Jesus Lives in Colorado (standard:Psychological fiction, 4768 words)
Author: echoesmyron	Added: Jan 07 2005	Views/Reads: 3384/2306	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
After his girlfriend's suicide, a man contemplates his own life.

Jesus Lives in Colorado 

She had ended her life in the same fashion that she had lived it,
quietly. Gathering a clean bath towel and a magazine, she walked 
towards the bathroom. Blowing a kiss to her boyfriend just as she was 
closing the bathroom door. The water was flowing at a fast pace and 
felt to be just the right temperature. She undressed and lowered 
herself into the tub. It was an old claw foot tub; she had chosen the 
house almost specifically for the old bathtub. The razor that she used 
to shave her legs was overlooked for her boyfriend's razor instead. He 
wholeheartedly believed that the best shave could only be achieved with 
a straight razor, the kind that one would imagine old barbershops used 
in a long ago, forgotten time. She had always assumed that her 
boyfriend used the razor because of his fascination with things that 
were not modern. Even the computerized self-checkout at the supermarket 
imposed a certain degree of paranoia in him. She thought that he was 
just silly, although she admitted to herself that sometimes he made 
perfect sense in his unwillingness to accept new things. She had 
recently found herself unwilling to accept new things. Opening the 
razor forced her to think about her boyfriend and smile. She stared at 
the razor for a short while. She made up her mind and slowly, but 
forcefully slid the blade against her right wrist. The pain was not as 
bad as she imagined that it would be. Realizing that it was easier than 
she thought, she proceeded to slice the left wrist in the same manor 
that she had sliced the right one. A momentary feeling of 
accomplishment swept over her followed by dizziness and the 
uncontrollable urge to drift off to sleep. She didn't fight her fatigue 
and instead settled down into the tub until her head gave into the 
force of gravity and the welcomed pull of the water. Looking up from 
under the water towards the ceiling was the last thing she saw. 

It had been a month since he had found his girlfriend in a bathtub
filled with her own blood, and it had admittedly left quite an 
impression on his fragile mind. The first thing that he noticed about 
her was the serene expression on her lifeless face. A lot of his time 
was spent on questioning her motives, and the police who had arrived on 
the scene had even questioned his for a moment. He was cleared as a 
suspect almost immediately, but he still remembered the way that the 
officers glared at him when they first entered the bathroom to find him 
soaked in her blood and bathwater while he was cradling her body like 
an infant. It was shock that caused him to act that way. "Anyone would 
do the same thing", he thought to himself. He was just trying to save 
her; He had no way of rationalizing that she was already gone. He had 
just seen her two hours before. She even blew him a kiss. 

Now he was alone in the world, that's how they had become so close.
Aside from each other, they were both alone. They had shared an 
understanding and familiarity with each other as if they were two parts 
of one person. Now all of that was gone and he would live or die, he 
felt as if he couldn't control either option. The grief that he felt 
was unbearable and he cried daily. For the most part crying and 
drinking had occupied the past month of his life. Despair had seemed to 
settle around him and soak into his pores; he couldn't scrub it off of 
himself if he had tried. If one thing was certain, he had tried. He had 
stopped working the day after it happened and never went back. He would 
never go back. Working was for the living, and he felt as good as dead. 


The one thing besides her actual death that was a mystery to him was why
she had shown no visible signs that she was planning to kill herself. 
Why would she hurt herself? Especially the way that she had chosen to 
do it. She was terrified of needles and had no tolerance for pain of 
any sort. If anything, she was over cautious when dealing with 
situations where pain could be a possibility. Perhaps she had gained 
that quality by spending so much time with him. He hated doctor visits 
and was terrified of even having blood drawn. 

Unlike her, he did not trust people and thought that the majority of
those around him were inherently bad. Or at least they thought bad 
things and would not hesitate in doing bad things to others if the 
chance should present itself. He knew that he was a little crazy but he 
figured that everyone was in one way or another. She, on the other hand 
had always been over trusting and outgoing to strangers. 

He had given up the house soon after the incident and it was put on the


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