head, or so he said. I could never prove that he was actually doing it, but once we did play chess over the phone. He told me he didn't have a chess board and was doing it all off of memory. I had the board set up and I was moving the pieces for him while he called out something like "B6 to C4" for the knight. He won that game, but I think he used a board anyway. I never proved myself right or wrong, but that's just how smart of a guy Mat is.
He, like I, has his own reasons for doing what he does. Sometimes we know each others reasoning for things, but there's times when I can't read him, and I'm usually good at reading people. He's a cat, by the way. His golden fur is naturally very short, and his hair is styled. He wears very nice clothes, cornering on formal, every day. Kind of like me, except that he makes no exceptions to this. Which is cool.
We've known each other for over four years. Since seventh grade when he moved in from another city. I hated him at first, I never told him about that, though I think he figured as much. It only took me about two months to realize it was a jealous hate because I had never met anyone as smart as me before then. We became best friends quickly after that. Our conversations didn't involve things that other people's conversations involved. If we talked about something it was never about another student or a teacher. They didn't interest us in the slightest, so why should we talk about them? We threw our thoughts back and forth to each other. Theories about humanity, how the world works and how art can be found in everything. That was our main subject of interest; art. We talked about the beauty of anything and everything. Including: fire, tornadoes, death and sex. But we also talked about the ugliness that everything had as well. For death, we found that the ugliest part of that was that it was always done wrong. It's like people didn't care how they left their bodies or anything. The ugliest part about fire was that it was always out of control. You can't be beautiful if you're out of control. The same applies to tornadoes and any natural disaster, really.
And the ugliest part about sex? That was easy. We figured that one out pretty quickly. It was primal. There was no class to it, it was a means of satisfying baser urges. Urges that haven't been evolved out of yet. Sure it was appealing, as is most things. But it was primal and ugly. But in ugliness there is beauty, and in beauty, ugliness. You can't find one without the other, it's just how you wish to block one out that affects your mindset.
We found ugliness and beauty in each other. Two years ago this morning, freshman year of High School, we had sex. The morning before Christmas. It was wonderful, it was awful. It was beautiful, it was ugly. We completely understood each other, and it was right. We lost our virginity to each other, and we weren't ashamed, because it was art. We even did it numerous more times since then, each time proving to be just as beautiful as the first. We didn't worry about gay or straight or any of the things that everyone else seemed to be worried about. We had no reason to care what the world thought. Besides, we were best friends. There were no problems between us, and things didn't change like so many people seem to be afraid of.
The next year I had tried to experience that same feeling with my girlfriend at the time, Stephanie Silva. Of course, it wasn't the same. She just didn't understand the power of what we did and were doing, the art behind it. She was a stupid 16 year old, just as I thought she was. Her body was a piece of art. She's a bunny, and everyone thought we made a 'cute' couple. They didn't understand. I broke it off with her after being thoroughly dissatisfied many times over.
Mat had a girlfriend as well, he told me about his dissatisfaction with her as well. In fact, they broke up only two months after Stephanie and I did.
This year was similar to our freshman year. We continued having sex, with somewhat of a running joke about playing 'cat and mouse'. We were both in Calculus C-D, AP Physics and Art IV (skipping Art I due to taking it in secondary school). We promptly completed homework on time and kept high A's in all of our classes, except Mat. He kept an exact 86% in his English, History and French classes. He does it as a personal challenge and has been doing it since high school started.
I so far have gotten into two fist fights with Jerry DeBois, both started by him. Of course I antagonized him, but he still technically threw the first punch. I think he's about an inch from getting expelled and getting me suspended. It's almost unfair. He's a five foot ten Doberman, on the varsity football team, yet he still attacks me first, and I still get in more hits then he does. I don't think he cherishes his black eyes like I do, though. I got into three arguments with the lunch ladies over the line and the food being served. I don't know why they even care to show up. And I've ditched each class, except Art IV, twice, at least. Different days, of course.
Which all of that leads up to now. Winter vacation. Christmas vacation. The big day. It's 1:24 in the morning. Two hours, six minutes before I scheduled to go through with the plan to give my family a Christmas to remember. It's a beautiful idea, an ugly one as well, but I choose to look at the beauty. From here on out, every Christmas my family has, they will remember me. And if I know my family, it will affect them every other holiday of the year as well. Probably many days too, for a couple of years at least. I'll silently go away in the middle of the night and they will cry in the morning over my dead body, call the police and see this note. With information that they never knew, it will make them think, and that's what I want to give them. The gift of thought.
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<2:45> Tim: I've been thinking about it.
<2:46> Mat: So have I.
<2:46> Mat: I'm guessing you wrote a note?
<2:47> Tim: That was what we agreed on.
<2:49> Mat: I don't think we should do it.
<2:49> Tim: I don't think we should do it.
<2:49> Tim: ...er, Either.
<2:49> Mat: Hahaha
<2:51> Tim: So, what'd you write in your note?
<2:52> Mat: Remember the golf course?
<2:52> Tim: Oh ya! I should have put that in there. Haha
<2:52> Mat: What about you? What did you put in there?
<2:53> Tim: Uh, let's see. Jerry DeBois. Stephanie Silva. Cat and Mouse.
<2:53> Mat: Oh ya, Jerry. Ha, what an idiot. That other stuff is cookie cutter isn't it?
<2:54> Tim: Hey, I also wrote about my car models and my third grade teacher.
<2:54> Mat: Boooring.
<2:54> Tim: What makes you care? You don't have to read it, anyway.
<2:55> Mat: That's true.
<2:56> Tim: So... We agree on not doing it?
<2:57> Mat: Ya, I mean, why let the art end now?
<2:57> Tim: You're right, I hadn't thought of it that way.
<2:57> Mat: You still have much to learn, young padawan.
<2:58> Tim: Really? Star Wars?
<2:58> Mat: It was a good plug.
<2:58> Tim: Ya, that's true.
<3:01> Mat: So... What now?
<3:02> Tim: I don't know... Wanna play cat and mouse?
<3:02> Mat: Ya, sure. Want me to come over?
<3:03> Tim: No, I'll come over there, leave your window open. Let me just get this rope down.
<3:03> Mat: Alright, I'll see you soon.
<3:03> Tim: Hey, Mat?
<3:03> Mat: Ya Tim?
<3:04> Tim: Merry Christmas
<3:04> Mat: Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.
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Well, that's it for my Christmas story! I hope you all have a wonderful art-filled Christmas like Tim McLyle and Mat Hughes! Rate, Comment, enjoy, etc.