The Final Treatment — A Short Story

Clay Williams just wants to "unalive" himself, and fortunately, the government is eager to help. His dark dream, however, quickly becomes complicated when it's time to commit the deed…

My hold on life was but a stitch. I'd watched it unwind, each tender sliver of a thread slowly twisting away until they flattened like curls forced between the jaws of an iron. 

I no longer wanted to live flatly. The 2-dimensional screen of my reality, ever warping and compressing, hadn't drawn or written anything beautiful for me. Looking around the hushed, off-white reception area, I glimpsed similar blandness in the still sea of faces.

Nothing roused these sleeping souls. Somnolence betrayed their decay in the droop of their faces and the hollow gleam of downcast eyes. Sometimes, when I looked at my fellow species, I wondered if I was the only living one among them. The people before me resembled corpses who, perhaps by means of necromancy, possessed a shape and suggestion of natural life but none of life's luster.

Face after face, and it was the same mold. Baking stencils with a general outline and no filling. Such as these couldn't afford the dignity of feeling miserable; they'd been robbed of that capacity. Life had snatched it from them like Dr. Vita was about to snatch the beating of my heart.

"Excuse me."

I looked to my right at the young woman beside me. Her energy and posture suggested an unusual intensity. It was enough to give me pause and silence the deluge of thoughts sloshing in my mind.

"Yes?"

The woman pointed down. "Your shoe is untied."

I glanced at it and saw that she was right. I shrugged and stretched out my foot, letting the loose lace dangle.

"Thanks for telling me, but it doesn't really matter."

The woman nodded slowly. "I guess. But it's better to go out with your affairs in order, you know?"

"I should probably have bigger things in my life to worry about than shoelaces, but I suppose you're right; best to die tidy."

She didn't say anything else for several minutes. Despite this, her presence, an insistent pulse of aliveness cloaking her, warmed me. Maybe she was just socially anxious; perhaps that was why she had chosen to die.

"What's your name?" I asked, turning to her.

I hadn't spoken to a female like this in ages. 

"Eva," she answered simply, avoiding eye contact.

Yep. Definitely socially awkward.

"Good to meet you," I said. "I'm Clay."

Eva nodded in reply.

I cleared my throat. "Well, uh, why are you here?"

Eva's gaze finally slid to mine. She wasn't particularly attractive; she'd probably been passed over by men for better catches her entire life. Maybe this accounted for some of her anxiety.

"I'm here to die, like you."

So short and frank. 

Like her life and mine.

"Well, yeah," I said. "But why?"

Eva shook her head. "You don't know me. Just because we're both about to die doesn't mean we have to pretend to care about each other's motivations."

"You cared about my shoelaces," I pointed out. "Why can't I care about you?"

Eva snorted. "What is this, a last-minute booty call?"

I sat back in my chair and blew out a breath. "I don't know if you've noticed, but this isn't really the most romantic place to get down to business."

I caught the twitch of her smile in my periphery.

"If I tell you why I'm here, will you tell me why you are?"

Eva's mouth tightened with consideration. "I suppose."

"Thank you." I clasped my suddenly trembling hands and forced myself to drift back to the origin of my misery. "I guess I have a lot of reasons, but my top ones are..." I laughed, feeling a bit stupid admitting it. "Not really having a future. I'm not my grandparents or parents; the world is different now. I'm never going to get married like them. I'm never going to have a family. Why would I even want to, with the way things are anymore?"

I couldn't immediately pinpoint why this was all spilling out, like every thought I'd ever harbored in my head had condensed into those core insecurities and shaken loose from my soul. Eva probably thought less of me for it.

Why do I care what she thinks? 

I supposed this was my pre-death confession; someone had to hear it. Judgment awaited me after the needle's inevitable release of poison, and I didn't need a human being condemning me while I was still alive. In that moment, I simply required a compassionate ear in which to relinquish my staggering self-loathing.

For a moment, Eva was quiet. Her thin shield of hair guarded any reaction to my breathless admission. When her voice finally cleaved the stifling silence, it emerged tensely, a whisper woven in gray threads of remorse. 

"I wish I had a reason like that."

I looked at her more closely, tracing the gentle slope of her full cheeks and rounded jaw. Indignance flared in the nostrils of a nose that was entirely too large for her face. Nearly all of her features appeared like a haphazard assembly of disjointed parts. There was no harmony. 

In a way, she looked a lot like my sister. My sister, like me, had elected to take her life, but she was braver than me; she'd taken it herself, making her own grand exit from the mortal fold. No one had manipulated or convinced her to believe her precious breath needed stopping. 

Eva's soft face couldn't resurrect my sister, but it sufficiently stirred the memories I'd toiled long and hard to settle. 

"What is your reason?" I asked gently.

Eva paused, the hesitation followed by a sharp little laugh. "You wouldn't believe me. That's how dumb it is."

"Try me."

She shrugged. "I'm just not really interested in living anymore. I tried so long and hard to always be a good person, to do something with myself, all that stuff... it never paid off."

"What didn't pay off, exactly?"

Eva waved her hand dismissively. "Doesn't matter now."

I touched her shoulder. She looked at me, a glimmer of interest igniting behind her deceptively placid eyes. "Maybe it matters more than ever."

Eva's lips parted as she mustered a reply. 

"Clay Williams?"

A nurse's smiling face popped out from behind the far doorway. Clipboard and file in hand, she beckoned me beyond the threshold that I would never again cross as one of the living. 

I cast a final glance at Eva and swallowed the writhing eddies of regret. "Please be sure of yourself before you do this," I urged her.

It was the least I could do for the poor soul.

The nurse maintained her white-toothed grin while leading me to the second waiting room. There, I would be briefed on my procedure, sign my final papers, and wait for Dr. Vita.

"Go ahead and have a seat, hon."

A reclining chair gently accepted me, and the nurse handed over her clipboard, still smiling.

"Last time you were here, you were briefed on the Facilitating the Unaliving of Challenged/Crestfallen Individuals Treatment."

"The FUCCIT program," I said, nodding.

Her grin never wavered. "Correct."

"Well, all my stuff is in order now, so I'm ready to go."

She passed me a pen, setting my file aside on the counter. "Wonderful. Now, as a reminder, this procedure is permanent—"

"Assisted suicide, yep."

The nurse grimaced. "I'd prefer if we kept the language a bit gentler, dear."

"I'd prefer if we kept it precise."

Another tight expression crossed her face. Apparently, that statement wasn't very gentle, either.

"You're scheduled to be unalived at 15:00. Dr. Vita is finishing with another patient right now and will be with you shortly." The nurse tapped my clipboard. "Please write your final signature of consent, and I'll pass that along to the doc."

This gave a whole new meaning to signing one's life away. 

I tried not to shake while penning my name, but the letters dragged. The nurse started to tap her leg, lips pinching as she watched me. As soon as I finished, she snatched the paper.

"Thanks, dear!"

She hurried off, letting the door click softly behind her. Now it was just me again.

"Like it's always been," I sighed into the blank space.

Couldn't they at least decorate it to make this process a smidgen more inviting? Hospitalized euthanasia was all good and well, but it didn't need to feel like dying in a hospital.

A poster on the door caught my eye.

"COMING SOON: LIVE-IN UNALIVING! PASS AWAY IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME."

I smirked. "Nothing too comfortable about the communal studio apartments, but I guess if I wanted an audience..." I laughed darkly and leaned back in the chair. 

Only a few more minutes.

Though I tried to stave off the thoughts and memories, they, like my many missteps and squandered opportunities, inevitably found me again to gawk and taunt me.

My sister, Tracy, lying peacefully in her bed... dead. 

Why? What pushed her out of the land of the living?

"You never talked to me," I whispered into my pale prison. 

She'd been too wrapped up in her social media and promoting her artwork; she'd always slaved and hustled to generate excitement over her paintings, portray herself as a legitimate artist… as if her wonderful work couldn't speak for her. Meanwhile, I'd been wrapped up in my own excuse for a life. Living selfishly had caused us to exist in separation, divorced from familial obligations and love.

"I hope you're happier now, Trace."

My grip had tightened on the chair’s armrest like my fingers were trying to squeeze blood and breath back into the still silhouette of my sister's empty body. 

I was among the worst of brothers.

Eva also came to mind. I wondered what she was thinking about in that reception area as she awaited her turn on voluntary death row. She could be crying, I supposed, or silently processing my warning.

Please be sure of yourself before you do this...

I thought back to Tracy. She and Eva weren't so different. Both projected a profundity one didn't encounter in the general populace, like they were more spirit than body. Their fleshly husks, sheer clothing, scarcely covered their underlying beauty.

If I thought long enough about it, I could drag back bits and pieces of things Tracy had said to me.

"You're so afraid to live, Clay. You complain about not getting women, being unable to carry on your bloodline, and not being able to do this or that." 

I remember her pounding the kitchen table in her apartment, not with anger, but with a passion she needed to physically release to illustrate her point.

"You live in a prison that you built, and I'm tired of feeling sorry for you when you refuse to step outside it. Why don't you just try?"

To that, I'd replied something about the world ending and there effectively being no point in trying with anything. That had really ticked her off.

"So, you were given the gift of life, and you're going to squander it because... why? Nothing matters, and this is all just an elaborate game?"

I don't remember what I said after that. Ironically, it was me following her choices instead of the other way around. My sister, who'd urged me to hang onto my life, was part of my inspiration to surrender it.

My gaze wandered again to the door, where I noticed another poster. This one featured a doctor standing beside an open casket, grinning with a hypodermic needle in hand. The man in the casket held up a thumb, also smiling, beneath a bold font slogan: "Just say FUCCIT!"

I sighed. No decorations and no decorum.

I wondered how many pending deaths in the waiting area had signed up for this out of sheer boredom and nihilistic exhaustion. So tired from the grind, they wanted only to grind their heartbeats to a halt. It hadn't taken much for Dr. Vita to recommend this treatment to me; only two weeks ago, during my annual check-up, she'd noticed I didn't look especially lively and commented on it.

"What's troubling you today, Mr. Williams?"

"Oh, you know... the usual. Life is just a little boring sometimes."

Her eyes had brightened as she took my blood pressure. "Really? Can you tell me more, please?"

I hadn't even said much. I told her I was feeling generally lethargic and somewhat detached from things, and I expected the typical follow-ups: "How's your diet? Should I take some blood? Have you been sleeping and exercising well and regularly?"

Instead, she asked, "How would you like to end that suffering, Mr. Williams?"

I remember the vivid lash of horror against my heart at these words. I couldn't recall the last time it had pounded so fiercely. 

"Suffering?" I whispered. "I... I'm not really suffering. I'm... tired, that's all."

"Mm-hmm." Dr. Vita jotted something down in my file. "And that's a perfectly valid reason to partake in the Facilitating the Unaliving of Challenged/Crestfallen Individuals Treatment, or FUCCIT program, Mr. Williams." She'd flashed me a serene little smile with the same perfect teeth as everyone in the clinic. "One small fee and one little jab, and you're good to go."

"I..."

I'm hesitant to believe this is real. Is this where society has fallen? 

"Is this what my taxpayer dollars go to now?" I finally choked out.

Dr. Vita chuckled and patted my shoulder. "We know it's a bit of an unconventional treatment plan, but none of our patients have ever complained. They've all been quite satisfied with the results."

Sentences like that didn't allow much room for reply. 

"How long has this been a practice?"

"Since early last year. That's when we started trial runs."

Trial runs. This was a theme park ride to her.

The memory caused the air in the waiting room to plummet a few degrees. Shivering, I drew tighter into my sweatshirt and fired nervous eyes at the clock on the counter. 

Six more minutes.

I noticed my file sitting in front of the clock and decided to peruse its contents. I'd been using this clinic since I was a young adult, so it had been charting my poor decisions for some time.

"Patient shows significant nutritional deficiencies," I read quietly under the ceiling's fluorescent glare. In another column: "Exhibits traits of depression and anxiety." I snorted. "Well, this is uplifting." 

I stopped at the column directly beneath it. 

Family: Tracy Williams, deceased—FUCCIT, trial successful.

The file slid from my fingers. 

"FUCCIT... trial run?"

But Tracy had taken her own life; I was the one who stumbled on her body in the veil of night. I was the one who saw the way moonlight shaped her into an ice carving under its freezing white glare. It was her bottle of pills at her bedside with the poetic note, emptied out, just like her flesh...

My sister couldn't have participated in this program because she'd clearly ended her life at home.

I have a lot of questions for you, Vita.

The minutes clicked away. My thoughts accelerated into a gallop. Tracy's gentle face filled the etches of my mind, and then mental snapshots of her cold body... and then my arms around her, still warm and living, desperately holding her as if I could revive her with my affection.

And then Eva. 

"Eva."

Her name was not yet a dead woman's. She wasn't Tracy. And I— 

"Good afternoon, Clay!"

Dr. Vita strode into my private thoughts, shooing them out with a gust of honeysuckle perfume and a too-bright snap of luminous teeth.

"How are we today?"

My grasp on the chair hardened.

"What happened to my sister? To Tracy?"

Dr. Vita's brows furrowed. "What do you mean, Mr. Williams? Tracy Williams is deceased."

"Yes," I said quietly, retrieving my file from the floor. I slapped it down on the counter. "From your suicide program, apparently."

Dr. Vita glared at the file and pulled it away from me. She set it behind her and began preparing her hypodermic needle, infusing it with the death agent.

"Well? Are you going to explain that?" I snapped.

Dr. Vita grinned, putting a pink acrylic-tipped finger to her lips. "HIPAA," she whispered.

"Don't "HIPAA" me," I snarled. "Why did you kill my sister?"

"Ugh." Dr. Vita flicked her half-empty needle and held up the dry vial drained of its euthanasia fluid. "Didn't she make sure this was stocked?"

"Answer me, Dr. Vita."

Her disinterested eyes grazed my way. "Can't talk about it, Mr. Williams. I'm afraid the patient requested privacy in this matter."

"That patient is my sister," I hissed, "And now she's dead. Tell me why you took her life or why she wanted to take it!"

Dr. Vita shrugged. "Suppose there's no point in hiding it now. She said she didn't feel like you loved her anymore. Since you were her only remaining family, she didn't want to live feeling that way, and paintings weren't a suitable substitute for human connection. So, I offered her the trial run for the FUCCIT live-in unalive treatment, and she requested that it be staged to look like a "proper" suicide; assisted dying made her feel insecure—lesser—and she desired authenticity, too scared to do things herself." She gestured to the poster on the door. "Artists, am I right?" Her easy, empty smile returned.

I swung my legs off the chair and made unsteady contact with the floor. I started to back away from her, the wild-eyed doctor and her starving grin, and cupped the doorknob with my right hand. 

"Oh, we're not finished, Mr. Williams. You can go ahead and let go of that door now."

Dr. Vita's voice strayed toward something of a snap. I shook my head and twisted the doorknob to the music of a low growl in her throat.

Can humans even make sounds like that?

"You failed your sister; don't you want more than ever to die, Clay?" Dr. Vita hissed. "Doesn't that make you want to fall on something nice and sharp and never wake up?" She raised her hypodermic needle, half loaded with poison, with the same smug demeanor as the doctor in the "Just say FUCCIT!" poster.

Oh, she was terribly right about how I felt about myself; the kiss of rigor mortis in my slackened cheeks would have made for a lovely one, indeed, but...

"Eva..."

Tracy.

One living, one passed on. Both were sensitive souls who, like the soft-hearted stars of old, could no longer cope with a hardened, dying world. A society spiraling into collapse would never support them, never love them, and warm their chilling hearts as it hurdled toward implosion, but...

I lurched out of the office. I sprang away from death and the madwoman's crumbling humanity, that leering expression of hunger and hatred seething from her pretty face.

Funny that it was always the pretty ones.

I found Eva's face in the reception area. She sat hunched over herself with her elbows on her thighs and head grasped between her hands, but she straightened when she saw me. No one else looked my way.

"Eva," I cried, crossing the clinic in three strides. "Please don't kill yourself. These people are predators."

Eva cocked her head, her uneven hair—funny, I hadn't noticed it before—angling awkwardly to one side. "I know they're predators. I know they just want my money, and I know they want to reduce the number of "useless" people in this world, Clay Williams," she said softly. "But I just don't care."

"That's not true," I objected. "You do care. You care more than other people do, and don't give me that look; I know you do. Besides, Eva, what about your life? The things you wanted and never had or did? Are you really so willing to discard all that?"

Come on, Tracy, don't give up on me this time. I'm here now.

Eva's gaze flickered with darkness. "It's too late now, Clay. I'll never be what I wanted to be, and that's fine. Really, it's..." A sigh swept from her chapped lips, which I also hadn't noticed before. "Fine."

I wondered how much I had missed in life in my emptiness, like my suicidal brethren huddled around the reception area.

With my stomach churning, I extended my hand to Eva. "Come with me. Let's go, go do something else."

Eva shot a distrusted glance at my hand. "Why?"

"Because we're still alive, Tracy."

Her brows drew together. "Tracy?"

"Clay Williams."

My nurse had returned; she did not look pleased.

"Your appointment is still on if you come with me right now," she said tersely. "You can still say FUCCIT to everything, Mr. Williams, but you need to come with me."

Scowling, I stooped to tie my shoe. Then I stood and gripped Eva's hand. "How about this? Ever heard of FUCCYU?"

The nurse's eyes sharpened.

"Excuse me?"

I pulled Eva to her feet and drew her under my arm; we moved toward the clinic door.

"In case you're wondering," I called on my way into the sunlight, "That's not an acronym; just a message from me to you."

We left. Even with the cold grief I carried over that threshold, I carried something else, too—rather, two somethings.

One was clarity. The other was a girl beautiful in her own right.

All in all, not such a bad life.