I’m going to kill myself this afternoon. At first, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d do it, but I’ve spent the last seven months researching different methods that might be the most effective. I thought, “Maybe I’ll go with a silver bullet, throw myself off of a skyscraper, or swallow shards of glass.” I considered drinking gasoline followed by a lit match, slitting my wrists (“Down the river, not across the street”) and dripping every bit of crimson I had left. But I hate to make a mess. So I decided to ingest cyanide capsules. I just hope the mortal sin sticks.
***
I don’t remember when I died. Well, not the first time. My mom woke up on my first birthday, January 1st, at 12:32 AM because my twin brother, Auggie, wouldn’t stop crying. Dad had gotten up the last time, so it was her turn. Winter was at its peak, and neither of them was too elated to creep across the icy, wooden floorboards. Pulled from a half-dream, as she mustered the resolve it takes to leave a warm bed to soothe a wailing infant, she realized that the other was uncharacteristically quiet. The cool light of the moon poured in from the frosted window, illuminating all of us under its delicate glow and, suddenly, the noise stopped. She said a prayer of thanks before trying to settle back into sleep. Right before she could drift off, something tugged at her conscience; a single loose thread that would unravel the tapestry of her life, of our lives. The sheets were so toasty, my father had shifted to a sleeping position that stopped his snoring, and everyone was sleeping peacefully. Still, something was nagging her, like the silence was too concrete.
There’s a certain kind of quietness that exists in this world unlike any other. It’s the total absence of sound, when any sort of buzz in the air has completely dissipated. There are no birds chirping, no hum of car engines, no gentle vibration that seems to coat everything in this universe. It’s the sound that existed before creation itself, before God himself had exhaled his first breath.
As she rolled out of bed for the second time, she walked over to our crib once more, her heart rate increasing as she crept towards us. She tried composing herself, insisting that all would be well when she made it to me. Perhaps she was just imagining things. The postpartum jitters of a new mother hadn’t quite worn off yet. She reached out, hands trembling, palms coated in worry as she placed them on my stomach and felt nothing. No rise and fall of my chest, no pulse. When I got older, she said that it was the single worst moment of her life. She lifted me from the basinet, placing my mouth near her ear for a few seconds to see if she could hear anything. But she couldn’t.
And then she started screaming.
By the time the ambulance arrived, I was long gone. There had been a terrible storm that night, with power lines and trees falling down all over the city. The local news station encouraged everyone to stay in their houses and off the roads. There was no way for us to leave safely, and a huge delay for any sort of medical intervention. My mother insisted that we try anyway, going so far as to grab the keys to our Volkswagen and try making a break for the car. Although my dad was just as perturbed, he was a pinch more composed. He knew that there was greater danger on the route to the hospital than in our home. He’d accepted my passing, so he knew there was no use putting the rest of the family in harm’s way. Still, my mom was adamant that we made a break for it. But the moment she opened the door, the ancient oak tree in our front yard snapped like a toothpick, and hurtled towards us. My dad yanked my mom out of the way, just as the brick and mortar encasing our front door came tumbling down. After that, he made the executive decision that we would wait in the living room until we saw the paramedics pulling up.
The room reflected the current state of affairs. The trunk and branches cut the foyer and living room in half. The family photos and heirlooms that my parents had so lovingly curated were destroyed. The wooden frames were smashed to pieces, their remnants carpeting the floor in fine splinters. Glass from their collection of ceramics mixed with the other debris, creating a collage of decay. Flashing red and white lights bathed us as they announced the arrival of the ambulance in the driveway. The ambulance arrived only to find a half-ruined house, and my despondent father holding Auggie, casually gesturing them towards the back door. As they came inside, my other brothers scrambling out of their way, they discovered my hysterical mother holding my body while on the ground, her face evenly covered with tears. Once they managed to pry my corpse from her, they checked my breathing, and confirmed what everyone knew; I had died.
As they prepared to take me back to the hospital, they allowed my parents to say goodbye again. My father used his one free arm to hold me, kissing my cold forehead, and Auggie latched on to my finger. My mother’s sobbing turned to muttering as she whispered Latin prayers and prayed the rosary from the ground. Climbing to her feet, she gave me one final squeeze, she was just about to hand me to the EMTs when she felt another heartbeat pulse in rhythm with hers. She thought she was delusional, wild with hope, fabricating things in desperation. But that changed once I started crying again. She was so stunned that she actually dropped me, but thankfully my dad’s quick reflexes managed to snag me mid-air.
At the hospital, the doctor who saw me suspected that I’d passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, which is uncommon, but not unheard of. As far as the catalyst behind my resurrection, that explanation was more evasive. Her previous patients included people who’d come back after dying for one, two, or even five minutes, but close to an hour? It was unheard of. I was dead for approximately 50 minutes. We ended up seeing specialist after specialist over the next six months, as my parents were terrified of something like this happening again in the future. Once the medical experts realized they couldn’t figure it out, they told us to not question things and go home. Besides, was it really so abhorrent to come back from the dead? Count it as a blessing.
The way my dad tells it, my mom didn’t care for the doctors’ glib attitudes and flew off the handle. She ended up taking (and landing) a few swings at the doctor nearest to her, as my dad dragged her out of the hospital. She says it wasn’t nearly as bad, she just “didn’t care for their attitudes, not one bit.”
The answers that we want aren’t always the ones that we receive.
***
On my second birthday, I was supposed to have a party at famed rodent funhouse and child casino, Chuck E. Cheese. Both sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and extended family were all invited, as were the friends I’d made in my “Little Guppies” mommy and me swim class. After last year’s incident, everyone really pushed for a celebration of life – even if I’d be too young to remember it. As my mom went to pick up the cake and balloons, my dad was tasked with retrieving me and Auggie from day care. After getting a last-minute phone call to grab some forgotten streamers, we headed back to our house as it started to rain.
It’s estimated that more than 50% of all car accidents occur within 5 miles of someone’s home.
A semi-truck pulling off of the highway began hydroplaning, and the streets became slick with water. As the driver struggled to regain control, he t-boned our car, causing the Volkswagen to flip seven times. A defective car seat ended up releasing me from vehicle and sent me flying through a window. I died. Again.
The next year, my eyes, ears, and throat, completely sealed after a bad reaction to chocolate. When I was 9 I was struck by lightning in a freak thunderstorm. 13 was my only “lucky” year, after several stray bullets careening towards my head ended up embedding itself in the brick outside of my bedroom wall while I was sleeping. At 16 I found myself in an alley, bleeding out after being stabbed in broad daylight by a total stranger. At 18 I was attacked by jellyfish on a scuba-diving trip. 21 greeted me with a severe case of rabies post-bat bite. This year, I had a heart attack.
***
When my parents began to notice the pattern, they changed. Quickly. The first of the year was transformed from this jovial, celebratory event, to a dreaded and frightening occasion. They tried keeping me at home, but I just ended up drowning in a shallow bathtub, or crushed under a previously secure bookshelf, or in a heap at the bottom of the staircase. They tried remodeling so that there was a room that acted as a bunker of sorts for me. They took out all of the electrical devices, eliminated windows, and padded the walls. I sat in there, the space cushioned by thick foam and white fabric. They didn’t realize that I was allergic to the material that lined the inside of the straitjacket I was wearing. The following year there a mudslide swallowed up the plush prison section of the house. An earthquake shook me to death the year after. It wasn’t until I was 10 that my mother and father acknowledged and accepted that there was literally nothing that they could do to keep me safe. The Grim Reaper was no longer this incredibly abstract concept, but rather, a figure with whom we were intimately, and achingly familiar.
Besides Auggie, my five older brothers handled my “disorder” with varying degrees of success. My parents said when each of us was born, they thought of one of the seven archangels. It was kind of cool, but also unsurprisingly difficult to get your kindergarten classmates to refer to you using an ancient, primordial Hebrew name. Instead, we all took nicknames:
Bart (Barachiel Balthazar)
Mike (Michael Constantine)
Gabe (Gabriel Pollux)
Uri (Uriel Lysander)
Nico (Jegudiel Nicodemus)
Bart was very much your classic eldest child; unapologetically type A, moderately anal, and the only one I didn’t really get along with. Where he was repressed and short-tempered, Mike was Bart’s antithesis. Patient, peaceful, and level-headed, he was one of the few I felt totally comfortable being transparent with regarding my experiences. We never talked about it in depth, but we didn’t need to. His was always one of the first faces that I saw when I came back. Gabe’s gift was his ability to speak. As the decided spokesman for the seven brothers, he was unofficially designated for negotiating with our parents. He was the one who first asked what was happening to me, if there was a cure, and what could be done to help. Despite this, his eloquence could easily slip into silver-tongued jabs that made him a bit of a jackass. He created chaos where Mike sewed peace. Gabe wasn’t malicious, just reckless. But for us, it was counted as iniquity all the same. Headstrong and impulsive, he was moved by the slightest impulse. Uri acted as the glue that held us together – something of a chameleon that was just as much of a reflection as he was his own person. Such is the burden of the middle son. He connected with Bart as intensely as he did me, and made a point of having specific bonds with each of us. Nico was achingly quiet, but an attentive listener, and I’ve never met anyone else with a moral compass that pointed north as strongly as his. That also meant he was a bit of a snitch growing up, but he grew out of that as we aged. I don’t think I ever saw him without a book in his hands. And then there were the identical twins: Selaphiel Augustus (Auggie) and myself, Raphael Ignatius (Iggy).
We were closer than brothers, closer than twins even, and I don’t say this flippantly. It’s not just that he would read my mind, or I would conclude his sentences, or we shared a secret language (although all of that was true.) We felt like a single soul that had been split into two bodies. It was to the extent that our own mother couldn’t differentiate between us. There was no “tell” that let anyone distinguish who was who. We walked the same, talked the same, and, before my accidents began scarred me, mirrored physical forms down to the matching moles on our left wrists. Almost everything we did, we did together. There were no interests or extracurriculars that separated us. A love of music meant we were able to create our own mini symphonies, with me at the piano and guitar, and him on the violin and theremin, or vice versa. It’s not that we held back for each other at all. It’s just that our hearts were naturally predisposed to echo one another. The only thing that dared separate us was my perennial cross.
***
I think I was around 6 or 7 when my parents and I had “the talk.” At this point, my brothers were cognizant of what was going on, but I hadn’t put all the pieces together just yet. Unfortunately for my parents, by that age I finally mustered up the courage to ask them about it. Why was I the only one who died on birthdays? Why every year? I appreciated my mom and dad’s honesty, as they very plainly explained that they had no idea why this was happening to me. My routine neurology, epidemiology, and pediatric visits were just one step they had taken. By now, they’d dipped into more unconventional methods of discovery. Psychics. Ghost hunters. Shamans. They were doing everything they could to figure things out. It wasn’t until I reached middle school that I finally noticed how they really dealt with my ritual deaths.
The process of dying takes a lot out of you, trust me, but at a certain point, it’s not easy to overlook how it impacts the people who are closest to you. In the beginning, the frequency of my parents’ fights tended to increase as my death/birthday got closer. My dad tried downplaying it as much as possible, just dissociating from what was an inevitable reality. Emotional outbursts were more my mom’s form of coping, as were hours upon hours spent in mass. But they got better year after year. The only possible way out might be through, and they’d need a united front for that. Bart generally checked out when my newest demise was approaching and came up with any excuse to not be home. Gabe tried making light of the situation, cracking jokes to help shift the dour atmosphere. Mike did what he could to keep me preoccupied, Uri got increasingly anxious, intentionally staying out of my way, and Nico tried his best to busy himself around the house. I was more resentful when I was younger, but as I got older, my empathy deepened. As far as I was concerned, there was no wrong way to respond to my predicament. How do you comfort memento mori incarnate?
But of all the ways everyone in my family felt, there was no one who felt more than Auggie. Since our first birthday, he’d always given some signal that the storm was about to hit. While I was drowning on our 8th birthday, Auggie was inexplicably vomiting up water. When we turned 14, he started feeling this excruciating pain through his abdomen. An hour later, a truck transporting steel beams made too wide a turn, the cargo flying everywhere. As I rode my bike on the sidewalk, one of the poles flew in my direction, impaling me straight through the stomach. 22 meant that meningitis ravaged my brain and body, while Auggie curled into a ball, crying as a migraine split his brain open. The pattern was almost always the same. Within an hour of Auggie’s first symptom, it was almost guaranteed that I would die shortly after. Once we all figured out that my twin’s pain was somewhat of an augury of my own, we acted accordingly. It wasn’t foolproof, but it’s everything we had.
Just because I’d come back each year before, there was no reason to think that the cycle couldn’t be broken. So my parents did what they could to minimize the outcome. If Auggie felt a pain on his left side, I was told to shield mine. The moment he complained of a stomach ache, I was denied solid food. It seemed extreme, but I figured that if it brought anyone the smallest amount of solace, then their comfort of mind was worth the behavior.
Every year, on December 31st, I would remind myself of the seven guidelines that accompanied these episodes:
I. Thou shalt perish at any given moment from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM on the anniversary of thine birth.
II. Thou art guaranteed to be resurrected at some undetermined point between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM the next day.
III. The relinquishing of thine life force during this allotted time is both inescapable and final.
IV. The specificities of death are unknowable. Every aspect of the instance shall be learned upon its manifestation.
V. Selaphiel is to alert thy mother and thy father upon the first forming of his harbinger pain, as a form of anticipation.
VI. The causes of death shall not be repeated from year to year. (Or so is decreed at this time, barring future occurrences.)
VII. Thou art not precluded from mortal wounds, should you fall prey to normal life-threatening situations on days beyond the accursed one.
At first, we tried holding family meetings to prepare. We’d go over what had happened every year leading up to the current one. My mom kept a tome that recorded every detail of my passings. How had I died? At what time exactly? Was I at home or out? Was I alone, even for a second? How long did it take for the ambulance to arrive? Was I driven to the hospital? What was the timeline for my recovery afterwards?
The seasonal storm came barreling towards us, towards me, and she would not be contained. When a hurricane is on its way, if you have any sense at all, you do what you can to escape. As humans, our instinct isn’t to leave with everything we need. It’s to run fast and run far, lest you too become a pillar of salt. Still, if you listen to any of those safety preparedness ads, you know that you should acquire flashlights, candles and matches, first aid kits, and non-perishable foods, among a host of other items. There are rules that can help guide your survival. But what are the rules for this affliction? Ultimately, what do you do when someone in your family is going to have the spine crushed? How do you get ready for the unavoidable moment when your son’s skull is fractured? Is there a way to navigate your brother seizing so violently that he flatlines? How do you make him safe? How do you prepare? Please. Let me know if you have a solution.
***
There are a few poignant moments between my loved ones and me that will forever be emblazoned in my brain. I remember my mom’s face when she saw the light going out of my eyes for the twelfth time. Few things are more devastating than seeing your mother’s heart tear to ribbons right in front of you. She held me close, and I breathed into her before waking up in a hospital bed. I remember Bart recoiling from my touch when I tried giving him a hug after my brothers gave me a present. They’d all pitched in to get Auggie and I brand new Game Boys. It’s all we’d talked about for months, but we were still so surprised that they’d gone out of their way to buy them for us. It was a few weeks after our birthday, as we were waiting for the blood poisoning from my tooth infection to clear up, and everyone knew that we’d entered the grace period. No supernatural harm was going to come to me at that point. There had never been an incident when my life, or someone else’s life, had been put in danger once the second midnight passed and everyone was able to release the smallest sigh of relief. When I looked back on the memory, I recall that, initially, Bart was right next to me as I was opening the packaging, turquoise and gold wrapping paper falling to the ground like the gossamer flesh of some magical creature. But somewhere along the way he ended up appearing on the other side of the room. My eyes lit up as I saw the Nintendo logo and box art. I ran to Gabe and Uri, almost vibrating out of my skin. But when I got to Bart and tried embracing him, he bristled. It wasn’t so perceptible that my parents or other brothers, barring Auggie, noticed, but being so physically close, I could feel it. We were never very attached to one another, but we weren’t enemies. The way his arms wrapped around me, they were rigid and mechanical, like a vice. I could tell he was suppressing a grimace, donning a mask that covered the true nature of his disdain. It was the first time anyone had looked at me and was repulsed.
***
There were rare occasions when I’d tried to explain my idiosyncrasy to friends that I’d deemed worthy of the information. In the 7th grade, I made the mistake of discussing it with someone who circulated it to all my classmates. Thankfully, everyone figured that she was lying, but after that, my mom and dad made a point to make sure I was more selective with the secret. I had one good friend who assumed I was joking when I first told him about it. He thought it was some sort of exaggeration, or that I just wasn’t a fan of my birthday. (In his defense, I’m not.) But he realized that my claim was far from hyperbolic when I flew back six feet into an oncoming commuter rail.
Later on, he told me that he’d replayed the moment over and over in his mind and it made absolutely no sense. I didn’t trip over anything, I wasn’t even walking when it happened. No one pushed me and the train didn’t fly off the tracks. We stood there, mid-conversation, and then I was flying through the air towards my death. Some people said that I jumped. Others swore that they saw the perpetrator who shoved me towards the edge of the terminal. When they tried to pull the surveillance footage, the cameras were offline for some odd reason. I didn’t see much of my friend after that.
***
Although we still hadn’t found a cause or antidote for my condition, there was a group of physicians who studied me over the decades. My parents weren’t satisfied with my first doctor’s suggestion that they refrain from looking the gift horse in the mouth. They needed some sort of explanation for the phenomenon. It’s a Herculean task for a mother and father to know that their child will be broken, and stay by their side for the recovery, time and time again. From a physiological standpoint, I’d been through an unbelievable cycle of pain, trauma, resuscitation, and rehabilitation. Although they’d examined me for what felt like eons, the doctors hadn’t made much by way of progress. However, they did make a few noteworthy discoveries that might’ve explained my resilient genetic makeup.
Neutrophils are the “first responder” white blood cells that our bodies dispatch when there are signs of infection or injury. We produce anywhere from 40-50 billion of these every day, since they only have a lifespan of about 24 hours. At my last check-up they said there were nearly 125 trillion of these cells in my bloodstream, and the sample they took confirmed that one particular group of these cells was at least seven years old. My skin produced larger amounts of elastin and collagen. My bone density was also higher than average, and my heart, lungs, and kidneys appeared to function at more efficient levels as well. They used their EKGs and cardiographs to Frankenstein together answers, assuring us that their team could come up with the solution to a problem that had no desire to be answered. As much as I think they wanted to help me, I also believe that they loved examining me. I was their Nobel Prize-in-waiting, an anomaly unlike anything they’d ever seen. Eventually, you grow numb to the constant poking and prodding. It’s hard to exist as little more than a curiosity.
Despite my inhuman resilience, my form wasn’t without blemish. The stress of regularly passing away was evident. My hair was going gray, and Gabe joked that at least now everyone could finally tell the difference between Auggie and I. But, of course, I dyed my hair so that we’d match again. Thick layers of scar tissue covered the majority of my vital organs. My bones ached from being shattered and fractured so many times, and I took multitude of preventative and curative medications. My parents had been forced to pay for more ambulance rides, coroner’s exams, and physical therapy sessions than you can imagine. They tried to be discrete about it, but I knew how much they’d sacrificed for me. I’m aware of the fact they’ve mortgaged the house multiple times, and picked up part-time jobs in an effort to create a “birthday fund” that might help cover some of the costs. As my brothers flew the coop and started getting married and having children of their own, I found out that they all sent my parents money to offset my cost of living. I’d crept past my mom and dad’s room late at night, my mom’s laptop illuminating the space as she frantically researches medical breakthroughs and famous priests that might keep me alive.
I know this will come as quite a shock, but besides the physical repercussions of my general inability to stay alive, I had psychological problems as well. We didn’t know if this was in response to my condition, if nature had a hand in it, or if it was all nurture. But I was suffering from generalized anxiety, panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and seasonal affective disorder that peaked, you guessed it, right around my birthday. And because I dealt with all of this, that meant that Auggie did too. Or maybe it started with him, before transmitting to me. It’s hard to tell.
***
Now you’re up to speed. Today is the 31st, and my plans are final. No one knows. Except Auggie. Always Auggie. He’s furious with me, and rightfully so, but dying is no way to live. There’s this pit in my stomach that grows deeper whenever I think about him trying to stop me, or even worse, if he’s hurt in the wake of my self-destruction. Considering how many times my parents have found me and watched as my life force was returned to my body, this shouldn’t be as big of a deal as you might think. But I can’t bear to imagine the clock striking midnight, and my corpse remaining frozen as a new day comes, held in my mother’s arms; she and I, a 21st century Pietà.
There’s not much of a future for me here. It’s hard to keep a job when you’re constantly gone for weeks or months at a time. Is it fair to raise children in a world in which one parent is an unwilling kamikaze? I could already feel Bart pulling away from me and I saw the toll that this took on everyone else around me. Financially, emotionally, psychologically, and physically, this was something that touched every single person I loved. If this were to be my curse, it would be mine and mine alone. I was so tired of the birthdays, the pewter gray hospital walls, the therapists, the tsunami of tears, the rehabilitation centers, the pills, the ambulance rides, my father’s helplessness, Auggie’s anguish. As painful as it would be to lose me, it seemed a bigger pain to keep me. Besides, it’s not like they haven’t had ample practice at this point. I’d been preparing them my whole life.
I have been a pawn of fate since the day I emerged from the womb. I’ve never had much of a say in whether or not I was allowed to hold on to my life. I wasn’t allowed to choose which doctors I saw, or decide if Auggie would be tormented for my sake. But this, this might be the one thing over which my control is absolute.
I have endured more in two decades than most people will deal with in their entire lives. At this point, I don’t question why me, or if there’s a way around this. Who knows, maybe the spell will be broken on my 30th birthday. But maybe my loved ones will be too. I’m exhausted. I have nothing left to give, save this final act. My sacrifice is far from completely altruistic, and I won’t pin the lion’s share of my reasoning on anyone else. But I stand by my right to untangle others from my web of death. The universe has always had a gun aimed at my head, the barrel locked and loaded. This time, I get to pull the trigger. So I take aim, and fire, the pills sliding down my throat. A few minutes later, I feel my pulse racing, my eyes clouding over with stars as I slide to the ground on the bathroom floor. Dizzy as I glance at myself in the floor-length mirror, my heart suddenly begins slowing down and I drift in and out of consciousness. My eyes are shut, but I still feel my stomach on fire, my head pounding like a war drum. I can see Auggie’s shadow underneath of the door. I can hear him softly wheezing. I can hear my heart stop. My last breath comes and it’s a sigh of relief.
I take a quick glance, but with my eyes closed, I start walking towards the blinding light in front of me. I embrace the warmth that’s there while I float in that space, drenched in bliss, bursting with ecstasy. Voices begin to fill the room, hands cover my body, and I’m flying through the air.
***
I finally open my eyes and wait a moment for my vision to adjust. Points of black cut through the white light and outline blue streaks directly in front of me. My eyes focus on the symbols as they begin form some ancient symbols, no, numbers. Both? Two seconds later I can read the clock in front of me: 12:00 AM, January 1st.
I inhale.