Scanlines

by Todd Keisling

1993, Traces of Death

Faces of Death (1978).

The video changed something in me. Made me start thinking about the universe in a different way. No matter what people tried telling you, this was in no way a safe world. Sometimes people collapsed. Sometimes they broke. If it could happen to them, it could happen to you—which was something I’d really grow to understand a couple years later as a teenager, sitting on the edge of a hotel window, trying to find the “courage” to jump.

There is a reality somewhere where we all succumb to complete internal annihilation, and nothing in this world scares me more.

To quote Robert Budd Dwyer, shortly before committing suicide on public television: “Please, please leave the room if this will . . . if this will affect you.”

Outside, the storm is raging, and the pale face of a man dead forty years stares through my apartment window, his eyes rolled up and bulging, his skin bloated and streaked with black trails of coagulated blood. He presses his face against the window when he sees me watching, leaving black smudges on the glass. I live on the fourth floor of my building.

I found myself in a position not unlike my mother, working just to scrape by, and scraping by just to work.

We’d forgotten about the promise of Jenna Jameson’s naked breasts, our arousal displaced by something far more primal—the need to feel alive, a feeling of “at least that’s not me,” the promise of death renewing the purpose of life. I wanted to look away, but if given a moment to go back and change things, I think I’d still watch.

The outline of the dead man’s face was burned into my retinas, and whenever I closed my eyes, I saw him in squiggly lines and flashing colors. He was still bleeding, still staring, still dead.

What we’d witnessed changed us in ways none of us understood. We were unwittingly burdened with emotions we weren’t equipped to express. Not at seventeen. Maybe not ever.

Seeing one another was a reminder of the horrible moment we’d shared, and I think we were all afraid to talk about it for fear it might conjure memories of the man’s suicide.

I wanted so badly to believe my own words. I think we all did, but what remained unspoken between us was the gravity of what we’d witnessed. There was something to the video that we couldn’t grasp, only felt deep down in our bellies and in our hearts, the way a chill can reach your bones and never leave.

We were ghouls in a graveyard, digging up a dead man’s grave for closure. We never considered he might want to stay buried.

In my defense, I only did it to help him—to help all of us—thinking that if we could track down the dead man’s identity, we might be able to put everything to rest. That’s how it works in the movies, right? Find the dead man’s bones and give them a proper burial? Not likely. You can’t bury what’s already buried; you can only dig it up.

It’s a look in the eye, a glance of dominance that makes you melt on the inside, turns your stony resolve to butter. It’s the power we give the other person, the sort of power that will make us bend to their will at the slightest indication. A power they don’t even know they wield. I didn’t stand a chance.

Bullshit. There are no new starts for me. Wish I could rewind this horror film, but that ain’t happening. All I can do is hit Play and keep the tape rolling.

It’s funny, you know, the way we can still dream about people we haven’t seen or thought about in years. Like they’re still alive somewhere inside us, going about their business, and sometimes they make themselves known. Sometimes they say what we’ve always wanted them to say. Sometimes we have a chance to say what we wish we’d said.

Sometimes I dream about sweet Nelle. It’s just the two of us in class, and she says she wants to tell me a secret. I lean in, ask her to whisper it to me, and she kisses me on the cheek. That’s her secret, and now it’s mine, and that’s the dream. Just a kiss, but to me it means everything, good and bad.

there’s a moment after waking when I’m still lost in the fog, when I think everything’s okay and the way things were before are how they are now. But the fog always clears. Reality always hits me like a hammer, and I spend ten minutes sobbing into...

When we peered beyond the veil, we saw more than the peace of nonexistence. We saw a dead man’s visage waiting to usher us over the threshold. Waiting for us to join him. Nelle was right: we were being haunted.

Our generation was too caught up in the moment, living day to day and minute to minute while riding this new, exciting wave called the internet.

We—I—grew up in a time when none of that mattered because tomorrow was a million years away. Even now, as my peers are back home living with their parents, unable to afford what society promised them twenty years ago, we’re all still living day to day. Living in the moment. We have no time for superstition because, hey, I need to meet my hourly quota for the day, week, month so I can pay my bills and continue surviving.

We were seventeen and stupid, with no concept of what we were dealing with. All we wanted was to live.

Danny’s words cut me to the bone. Only the best of friends can do that to each other. It’s the fine line we walk between love and hate, and while those wounds will heal, they do leave scars. Some of them are quite deep.

Today I know better. That voice was always my own. We escaped Stauford, but we never escaped ourselves.

I sat there for a few minutes, listening to the radio, and screamed until I was hoarse. I screamed for Nelle. I screamed for Danny and Jordan. But mostly, I screamed for me.

You know how it goes. One thing leads to another, one fix leads to another, and when you’re desperate enough to escape your demons you’ll try anything.

I’m scared, but I’ll hold onto him as long as I can. For you, J. For you, Robby. But I’m so scared, and this weight is so heavy.

Suicide is suicide, whether it happens in an instant or over a long stretch of time.

Benjamin Hardy is less a ghost than he is the force of depression. He’s the grim face you see projected on everyone else, that same face you see in the mirror every day, the one that tells you there’s no point, you aren’t worth it, you don’t deserve it, and why not end it already? He’s the liar in your head, and you’re the suit he wears.