Prologue: Beginnings at the End
They say that everyone deserves to be happy, to have some sort of silver lining or bright side to their lives. I guess I'm not one of them, I certainly don't feel like it, anyways. My life was...is a mess. At least I won't have to suffer for much longer.
Jamie swallowed, even though his throat was as dry as a desert. He was sweating profusely, mainly due to the implications of what he was about to do, but the broken air conditioner in his apartment window could have also been a factor. It was a hot summer's day, sometime in July. He didn't know the day though, not that it mattered. With no job and no obligations, he had stopped keeping track of them.
"Well I guess that now's as good a time as any," His own voice had startled himself. He hadn't realized how utterly silent the room had been just then.
"Stop putting it off..." He trailed off as he look about the room, taking in the sights for what would hopefully be the very last time. A small, soiled bed that his feet hung over on, a box television that only received two channels, both of which were static. An old broken dresser that housed his meager array of clothes, which at this point was two pairs of jeans and a few t-shirts. Finally his eyes came the the stool with the neat little pile of rope on top of it.
When the idea of what he was about to do first entered his mind, he had completely dismissed it, calling the notion silly and telling himself he still had so much to live for. But it didn't matter, those thoughts had been the seeds of his undoing. He had been such an optimist, but it that only made things worse. Having your hopes repeatedly crushed and destroyed did terrible things to a man's psyche.
Every time he had failed or messed up, the roots of those thoughts grew a little deeper, the plant a little taller. At this point is was comparable to a California Redwood, but he didn't much care. All he wanted now was relief. Relief from his shitty life, his failed expectations and his broken heart.
He trudged over to the stool and pick up the coil of rope, simultaneously kicking the stool out into the center of room, right under the single support beam that spanned his two sizes too small apartment. How had managed to find and live in Philadelphia's dankest, smelliest, darkest pit was beyond him. He always regretted making this his home, but he couldn't afford anything else.
The knot was ingrained into his mind from weeks of practice. He uncoiled it and formed a noose almost instantly, his hand moving like clockwork. He stared at the noose for awhile, reflecting on how things had gotten to this point. It had been a string of failures for the past year, but it had all started the day he was expelled from Temple U.
It was early December and he had been on Broad Street watching a parade. At the time he was a Sophomore at Temple, aspiring to become a therapist. As the parade strolled by, he casually looked around him trying to spot anyone he might know. He happened to look up at the building behind and saw a man standing on a windowsill.
That's odd, he thought to himself, oh well... Looking back, he should have paid more attention. That man was about to do the very thing he was, but he had been so naive that the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. Turning back to the parade, he rubbed his hands together to keep them warm.
A smack and a collective of screams jolted him around, and he saw the most horrific thing he had ever seen. The man from the windowsill was on the ground. His distorted body was crumpled into unimaginable shapes and a dark red pool seeped from under him. The worst part were his eyes, though. Staring, lifelessly, right into his soul. He had backed away a few feet, too stunned to look away. Eventually, he managed to get his feet moving, and proceeded to sprint away from the grisly scene.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, he tried to make his way back to the dorm. Someone had tried to get in front of him and yelled at him to stop, but he couldn't, he had to escape those eyes. He barreled into the man, and heard a thunk. He stopped just in time to see a police officer falling away from a parking meter. There was a blinding flash of pain in his back, and then darkness.
The whole ordeal lasted several more days. He had pushed the officer into a the parking meter, and then was hit with a taser from the officers partner. At first, it looked like he was gonna get charged with assault, but extenuating circumstances, I.E. the suicide, reduced the crime to public recklessness. After paying his fines and leaving the hospital, he went back to his dorm to discover a letter in his door's hanging mailbox. Curious, he opened it up, read it, re-read it, and then cried for what seemed like hours. The admins at Temple had found out about the event and were kicking him out, due to their zero tolerance policy against crime, regardless of how small.
After that things blurred together and got worse and worse. He moved into his shitty apartment, found a job working at a fast food restaurant, and lived paycheck to paycheck. His girlfriend of three years dumped him soon after he was expelled from Temple. Apparently she needed a stable relationship and he couldn't give that to her. His parents all but disowned him, furious that two years tuition had gone to waste. His life turned completely upside down. The only solace he found in life was watching some of the channels on his tv...before they all went to static that is. One station he really enjoyed was a news station that played cartoons in the mornings. Some show about teenage turtles, another about a hedgehog, and one about ponies.
"Stop thinking, Jamie, just do it." He said to himself, with as courage as he could muster.
He stepped onto the stool, tied the none-noose section of rope to the beam and placed the hoop around his neck. Closing his eyes, he shed a tear, thinking it through one last time. It was the only option left, he had nothing to live for, no one to talk to too. All of his loved ones had deserted him, and he felt no joy in anything anymore. All he felt was sadness and the need to make it stop. With a last breath, he kicked the stool out from under himself. There was a quick moment of pain, some panic, but slowly things got darker and darker. In a minutes time, his eyes closed and he was finally at rest.
...
...
...
...
Or so he thought.
His eyes burst wide open, and he started screaming. He had died, he had died, he had died...what the fuck....he had died...It didn't make sense...he passed out again, not getting the chance to look around him. He didn't see the lush green field he was laying in, or the dense forest far off to his right. He most certainly didn't see the train tracks just a few hundred feet away, or the city in the distance, with a plain, brown sign in front...
Welcome to Ponyville
