Short Story: eight hours

He decided that eight hours was enough; after that he would shoot himself. Jacob lived by himself on a farm in the Northern Cape - dry and vast, the landscape appeared lifeless, though the ground concealed bulbs, which would bloom magnificently after rain. Usually, when a migraine started, he would identify with the flowers - how, though he was now immobile and in buried in his pain, he would rise again gracefully - and in this fantasy he would wait out the suffering. Lately however, after his wife left him for the vibrancy of life in Cape Town, he began increasingly to wonder why he should bother, especially since the handgun in the safe promised such obvious relief. Setting a time limit to the pain gave him a perverse mental strength, and he visualized, in detail, getting up from the bed, walking to the safe, taking out the gun and putting it to his head. Specifically, he imagined the final moments: the coolness of the metal, the roughness of the grip in his hand; the shattering sound; the delicious release of pressure.

To Jacob, the pain seemed unending; his entire being fought the pain in his head. For minutes that felt like hours, he sweated, curled up like a foetus. The problem he realized, was that his mind was drawn, almost masochistically, to the pain - what he felt he was fighting was the nature of his own mind. His carefully constructed visualization helped, his brain would divert for short stretches. At other times he tried a different approach and concentrated on the pain itself: with an effort of will he would try to locate its source, and sometimes the pain would differentiate into spots of greater and lesser pressure - he felt if he could 'figure it out' it would cease, but the pain would soon overwhelm him.

Later in the afternoon, unaware of the shadows lengthening outside, or the geese scratching expectantly nearby, or even to the slight chill entering the air, he thought again of suicide: he thought of a picture he had seen of a monk sitting cross-legged and serene, while his whole body is set aflame (as a protest against the occupation of Tibet). In that picture he believed he could see clearly that suffering was directly related to ego: the monk's mental skills at handling pain, a result of his humility, self-sacrifice and non-attachment. How different his suicide would be! He thought of the character in the novel Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse, who, obsessively mired in his own thoughts, also sets a limit to his suffering, deciding his life should end at a certain age. He thought of the suicide in Paul Theroux's novel, Chicago Loop, the character gradually destroying his own ideal life. How perfect that both novels circle around a single self-obsessive character ignoring, fearing, or shutting out other people, except those who serve their desires.

As the eighth hour drew closer, he again focused in on the pain. Once more the pain differentiated into variable spots. He concentrated harder and detected a slight pulse to the areas of pain, which in the negative awareness of his aversion, he had been oblivious to. Once again, his concentration wavered, but seeing the slight differences gave him a hope for a final difference to come: it suggested to him that the pain would eventually end. He gave up his thoughts on suicide and soon, with the migraine gone and with even the memory of the pain fading, he arose from his bed. Walking outside in the approaching twilight, the world seemed refreshed; the air felt liquid, velvet and cool on his skin; the sun was half-concealed and the moon, already visible, was just about full. He lay in the dust - a grain of sand in an immensity of sky - and made plans for the future: huge, beautiful, expansive, wonderfully conceited, plans, for the future.