My Demise

 “I would be back in 10 minutes,” said Ahmed as he took the phone off his ears. He then picked up the teacup in front of him and took the last sip after having to laugh at his friend’s joke. 

 

The group then got up from their seat and Ahmed bid his friends a farewell and made his way towards his building but before walking away he turned and hugged his childhood friend, who happened to be his best friend too. 

 

“Now! There, Ahmed, I happen to support your rights, but I am not gay” mocked his friend. 

 

“Ahh! Shut up! Always remember even if I was gay, you’re never my type.”

 

“Aww” 

 

They both laughed and Ahmed made his way towards his building’s door and saw his friends parting.  

He then waited for the elevator at the reception of his building while the guard smiled and told him how the eight floor’s Mr. Bohio, a rich tribe man owning both the penthouses on that floor, is creating havoc at midnights because of constant guests coming up and down the elevator due to his daughter’s wedding. 

Ahmed laughed and consoled the guard. As soon as the elevator came, he made his way in. Elevator was a little old and took a while to reach the seventh floor. As it dinged on the seventh floor, Ahmed made his way out of the elevator, turned left, and walked towards his apartment. 

 

He opened the door and greeted his mom loudly, letting her know he was home. He then made his way towards his room and after washing himself he changed into something more comfortable.  

He then made his way towards his mom’s room. His mom was already laying on her bed and was tucked down to sleep. He smiled, kissed her on the forehead, wished her goodnight, and made his way out.  He then went to the TV room and saw her sister watching a movie. He stood outside and first watched her and then glanced at the TV and said, “and you think you can understand the revenant?”

 

“Oh! Shut Up!” replied her sister. 

 

“I mean you would have to watch it twice.”

 

“My taste in movies has changed. Okay? Stop thinking that you’re the only one who gets all the movies.”

 

“Yeah right! Only yesterday I saw you watching ‘high school musical’.”

 

“Even I saw you watching Riverdale.”

 

“I just wanted to have a closure at a sucky series”

 

“Lol! Shut up! Let me watch the movie.”

 

“Alright! I’ll be in my room in case you need any help to understand the plot,” said Ahmed as he made his way towards his room. 

On reaching his room he shut the door behind him and turned on his fan as he jumped on his bed. His room was the second largest room in the apartment. It has light grey walls, a bookshelf just above the bed, parallel to the headrest, with books organized first by language and then by size.  Alongside the footrest, there was a computer table neatly organized. The laptop was centered with its screen up and screensaver running, the RGBs on the mouse and keyboard flickered as programmed.  The left side of the table had a writing pad and a pencil holder whereas the right-hand side had a docking station hosting an empty smartwatch charger, a wallet, some keys, and an empty space awaiting a smartphone. 

After stacking a pile of pillows behind him and being in a perfect reading posture, Ahmed reached for the book lying on the nightstand, placed left. The book appeared rather old with its cover torn and had pencil marks and scribbles all over it.  Ahmed started to skim through it, and it appeared that he had been through the book more than once and this probably explains the current condition of the book.  Time went by seconds turned into minutes and soon the long and the short hands of the clock met at the number 12 and it has been thirty minutes since he was skimming through the book. 

Though he was indulged in reading he had a smile carved on his face, but his eyes didn't match his facial expression and they appeared rather melancholic. A tear rolled down his left eye and made it’s through his cheeks and fell on the book’s page. Ahmed then got up from his bed and reach to his desk, with his favorite pen he wrote at the very end of the page, “I tried to master the subtle Art of not giving a F*ck, but I failed.” and folded that page and placed the book neatly back at its place in the bookshelf. 

He then walked towards the window of his room. It was relatively a large window and was more a curb then being just a window. He looked down through it, it was dark down, and all he could see was an old dingy lamp flickering far away at a house’s servant room on the roof. There were numerous cars parked down and that an old corolla from the 1980s was still parked at its spot. It was a very normal quiet night. He smiled looking at it all and then he turned back and moved towards his closet.

He picked out his favorite pink hooded t-shirt and his favorite blue shorts. He then removed his watch and put it in charge. He pulled out his phone from his old pajamas and placed it on charging hence filling up that one empty spot on his dock. He placed his earbuds next to his phone on the docking station neatly. He picked up his sleeping shirt and pajama and tossed it in the laundry basket placed in his restroom and while he was at it, he brushed his teeth too. He then came out of the restroom and walked toward his other nightstand, he drank water off from his water bottle and eventually took his glasses off placing them alongside the water bottle on the nightstand.

He then once again made his way towards his room’s window. He was facing the window. He had a great glance at everything in his room. For the first time in his life, his room was perfect, exactly the way he always wanted it. He then took off his slippers and placed them neatly alongside the window. He stood there all frozen in time as if he was trying to picture his entire life in front of him. He then climbed his window, carved a smile on his face and he jumped down out it he heard a “ding” on his phone reminding him, that though he tried to master the subtle Art of not giving a F*ck, he failed.

As he was falling, he had a smile carved on his face. He could still hear all the laughter and see all the smiles. His life was playing in front of him and for the first time in weeks, his face and eyes were amused. His hair was bouncing as the air whoosh through them. As he took a deep breath that filled his nostrils and lung with fresh air, “thud” his head hit the concrete road. It is then when blood oozed out through his scalp and his veins. His eyes were blurred, and every noise faded. Everything around him moved but he. He slowly descended into the darkness until he stopped yet there one thing never changed; his face carved with a peaceful smile. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The loud thud and the anti-theft alarm from a car parked near the “fall site” were enough to attract some attention. The security guard rushed towards it with his gun all locked and loaded speculating a probable theft attempt, but he was shocked when he saw what he saw. This was probably one thing he would have never ever thought to ever witness. He was more shaken because it had only been an hour or two when he saw Ahmed laughing in front of him with him and his friends. Goosebumps ran down him and after being frozen for a while he finally came to reality. He tried waking Ahmed up, but it was worthless. He rushed up to his house while the other guard on duty stood by the Schrodinger’s cat that Ahmed was as he waited for an ambulance to arrive.

“Ding” the apartment’s bell went once and then again and then again, “Who is it at this hour?” said a girly voice from within.

“Open up! “said the guard as he told his name.

“What happened? Wait! Let me call my brother.”

“Wait! It’s about him. We found him fallen down on the road.”

That statement spooked Ahmed’s sister who still couldn’t comprehend the statement and went in utter silence and after a while, “What?”

“Yes! Please come down. We have called an ambulance. “

“I am coming. You rush down near him” said his sister in a breaking voice.

She woke her mother up and explained what the guard told them. Both couldn’t comprehend the situation. They rushed down while having tears in their voice and wondering what might have happened. As they reached down, they were shocked to see Ahmed in that state. Blood was all around him, his head was cracked open because of the shock and his bones appeared broken.

The family tried to help themselves, yet they screamed, cursed, and cried. The ambulance soon arrived at the location and they tried and helped Ahmed on to the stretcher. They pumped his heart, but his pulse was long gone, and he was nothing but a cold cadaver. They still rushed their way to the hospital and the family accompanied them. His mother was in a state of shock and his sister though crying was holding uptight. She called his friends and informed them and requested their assistance. The ambulance reached the hospital within 5 mins followed by his friends who reached there in 20 minutes. The hospital rushed him to the ICU but within a short span, he was declared dead.

Days passed by and Ahmed’s friend and family were still in shock. It was the tenth night since the incident and Ahmed’s friends were visiting his family to comfort them and more importantly to ensure that his mother was sound. His sister, best friend, and the guard showed the symptoms for PTSD as they were the last people who talked with him and saw him laughing out loud. His other friends tried to console his mother and tried their best to feed her.

“Why? I want to know why?” shouted his mother, “I would never forgive him.”

“Don’t say that. We all don’t know why? But we must forgive him to make his journey after demise easy, said one of his friends.

“He was a coward. He thought running from life was the easiest option.”

“….”

No one said anything for a while and the house went in silence.

“I might know why he did it,” said his best friend.

“What?” said his sister.

“Yes! I think I know.”

“Why?”

“Follow me.”

They went into his room, it was untouched. Everything was the way Ahmed left it which according to him was perfect. His friend woke his laptop from sleep and unlocked it as he knew the passphrase to it. He quickly browsed through his documents and found one his story which was titled “My demise”.

“Remember this?”

“No!” said everyone.

“Well, I remembered it, he wrote this after he told me he was depressed. It was a story of a boy named Ahmed who committed suicide because he was suffering from smiling depression and everyone assumed that he would be okay after a while.”

 “Yes! I do remember it. I made fun of him and told him it was too dark,” said his sister in shock.

“He mentioned all of us in it. You, me, your mom, everyone, and do you remember how vividly he described the suicide?”

“I do,” said his mother who still couldn’t stop crying, “I even scold him for it.”

“Precisely. Even I scold him, but I think instead I should’ve talked to him.”

As they read through the story, they found out everything was exactly how he wrote and as they reach towards the end, they read about the book, “the subtle art of not giving a f*ck and how the Ahmed from that story wrote had folded one of the pages and the end of it wrote the sentence “I tried to master the subtle Art of not giving a F*ck but I failed”.

They searched for the book in his room and because his books were organized neatly and, the fact that he had vividly described the condition of the book in his story they were able to find it and once they did, they found the folded page and at the bottom of it was the sentence “I tried to master the subtle Art of not giving a F*ck but I failed”.

The next few days were hard for all of them especially for Mother, Sister, and the best friend. There were days when they used to blame themselves for his death and there were some nights when they couldn’t fall asleep and some nights when they used to wake up from the sleep following a nightmare. Days passed by but they could never let go of the fact that how they ignored that one warning Ahmed gave them before taking that drastic step. There was something that bothered him and now that he had gone, they would never know what it was. Everyone around them made conjectures of what could’ve been the reason, but they were talks which were now meaningless because they now knew that even if they now figure out all his reasons, they would never be able to bring him back.

“Do you think we should publish his last story?” asked Ahmed’s sister while talking to his best friend and mother.

“We could!” Replied his best friend.

“We should! Yes! We should. I know I have lost my son, your friend, and her brother but if we publish his work and if that could save just Ahmed, it would be as if we have listened to him and saved him,” said his mother.

“I agree! There was a reason he wrote it. He wanted to save himself, but he was instead asking us to save him and we failed him, but his work could wake another one of us and could probably save another one of him,” seconded his best friend.

They spent the next few weeks trying to publish his last work, “My Demise” and they were eventually successful in it. His work went viral and numerous people started to talk about smiling depression all over Pakistan. Many universities, NGOs, and social media influencers used his work and the story about his demise as a base to create awareness. His friends and family made an organization that tried to help youngsters in their war against depression.

 

Months later while visiting his house, his best friend who was hanging out in his room found his diary and the last page of it read, “

Who am I?

A monster in disguise.

Don't love me.

I'll leave you unlovable

Yet don't hate me.

I'll be your worst enemy

Do not befriend me

I'll be the friendliest foe

I am lost in the dark

Capable of making you a lost lark

I'll be the best the stray path

Choose any but that path

I may be coveted despicable

Let not me be your one desire

Who am I?

I am an ogre who’s chained to rage

Don't get me?

I'll be making you my pet

Yet don't stone me

I'll be the boulder that kills you

Let me free

Let me be me

Your ethics don't define me

Don't bound me

I am too wild to be caged

I am a thought unfathomable

I belong to tale unspeakable

Who am I?

A monster of my own device

Unknown and unheard

And unlike the Joker, I hope my death makes more sense than my life.’ “

 

A tear rolled down his friend’s eye as he closed the diary only to keep it hidden and said, “You lied! You mastered the subtle art of not giving a f*ck and it is because of that you ensure that your death makes more sense than your life.”