The Saddest Note Ever Written

This note was passed to me from the adjoining cell, penciled in a deliberate fashion as if by someone standing before a strong wind and knowing the time was coming when he could hold out no more.


"Please help me to commit suicide. I'm never going to see my family again. After twenty hellish years, I see faces in my mind that no longer exist. Has my wife taken with another man? Does she spread her legs for him, forgetting me and finding comfort in another's desire? My children are grown now but did my absence twist their lives? Are they still seeking a father who never was?

"I have no more defense against the haunting questions of the night. Like lead weights tied to my feet they pull me under the water, drowning me in despair. My body is rotting from within, scabs forming on my skin for me to pick at in all my lost moments. I grow uglier by the day. In that sense, I'm glad my family cannot see me. I am an ugly truth no one must see.


"They have re-purposed my life to make little rocks of big ones. I am nothing and nowhere. What I should have been I will not be. Just more and more of this living death as bile creeps up from my belly in self-revulsion. Whether it serves justice or not, this is my fate and I send out my prayers to the grim reaper for escape. I have no other appeals - and what appeal can a soul have when starved of true love?

"My lying brought me here and I used my lies to stay afloat. Lies of hope, lies of escape. But feeding myself those lies only cemented my life in this cell of cement. Shaking the bars merely shattered the bones to stiffen my hands. Never will I know what their true purpose should have been. A poet or plumber, a preacher or porter - who am I? Nothing but a creature twisting in the night begging for relief from demonic interrogations that never end.


"I am faceless here. Am I not a mute when no ear chooses to hear my voice? To whom do I scream as claws of terror rip me in two? I wish the world to die but it's happening too slow. I have seen the true face of mankind and it's made of stone and steel, the humanity is gone as their lies split a chasm from reality and they too find themselves trapped and doomed on an unlivable planet with no place left to go, spending the rest of their lives searching for a place that does not exist.

"They're coming again...with their pitiless pitchforks and mocking grins...knowing they always win...I no longer remember rest...the sandman puts hot coals on my eyes and burning lava down my throat...What have I done?...What have I done?"