Commercial Suicide Before The Internet

by Daniel Guy

At the back of a city pub, Toby was sitting with his Mate Sam, offering advice. When he finished he lit a cigarette and sipped his beer.  Sam sat opposite, his hands a cradle for his face, too miserable to be ashamed of tears.  Toby leaned forward and touched Sam’s elbow.

'Sorry mate. I didn't mean to make things worse.'

The awkward silences shared by these two ordinary looking middle aged men was accompanied by a pitchless background a-cappella rendition of HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SONIA, sung by a party of young female receptionists, sitting around a table at the other end of the bar.

Toby looked over Sam's shoulder to catch birthday girl Sonia unwrapping from metallic green wrapping paper, a large pink latex vibrator. He thought for a moment to draw Sam's attention but glancing back at him, he decided that Sam might not be in the mood. Sam adjusted his melancholic slouch from one elbow to the next and looked down at the mosaic he'd created of tiny torn-off pieces of beer mat. Toby pulled open a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

‘Fancy a crisp?’

Sam looked up, shook his head and then lowered it back into his hands. Toby crunched a few crisps into his mouth and then leaned forward to continue with his analysis of Sam's predicament.

'All I meant was...' he said, before lowering his voice for fear the couple on the next table might overhear.

'All I meant was, if your life has become too difficult, you shouldn't make matters worse by ignoring the possibility of ending it. Fear of death as much as life, leaves a man in Purgatory.'

He swallowed the masticated crisps and continued.

'Think of all the failures we know, who loathe themselves so much that suicide would bring them such obvious relief. But since the value and worthiness of death are notions too abstract for them to think about, they remain alive, existing, wandering about as whining, wallowing miseries.'

Sam looked up. 

‘Are you really telling me I should kill myself?’

‘I’m your mate’ said Toby. ‘I’m giving you my best advice. It’s what friends are for.’

Sam finished his forth vodka and stood got up.

‘Thanks mate, I’m going home. I’ll see you around.’

On the following Saturday morning and in the privacy of his own house, Sam found himself weeping again. He stood in his kitchen and stared out of the window across the quiet residential street at the line of other new cloned houses on the estate.

'I'm forty-five and have nothing to show for it.' he said aloud.

He wiped his eyes with the tea-towel and finished drying a solitary coffee mug. On the kitchen table behind him was a letter from Becky, his estranged wife, confirming that she would go ahead with the divorce. The other letter that had arrived that morning was from his accountant confirming that Sam's Industrial Packaging business was now officially declared bankrupt.

He wiped off the half-moon smile from a coffee mug stain off the top of the fridge and stared at the un-ironed shirts hung from the pantry door.

The smell of last night's take-away curry hung in the air. The telephone rang. He tried to sound up-beat.

‘Hello?’

The call was to inform him that his therapist had died in a skiing accident in Switzerland.

Next time Toby handed Sam his vodka on the rocks, they were in a wine bar, and Sam knocked it back and slammed the glass down hard on the glass top table.  Immediately Toby raised his arm and with a flutter of his fingertips attracted the waiter's attention.

‘Another Vodka for my friend.'

The waiter left. Toby leaned across the table once again and said,

'Look my friend. I have a proposition. Tomorrow night I'll take you to club. It's, well... it is what it is. I think it may help you.'

The Go-Go Club is a private venue hidden away in a basement along a narrow alleyway near the docks. Toby rang the bell and whispered his name into the grill of the intercom. The anonymous black wooden door, reinforced with iron plates and nipple rivets opened, and the two men shuffled in.  In front of them was a kiosk, where Toby bought two tickets. Sam followed him along a narrow corridor and then down a staircase, though another door and into a large smoke filled room where in the dim light he could make out dozens of people lying half-naked on cushions and rugs spread out across the floor. At one end was a tiny stage. Red velvet curtains across the front of it were closed.  Sam waited nervously by the door while Toby went over to a small bar to fetch drinks, stopping on his way back to chat briefly to a couple he seemed to know.

'Regulars.' he said to Sam as he returned. 'And they told me that tonight promises to be good.'

Together they stepped gingerly through the carpet of bodies, until Toby found them a couple of large cushions to sit on at the back of the room. 

The piped music faded and the faint houselights dimmed. The audience fell still and silent and turned their heads towards the stage. The red curtains drew back and a middle-aged man in a red velvet jacket appeared, holding a microphone.

‘Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Go-Go Club. It’s nice to see a few new faces here tonight. I hope you’ll have a good time. We have four acts tonight and I hope you’ll be very generous with your applause.  Death is a serious thing. Here at the Go-Go Club we are extremely grateful to everyone who has the courage to step onto this stage and share their final moments with us. So will you please welcome Mark, who is the first of our acts.’

The audience clapped. The compere made a gesture into the wings and then a thin unshaven young man appeared. He carried on with him a small wooden chair. The compere stepped back behind the curtain as the applause faded into silence. The young man placed the chair centre stage, and then stepped forward to address the audience.  He spoke in quiet confessional monotone, explaining that he'd been a veterinary student for thirteen years. He'd failed his exams so many times that his fellow students were calling him Low-Mark. A man at the back of the room offered an audible laugh. The student went on about the black, oppressive cloud that now hung over his head constantly and about the shame and disappointment that he didn't feel inclined to suffer any more.

Between the sentences he fed himself cupped hands of small white tablets from a small brown glass bottle. When his epitaph was said, the unsuccessful student sat down, pulled out a scalpel from his pocket and made a deep cut into a vein in his wrist. Blood shot out over his face and shirt, he dropped the knife, he shook, his head fell back and his bloodied body sagged and tumbled off the chair.

Sam glanced over to a topless woman behind him, who was squeezing the nipples of her enormous breasts.  Beside her, a young man was masturbating.

Embarrassed he turned back and began to join in with the audience applause, which was generous and respectful as the curtains closed and the houselights flickered back on. The clapping faded and several guests turned to each other to continue making love.

'Well then, Sam. Tell me. What do you think?' Sam said nothing. He was staring over at a young naked woman who was squatting heavily onto a man’s face.  Toby went on.

'Amazing, don't you think? In here, Death is entertainment. Anyone who wishes to end their life can book a slot and do it live on stage, watched by an audience who finds the sight of it arousing.’

Sam said nothing, only 'Thanks' when Toby offered him a cigarette.

When the curtains opened again twenty minutes later all trace of veterinary student had been cleared away.  Instead a white tin bath had been wheeled on and in it sat a large naked woman aged about forty, with long blond hair.  The bath was filled with hot foamy water and she was combing her hair.  She told the audience she had breast cancer and the doctors said she had six months to live and she decided there was really no point in hanging around.  Then she reached down, put down the comb, picked up a hair dryer attached to a cable running off to the side of the stage. She switched the dryer on, and then dropped it into the bath.  There was a flash and a scream. The woman seemed to jump into the air and then crash down into the bath, sending waves of soapy water into the air. Everything died down again within seconds. One leg hung over the side of the bath.  Water dribbled over the edge and onto the wooden stage. The curtains closed. The audience clapped. Toby got up to fetch more drinks, leaving Sam to sit and stare blankly at the curtain. The soft music was turned up. People around him chatted quietly. Some were moaning softly as they continued to pleasure themselves or their friends.  The next act was an old man who declared that old age had now prevented him from working in a bakery where he had decorated celebration cakes for forty-eight years. He picked up a cupcake from a plate and ate it He sat down beside a projection screen that has been rigged up at the back of the stage. He flicked a switch and the audience was presented with a slideshow of all the most impressive cakes he’d ever made.  There must have been something very poisonous in the cupcake he’d eaten because half way through the slide show, the old man began to grip his neck and then his chest, and then shake and clench his fists. He fell to the floor and writhed in agony until at last he was dead.

It was the final act that produced the most applause. Dressed in a dapper purple suit and pink bow tie, a man of fifty introduced himself as George. He said he's been a stand-up comic, who had died too often in his life in front of audiences who wouldn't laugh. Nevertheless the jokes George cracked as he climbed up onto the wooden stool and slipped the noose around his head weren't bad.

'Thank you very much.' he said. 'Goodnight, God bless, good luck and drive home safely.' as he kicked away the chair. A couple at the back, relatives possibly, clapped longer than the rest as if expecting an encore of some sort.

As the house lights flickered on a final time, guests slipped discretely back into their clothes, sipped the remnants of their drinks and reached for their coats.  Toby got up to go over and wish his friends goodbye. Sam remained sunk deep into his cushion. He studied the flushed, contented faces of the couples as they made their way arm in arm towards the exit.  Then with his mind made up Sam got up and wandered backstage to find the manager and book himself a slot.

The three weeks Sam had to wait before his stage debut turned out to be remarkably pleasant for him, as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. After a considerable amount of thought he finally decided how he should best end his life. 

He went into his garage and over to the shelves of old stock from one of his shops that had closed a month before.  Boxes of clear plastic bags were piled high against the walls.  He searched till finally he located the size he was looking for.  He took the box into the house and opened it up. Inside were fifty neatly folded large clear plastic sacks, two feet wide and eight feet long.

Perfect. That afternoon, he travelled to a shop he used to pass every day on the way to work, which sold second hand military things, and bought himself a pair of steel handcuffs.    

He spent several nights rehearsing. He didn’t want to mess it all up. Not in front of the crowd. He practiced locking his wrists behind his back and then releasing them with the key. It took him a while to master getting inside the bag and then sealing it up from the inside, but in the end he was very satisfied with himself once he had mastered it.

If Sam will be remembered, it will be for being a meticulous man. He wrote letters of thanks to all the people whom he felt had been kinder to him than he had been to them. He went around his house sticking yellow post-it notes on all his furniture, pictures, nick-knacks and ornaments. On each sticker he wrote the name of an acquaintance or relative whom he thought might like to be the object's new owner, followed by a question mark.

He rang his father a final time, and the first time in six months. They spoke for a couple of minutes, Sam assuring him as usual that he and Sonia were very well and that his packaging business was booming.   

On his last night, he returned from his last quiet meal alone at his favourite Indian restaurant and recited his speech by heart once more. He listened to the tape cassette of Gilbert and Sullivan's Overture to H.M.S. Pinafore, to check again that it was the right choice of music to accompany his death. He wanted something that wouldn't make the audience sad.

There were four acts on the bill at the Go-Go Club the following night and Sam was on third.  But when the entertainment was due to begin, the manager of the club stepped onto the tiny stage and explained that the Swiss Man, who was due to open tonight’s show, had called to say he'd missed his flight so the show would begin in half an hour.

Homemade videos were projected instead, onto a small screen pulled down in front of the curtain. These were recordings of suicidal acts, sent in by people who knew the Go-Go Club paid high fees for this kind of snuff.

Toby and Sam sat crossed legged on space of carpet nearer the front of the stage this time, gazing up at the projections of people strapping hoses to their car exhausts, slitting their throats with huge carving knives, and stepping nonchalantly out over the edges of high cliffs… 

At ten thirty p.m. the screen was rolled up, the curtain was opened and the real live fun began, with Mr Michiyo from Japan. No one seemed to mind that his speech in Japanese went on for twenty minutes. He was a small-framed, wrinkle-faced old man who wore a red kimono, beautifully embroidered with yellow and black dragons.

After the speech he bowed very low to his audience and when he stood up again, the audience saw that he was holding a silver dagger out in front of him. Mr Michiyo slowly turned the dagger with both hands clasped around the handle, so that the tip pointed into his little bulging belly.

He stood frozen in silence and the audience watched, waiting for him to thrust the dagger in, but after a very tense two and half minutes, he bottled out. Deeply ashamed, he bowed very low once again mumbling apologetically in Japanese before stepping off into the wing.

Next on the bill were Angie and her partner Rick, both young and pale, heads shaved and bodies decorated with tattoos, studs and silver rings. As the curtain reopened they were kneeling naked, facing each other on a picnic rug. They shared a lethal needle full of heroin and then made love. Their entwined blemished bodies writhed and twisted to the sound of a Sex Pistols track, loud enough to drown their dying screams and most of the audience applause.

Sam finished his final cigarette, said goodbye to Toby, shook his hand and left to go back stage. Toby called out 'Break a leg.'  Although Sam was too far away to catch the words, he turned back to smile and nod and say ‘Thanks,’ before disappearing backstage.

Toby turned to speak to a large middle-aged woman sitting beside him. 

‘My mate’s on next. He’s going to suffocate inside a huge plastic bag. ‘

‘Ooo,’ she replied. ‘Tonight’s been a bit disappointing so far and I was thinking of going home, but I might stay for that.’

When the house lights dipped again and the red curtain re-opened, Sam was standing awkwardly in the centre of the tiny stage, lit by a solitary spotlight, tinted in pink. He looked very smart, dressed in a dark suit and had a pair of handcuffs dangling from his left wrist. He said a few modest words about how happy his childhood had been and how lucky he was to have a few good friends, and then he opened up the large clear plastic sack and stepped inside it. He pulled up the sides until he was completely enveloped, and then gathered the end of the bag inside and managed to seal it airtight with a knot.  He clasped the other wrist behind his back and then stood there very still and waited. In the background HMS Pinafore played on.  The audience watched attentively and patiently until the plastic wrapped figure shape began to wobble and then to drop to the floor. They watched as the bag, now steamed up considerably, crackled and twisted for a further ten minutes before finally it was still.

Toby’s hand was buried deep inside the knickers of the woman sitting next to him, while her hand gripped his cock. They moaned with delight along with the rest of the audience.  The applause was generous and as the spectators were getting to their feet, Toby turned to the middle-aged lady sitting next to him and offered her a lift home.

 Daniel Guy