I'm Thinking of Ending Things

by Iain Reid

HOW DO WE KNOW WHEN something is menacing? What cues us that something is not innocent? Instinct always trumps reason.

“Just tell your story. Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited. So just keep going.”

What if suffering doesn’t end with death? How can we know? What if it doesn’t get better? What if death isn’t an escape? What if the maggots continue to feed and feed and feed and continue to be felt? This possibility scares me.

I bet she doesn’t like being here. She’s smart and capable, but for various reasons prefers leaving school to arriving. School should be a place she likes, where she feels welcome. I bet it’s not.

for we don’t exist, we get existed.”

We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.

I think there’s a perception that fear and terror and dread are fleeting. That they hit hard and fast when they do, but they don’t last. It’s not true. They don’t fade unless they’re replaced by some other feeling. Deep fear will stay and spread if it can. You can’t outrun or outsmart or subdue it. Untreated, it will only fester. Fear is a rash.