Brood XIX

by Michael McBride

  That same tinny voice... "The number you are calling is blocked, and cannot---"

  Jared hung up and immediately lunged from the bed and switched on the lamp at his desk, setting the scribbled pages of notes directly beside the keyboard. He turned on the monitor and instantly began to type onto the white page where he had primed the flashing cursor beneath the title:

  Senior Thesis

  Contemplating Suicide: What Drives Man to Take His Own Life?

  * * *

  He had gone to school the following morning only long enough to sit through a single lecture in his Psychology of Addiction class before stopping in to talk with his faculty liaison, Professor Witt. For the last month and a half he had been dodging the good doctor, as Witt had been demanding to know the thesis to the all-important paper that would be due in less than three weeks.

  Jared felt a swell of pride when he walked right into Dr. Witt's office and told him all about his idea.

  Witt had lowered his spectacles from the wrinkled crescents beneath his aged brown eyes, and shook his head.

  "To know what's going through the mind of someone poised to take their own life, you would have to find a way to get into their psyche," the old man had said dubiously.

  Jared hadn't been able to take his eyes off of the stringy white hairs stretched over the top of the man's liver-spotted scalp.

  "I've got it under control," he had said.

  "If you don't, Mr. Danner, then you will be watching your classmates graduate from the audience," was all the old man had said, dismissing him with a disinterested wave of the hand.

  "Oh yeah," Jared had said the moment he pulled the heavy door closed behind him. "Everything is under control."

  * * *

  "Hello," Jared answered in the middle of the first ring. He had been typing his paper with the phone sitting directly beside his right hand.

  "That was quick."

  "What was quick?"

  "You answered the phone before it even started to ring on my end."

  "I was expecting your call."

  There was a long pause.

  "Do you still think you can talk me out of it?"

  "Yes," Jared said, thumbing through his notes until he found the spot where he needed to be. Testing their resolve, the header on the top of the page read. "I'm confident that I can."

  "Are you?"

  The voice sounded amused.

  "It's been three days. If you were going to do it, you would have done so by now."

  The silence from the other end of the line was sharp and poignant.

  The pen shook in Jared's grasp as his lower lip slipped between his teeth to be gnawed.

  "Maybe I should just hang up and do it right now."

  "No!"

  "Tell me why I shouldn't!"

  "Because---"

  "Because why?"

  "Because I don't want you to."

  Silence.

  "Why not?"

  "Because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you did."

  Dead air hung between them.

  "You could hang up at any time and never know whether I did or didn't, you know. You could convince yourself that you'd 'saved' me, and never learn otherwise. This is a large campus, and the University certainly wouldn't like the kind of press that would be involved. I'd be surprised if it even made the campus paper."

  "I don't even read it."

  "See how easy it would be?"

  "Is that what you want me to do?"

  "Only if that's what you want to do."

  Silence.

  "I don't want you to kill yourself," Jared said.

  "Then I suppose I'll be calling you again."

  Click.

  Jared turned the phone off and on, and then hurriedly dialed *69.

  "The number you are calling is blocked," he repeated along with the computerized voice.

  He set the phone back on the cradle.

  * * *

  Jared slept through his alarm the following morning, which annoyed Matt to the point that he had shut it off for him before storming off to the dining hall to get breakfast a full hour earlier than he had wanted.

  By the time Jared awoke, all of his classes were through for the day, and students were already beginning to filter into the cafeteria for an early dinner while he was pouring himself a bowl of Apple Jacks.

  He sat at the corner table, still only wearing his slippers over his socks, and shorts though it had to have been well below freezing outside. No one tried to sit by him, or even looked up from their meals for that matter. They were coming up on finals week and the tension was so thick that it lingered like a fog over the preoccupied faces of those shoveling their food unconsciously past their lips.

  There wasn't a single thing about this school that he was going to miss when he graduated. Not only would his thesis paper be good enough to knock old Professor Witt on his ass, but he'd have the professional journals fighting over the print rights. Maybe he'd experiment a little with practicing psychology before debating the merits of medical school, or maybe they'd be clamoring to pay for his education.

  He smiled and milk spilled from the corners of his lips down his chin.

  Nobody looked up.

  No one even noticed.

  * * *

  Jared stayed up all that night, watching the phone...waiting for it to ring.

  But dawn came without the sound of the ringing phone.

  * * *

  Jared didn't sleep at all the following day...nor did he even bother getting dressed for class. He had already missed so much by now that what was one more day?

  He made the requisite three trips down to the cafeteria, but had done little more than stare at the cordless phone that he had been unable to leave behind in the room. Minutes stretched endlessly into the hours that never passed as he scrutinized the clock with bloodshot eyes.

  Matt came and went, pausing only long enough to deposit his backpack on his bed and tell Jared that he should try getting some sleep because "he looked like shit."

  Jared had promised to take the suggestion under consideration, but hadn't even looked at his pillow. He had sat there with his back against the wall, legs stretched across the bed, watching the phone in his grasp.

  He didn't even bother to get up to turn on the light when the sun set outside, the line of sunlight creeping across the floor back toward the window until it finally disappeared, leaving him alone in the darkness.

  * * *

  "Hello," Jared answered breathlessly after deliberately allowing the phone to ring twice.

  "Two rings this time."

  "The phone was across the room," he lied, he had been staring down at it in his hand for the last fifteen minutes, trying to mentally make it ring.

  Silence.

  "You didn't call last night."

  "Did you think that I did it?"

  "I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my mind."

  "How did that make you feel?"

  "Hurt. Angry. Both."

  "Good."

  "Is that what you wanted?"

  "I wanted you to question yourself, to plant the seed of doubt. I wanted you to know that I could actually do it."

  "I guess you made your point then."

  "Did I?"

  "Clearly."

  "Good."

  Silence.

  "I was worried about you last night," the voice said.

  "You were worried about me?"

  "I know how much of yourself you've invested in this endeavor we share."

  Jared shook his head.

  "Am I not right?"

  "Yes," Jared said, trying to keep the angry edge from cutting through his voice.

  "What would you do if I didn't call you tomorrow night? Would you still be sitting there in your room, alone, waiting for the phone to ring to find out for sure whether or not I had decided to go through with it?"

  Jared could think of nothing to say.

  "Then I suppose I'll leave i
t at this..." the voice said, and Jared could hear the smile creeping into it. "Perhaps I'll call you later."

  Click.

  Jared growled through his ground teeth and raised the phone over his shoulder to spike it into the wall.

  "Damn it!" he shouted, catching himself before shattering his only lifeline into a thousand plastic shards.

  He turned the phone off and then back on again, and dialed *69.

  "The number you are calling..." he started to say before the voice had even responded.

  "The last number to call your line was..." the voice began. Jared dashed to the desk and grabbed the pen to frantically take down the number. "...three five one, four six eight nine."

  Jason hung the phone up again, waited a moment, and then dialed *69 to make sure that everything had really just happened.

  * * *

  He logged his computer onto the internet.

  Google.com, he typed at the search option and then hit enter.

  Google came up as the number one match, and he clicked the link to it.

  At the home screen he typed in the phone number he had lifted from the last call return service, including the area code, and poised the cursor over the "Google Search" box, instead opting for the button directly to the right, labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky."

  By the time his finger recoiled from pressing the mouse button, the search yielded its results.

  It was a little trick he had learned back in high school. Given any given phone number, Google would provide the name and address of the person to whom the number belonged. It would even offer links to Yahoo!Maps and MapQuest.

  Jared printed out the page, tapping his foot anxiously and tugging gently at the paper as it rolled far too slowly out of the printer.

  "Room two-sixteen, Kenward Hall," he said, whirling to grab his jacket and shoes. "Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove."

  * * *

  Jared stood ankle deep in the accumulated snow in the field to the west of Kenward Hall. He had no idea what time it was or how long he had been standing there staring up at the side of the dorm. There had only been a half dozen windows with their lights still on when he had arrived, and from where he stood, he could still see three of them.

  The falling snow alighted atop his head, forming a layer of frost over his ruffled hair. His body heat melted the snow ambitious enough to make it all the way to his scalp into thin, frigid rivulets.

  Droplets of freezing water quivered from his jaw line, threatening to snap free, but holding tightly to the week's worth of stubble that thickened on his skin.

  "Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove," he said, studying those lighted windows for even the remote hint of a shadow to move across them.

  * * *

  "Can I help you?" the resident advisor working the front desk called across the lobby.

  Jared just shook his head and looked off in a different direction, feigning indifference.

  He had found a seat in the back rear corner, partially concealed by one of the tall potted ferns. His damp hair clung limply to his head, and his flesh prickled beneath his drenched clothes.

  "I can't just let you sit there all night."

  "I'm waiting for a friend," Jared called back, turning his attention to the television bracketed to the wall, staring at the vacant gray screen.

  "I could ring his room if you would like."

  "I'm early," he called back. "I'm sure he'll be down soon enough."

  "Who are you waiting for?"

  "Scott Nelson or Andrew Cosgrove from room two-sixteen."

  Jared forced a smile.

  "I think Scott goes home just about every weekend, but Andrew's generally here."

  Was it the weekend? Had he really missed nearly the entire week of class?

  "Perfect," Jared said. He smiled to the RA, and went back to waiting for the breakfast crowd to begin rolling through the lobby.

  * * *

  The doors to either side of the front desk were access-controlled by a button beneath the reception desk, though one could easily walk right through if someone were to open it for him and he were to merge into the crowd...

  Jared had slowly worked his way across the lobby until he was standing on the far side of a Pepsi machine from the front counter, leaning against the wall.

  His eyes were so irritated and red that they hurt to blink.

  So he didn't.

  Through the window in the middle of the wooden door---the glass crisscrossed with diamonds of wire---he could see a group of girls approaching, flipping their hair, swinging their heads, completely absorbed in whatever conversation held them in such a state of enthrallment.

  As soon as the door opened, Jared darted directly for it, pulling it wide and stepping behind it as if to do the gentlemanly thing for them and hold it.

  The girls thanked him in chorus, and he slipped past them and into the hallway.

  "Two-sixteen," he whispered, heading for the stairs.

  * * *

  From where he crouched behind the door to the stairwell, he could clearly see the golden numbers affixed to the center of the door. One of the guys in room two-eighteen to the right had come and gone several times, as had the people across the hall in two-fifteen, but the knob hadn't even budged to room two-sixteen.

  He had discretely walked down the hall and pressed his ear to the door---maybe an hour ago now---to ensure that he could hear noise within, and then rushed back down to take his spot in the doorway. There had been the sound of typing, of frantically hammered keys.

  Jared had dumped the contents of his pockets---loose change, his keys, candy wrappers---onto the ground in front of him. Whenever he heard someone coming up or down the stairs, he pretended as though he was merely gathering his belongings to shove back into his pocket.

  He knew there was someone in the room, and at some point that person would have to come out. There was a communal bathroom for each wing on each floor, which was down the hall and around the bend to the left. Eventually, whoever was inside was going to have to make a trip to it.

  He was counting on that person leaving the door unlocked when he did, as he was only going to be heading down the hall for a few minutes tops.

  * * *

  Jared saw the glint on the round knob the moment it moved.

  The door opened inward and a guy strode purposefully out into the hall, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. He had dark hair that was cropped on the top, but other than the fact that he had bare feet a wore a pair of jeans, that was all Jared could determine before he turned away down the hallway.

  Jared threw back the door to the stairwell and sprinted toward room two-sixteen, twisting the knob and shouldering his way through.

  The room looked just like every other on campus: same painted cinder block walls, same wood-railed beds, same damn pipes running along the rust-stained ceiling.

  He needed to find a journal, a diary, something that would offer insight into the voice's psyche. Or failing at that admitted miracle, he needed to find a bottle of prescription painkillers, an overabundance of over-the-counter drugs, or maybe even a gun. Something.

  Throwing the drawer of the nightstand open, he riffled through the contents, but there was nothing but a packet of Tylenol and an opened box of condoms. He hurriedly lifted the mattress, but there was nothing stashed beneath but the box-spring.

  He similarly scoured the matching setup on the opposite side of the room, yielding nearly identical results.

  Both roommates were sexually active. There was no sign of drug or alcohol abuse. Both walls were thick with framed photographs of friends and girlfriends. There was even a little Nerf basketball hoop mounted to the wall.

  It didn't fit the profile he had created. There were no moody posters of melancholy musicians. No black fingernail polish or the matching clothes heaped in the corner. The room was in a precise state of order. Everything had its place. It reminded Jared more of his own room than that of someone preparing to end his life.

  Sur
ely someone about to die wouldn't give a rat's ass about whether or not the bed was neatly made!

  At the back of the room there was a desk beneath the lone window with a computer atop it. The screen was still on...the cursor flashing.

  Beside the keyboard was a stack of handwritten notes on yellow legal paper. Atop them rested an old-fashioned looking tape recorder that appeared to have a phone jack that entered to the left side, and connected it with the hand-held unit resting on the cradle to the right. A handful of tapes were scattered across the desk without their cases.

  Subject 16, Night 4, the first one read.

  Subject 16, Night 1.

  Subject 16, Night 5.

  Jared snatched the phone from the cradle and the tape recorder immediately began to whir, recording the dial tone.

  He slammed the phone down and ripped the cords from the sides, stabbing the "Play" button with his index finger.

  "Hello," his own voice spoke back to him.

  "I didn't think you'd answer," that same voice responded.

  "I was starting to think you wouldn't---"

  Jared pounded the machine with his fist, popping the cassette hatch open and jarring the tape loose.

  What the hell was going on here?

  He leaned forward toward the monitor and dragged the scroll bar on the side all the way up to the top.

  Senior Thesis

  The Myth of Compassion: The Generosity of Strangers

  * * *

  Jared heard the door to the room open inward with a slight squeal. Through the small gap he had left the closet door ajar, he watched the person pass on their way back across the room to the computer.

  He slipped a tie down from the rack beside him, rolling it tightly in each fist. With a snap, he jerked it taut.

  "What the---?" that voice he knew nearly as well as his own gasped.