⚠️ Trigger Warning: Suicide, Grief, and Psychological Distress
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Early February, 20xx
The rain had finally stopped, but it hadn't brought peace. Only quiet, only the ache of stillness. Mist clung to the gnarled vines like a shroud, and the clouds above remained heavy, as if undecided whether to weep again or simply hover in judgment.
The house felt colder than it had during the storm—perhaps because I could no longer blame the weather. The firewood lay untouched, I hadn't lit the hearth in days. There was no warmth left to summon.
I wandered the halls as one might wander ruins—not seeking anything, only confirming what had already been lost.
My footsteps didn't echo, they dissolved.
I moved from room to room, as though I might find a version of myself I could still tolerate. But all I encountered were relics: a coat too large on a hanger, wine gone sour in an open bottle, the pages of a half-read book curling inward. Time had no shape here, no purpose.
There was no longer anything I wanted to do—only things I no longer had the energy to resist.
Elodie had once told me she could feel when her relapses were coming.
"It's not pain," she'd said. "It's gravity. Like something is pulling me down."
I understood now.
I didn't want to die in the house. That, at least, felt wrong. Too impersonal, and too cowardly. It would make the walls complicit. I had loved this house once—loved it enough to return to it when the city's ghosts became too loud.
I would not leave my bones in its foundation.
Instead, I picked up the keys and stepped out into the cold.
---
The car started without resistance, like it knew where I was going.
I didn't bring a bag
I didn't leave a note
I didn't check the locks
I simply drove.
The roads were half-melted with rain, darkened to the color of slate. Water pooled in ruts and reflected the gray canopy overhead. Fields stretched out on either side of me—mud-choked, motionless, stripped bare by winter. The villages I passed seemed half-asleep, their windows blank, their shutters sealed. No one watched, and no one waved.
I didn't turn on the radio,
The silence suited me better.
The drive carried me north, deeper into the Provençal hills. Somewhere beyond Bonnieux, the landscape softened into emptiness. The trees grew sparse, and the air thinner. I drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting in my lap, and I watched the world as if it were something already over.
What surprised me was how calm I felt. There was no panic and no second thoughts.
Just a slow, heavy certainty, as though I had made the decision a long time ago and had only now caught up with it.
I remembered a time when the same drive had felt beautiful—sun-drenched, sweet with lavender and dust, the wind curling through the windows like laughter. Now it felt like the closing of a door.
And still, I didn't turn back.
---
I stopped at a bend in the road near the edge of a ravine. The land dropped steeply into a narrow gorge lined with oaks. Below, the trees looked like scribbles against the stone. If the car went over with enough speed, it would break apart on impact. That much was certain. Metal didn't bend gracefully when hurled into rock.
I left the engine running.
Stepping out, I stood at the edge, breathing in the sharp, leafless scent of winter. The air held the chill of something ancient—something that didn't care whether I stayed or left.
That, too, was a comfort.
I looked down.
A bird passed below me, a dark smudge with wings.
Alone
There was no divine sign, no moment of revelation. No sudden, cinematic memory that made me want to return. I didn't see my childhood flash before my eyes. I didn't think of Paris, or of clients, or even of Elodie's final words.
All I felt was an absence. A vast, echoing absence.
There was nothing left to offer. And no one left to receive it.
---
I returned to the car,
Closed the door,
Pressed both hands to the steering wheel.
The engine thrummed beneath my feet, steady as a pulse. I could feel it in my ribs, in my wrists. The scent of gasoline lingered faintly in the air—acrid, alive.
I looked up at the road ahead, it narrowed, curved, and disappeared behind a crooked tree at the bend.
There would be no brakes, no hesitation.
The light shifted just then—the last spill of gold between parting clouds. A brief, reluctant gift from the sun. It fell across the slope behind me, igniting the wet vineyards with amber and fire. Everything shimmered for an instant. The vines, the hills, even the mist.
It looked, for a moment, like the world had been washed clean.
But I was too far gone to be saved by beauty.
I closed my eyes.
Pressed the accelerator.
And let go