They call me The Archivist. I abide at the periphery of life, pen in hand, archiving the departs. Periphery is my home and the only place I exist, on the borders, far away from reach, whereas archiving is nothing more than my job. I do not take much of a keen interest in the archiving of these departs, yet my job requires me to be vigilant and cunning in how I do it, and therefore, I have gained expertise in the field.
Death, my oldest companion, visits often while I archive. He sits by the hearth, pale—the moon might shy away from his paleness—hands folded, eyes empty as holes.
To chronicle death is not morbid; it is to catalogue the sincerest form of human freedom, oftentimes I tell myself, oftentimes though, I despise my job.
Some drink poison, some fold themselves into rivers, some cede to gravity, yet, I have noticed, all of them keep their mouths open – almost like newborns, however, they yearn for their first breath while they wait for their last.
The manner of one’s death is the final metaphor the soul dares to write. The man who dies alone in a cabin dies a metaphor of isolation; the woman who jumps into the sea, pockets filled with stones in case she might surface back, dies a metaphor for burden and surrender; the boy who steps between strangers in a subway and takes a bullet that was never meant for him, dies a metaphor of impulsive bravery; the addict who overdoses in a gas station bathroom, dies a metaphor of escape.
I record all of these metaphors, but mostly suicides, metaphors of surrender and guilt. The Archive is filled with such peculiar endings and metaphors. Some leave letters scrawled in their languages. Some leave their will. Some leave nothing at all. That itself it a metaphor in its own means.
They ask, in their trembling philosophies: Is it wrong to unmake oneself? Is it a sin to vacate a burning house if the architect is cruel? Those who condemn suicide mistake the cage for a cathedral, I tell them.
I have watched kind men and gentle women crumble beneath the years. I have seen laughter eaten away by invisible worms until even the memory of joy is a foreign tongue. I have seen humans make such unmistakeable flaws and I have reminded myself countless times to not judge. And so, I do not judge. I witness. I record.
For if no one listens to the last breath, then did it ever truly pass from the lungs?
I visit at twilight most often, and almost always I forget to knock. I stand in the doorway with my tilted head and offer no words of comfort, of course. If I were to offer these ‘words of comfort,’ wouldn’t I be a human myself—incapable of recording in my Archive. I would be fired from my job, ripped from all my necessities, and thrown on the streets.
People, as I carry them, have told me that I smell like iron and rain. I try to smile as them, provide them with a slight grin, but the smile never formulates on my face. Instead, I’m left staring at them hopelessly. Someone, once, foolish from wine and solitude, asked me: Why do they go? I answered, “Because even stars tire of burning.”
I have Archived for years at least by now, yet I see patterns, I always do. Patterns in how these metaphors are displayed and how these humans, these stars, extinguish their flame. Some do it the traditional method. They call it “the quick drop and the sudden stop” for some reason. I’ve watched the victims sway gently from the ceiling beam. At first, their legs kicked—tiny, almost embarrassed kicks, like a man shaking rain off his boots. Then their toes flexed in longing for the floor, trying to grasp the ground that they surrendered in the notion of never stepping foot on again. The rope bites into their neck, the skin swelling pink, then blue, then black like rotting fruit. It takes about four minutes to die this way. Four minutes of slow grinding silence, where the world squeezes your voice to nothing. A common instance I’ve noticed from this method in suicide as a whole is that the body begs for life long after the mind has resigned. Their eyes bulged not from pain, but from betrayal. The body does not understand why you have forsaken it.
The freefall. Freefalls are the most overwhelming to look at. There is a moment, exactly one second after stepping into air, where the human soul screams for mercy. Not out of regret, no. Out of pure, animal astonishment. Raw terror. “I have done it,” they think. The fall itself is a long, sick prayer. Limbs flail without meaning. Eyes open wider than they ever did in life, catching the rushing earth in their final gaze. Most don’t die instantly. Bones shatter like porcelain. Organs rupture with the soft sound of crushed fruit. It’s the broken ribs that pierce the lungs and drown them inside themselves. They die of this pain, the pain that gnaws them hollow, only then do they die.
Pills are the coward’s wish and the romantic’s fantasy, I deduce and I witness and record. The cowards lay on the bed in an attire perhaps too fine for the occasion. They gulp it swiftly. Some take a moment’s hesitation, but they are in the Archive, and it means that the bad side of the reasoning took over them. I don’t visually notice anything on them – no guilt, no remorse, no pain. Only longing. First comes nausea, then shivers, then the mind frays slowly. Colours blur, breath stutters. And only then do I notice a faint feeling on their face – pique. They think the pill isn’t working fast enough. Death is not graceful, I try to tell them, even for those who try to dress it up. Death is a punishment for seeking solace from Life in a way that you depart from it completely. It is the punishment. Death is not the absence of Life, it is the punishment of Life. And punishment means suffering. We die as beasts, perhaps punished beasts, no matter how we perfume the grave.
It’s the poet’s method, this one. The careful slicing of the wrist – down the river, not across the street. But blood is shy. At first, it only beads up in petulant little droplets. It takes time and coaxing, the heart slowly losing faith in itself, and it slowly releases that no matter the amount of blood it pumps, it just drains out the other way. The skin peels back like paper; veins open reluctantly. They often fall asleep before the end. It is the gentlest way to be forgotten by oneself. The riverbed dries slowly. The stones remember each drop. The softest of punishments, yet just as aching.
Fast. Brutal. Cowardly, some say. But honest, I think. They sit with the barrel trembling against the roof of his mouth, where bone thins to almost nothing, where the pressure from the metal of the gun might pierce some skin without attempt. Their thumb taps the trigger and I see it, the last flicker of doubt. Then, thunder. The skull does not shatter cleanly. It folds, collapses inward like a broken nest. The mouth splits, teeth spilling like dry seeds across the floor. Sometimes, the body remains sitting, head bowed in permanent prayer to Death. When the soul flees the cage, it leaves the door swinging open behind it, I deduce once again. I remind myself that my job is to witness and record, not judge, but even I am not empty of these human emotions. Even I deduce every now and then.
The living never stops feeding me, my deductions, and my Archive. Well, once they enter my Archive, they are officially no longer living.