Adrenaline, it turned out, was one hell of a drug.
Nellie had had a rather direct trip from the corpse of her murder victim to the seawater pool, which she was now completely ignoring, along with everything else in her vicinity. Although she didn’t really remember whether or not the walk had involved going downhill (probably not, since she was still at sea level?), her train of thought sure had.
“I’m going to win, this’ll be easy!” had turned into “Yeah, that wasn’t hard at all…”, to “I’ve got to do that again?”, until it reached her present state of “Oh my god, what have I done?!”
Taking a life, it turned out, wasn’t easy at all. Who was she to do so? She was just some geeky girl from America who wanted to work at a café after school. She wasn’t particularly good at anything in school; adequate, but she was never going to make any waves, and she was fine with that. She just wanted to draw her D&D characters and hang out with her friends and family, and that was enough for her.
And now she had blood on her hand. It felt horribly cliché to say it, but it was absolutely true, and she even had some on her sweater too! She was a blood covered murderer by all accounts!
She gripped her mouth with her hand, holding in the panicked whimpers. She was pacing, wriggling the fingers on her other hand, as she went in circles in both a locomotive and contemplative manner.
If she wanted to stay alive and go home, she’d have to do that again, but she couldn’t do that again, so she couldn’t go home, so she wasn’t going to stay alive, but she wanted to stay alive, so she’d have to do that again…
That probably went on for a good twenty minutes before she finally slumped down onto the ground. Head in her knees.
This was not something she could do.
Sometime later (but not actually that long, in the grand scheme of things), she was staring out at the water. She didn’t deserve to go home, she’d decided, not after what she’d done. Her victim who’s name she didn’t even remember hadn’t done anything to her, so she was the absolute pinnacle of a cold blooded murderer, and they got the death penalty.
There was no police around to turn herself into, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to see any of her classmates anymore either. Thinking about it, thinking how horrible things must’ve been for her victim (who even has the bad luck to get killed by a shoehorn?) just made her shake even harder. She couldn't deal with one of her classmates pulling that on her.
No, she’d have to do this herself, on her terms.
She stood up, looking at the pool behind her, looking down at the knife in her hand.
She thought back to one of her escapist stories, a tragic death scene where the hero’s love had been killed. Her corpse was floating in a pool of water, hands on chest, hair spread out on the water, looking so peaceful. So free.
It had been a horrible tragedy, but there was a beauty to it. The most beautiful suicide. That’s what she needed.
She turned her back to the water. If she did this right, (and she felt she’d read enough stories to know where to go), she’d die in mere moments. She’d fall back, float on the water, and be at peace. She’d have made her amends to that poor guy she’d killed, and everything would be in order.
So she took the knife, and with one last breath, thrust it into her throat.
Well, you can probably imagine how well that went.
ELEANOR 'NELLIE' FITZPATRICK – DECEASED