The Suicidal Boy’s Fate
On the table lay a slip of paper.
It read: There is one person too many on Earth.
Antoine sat cross-legged in the middle of the room.
Eyes closed.
Hands joined.
Humming his ritual prayer.
Twice the weight.
Three times the height.
Five times the speed.
Seven times the cunning.
Eleven times the strength.
Thirteen times the madness.
So shall I be
in my next life.
So shall I die,
again,
by my own hand.
Nothing else moved.
The droplet at the tip of the tap
clung tightly to its metal rim.
The little baobab, obstinate,
held its breath.
The knives on their rack caught flickers of light
but chose none.
The curtains stood guard
as the wind howled,
dragging thunder behind it.
Antoine, too, was still.
When the silence settled,
he aligned the scream inside him
with the storm outside.
Nature fought the void.
He fled it.
Each in their own way,
each knowing defeat.
Then he stood,
walked softly to the kitchen.
Came back with three onions, a board, a towel,
a long knife.
The floor creaked, faintly, somewhere behind him.
He sliced crescents.
Again.
And again.
The knife’s rhythm beat against the walls.
His mind drifted.
He thought of the phrase —
not the first,
but the last
of sixteen messages
he had mailed
to himself.
He dreamt a dark sky.
A field.
Peace.
The knife kept moving.
His tears fell into the wood.
The droplet still held.
The baobab did not breathe.
The wind had grown teeth.
He imagined himself
outside,
sponge-bodied,
swelling with each strike of rain
until he could no longer fit through his own door.
Then a giant’s hand would reach from the fog
to wring the water out.
But always,
it closed around his heart.
The tears turned sharp.
The rain passed.
The wind remained.
A rope now hung around his neck.
He hummed softly,
watching the onions break down in the pan.
A knock.
Silence.
Another knock.
He did not move.
Then, eventually,
he opened the door.
“I was just about to eat,” he said.
And pointed to a chair.
He served two plates, evenly.
Set the pot aside.
Lifted it overhead.
Asked for forgiveness.
And struck.
The baobab held its breath.
The knives reflected nothing.
The curtains did not look away.
Later,
he watched the words
he had written,
received,
burn into smoke.
The black sky
had taken another.
In the quiet that followed,
two envelopes lay on the table.
One bore his name.
The other — didn’t.
Sunlight came in slow waves.
Antoine held a folded paper in each hand,
and hummed his prayer once more.
On one of them,
he had written:
Live.
