THE LOGISTICS

  • 04 Jul - 10 Jul, 2020
  • Mag The Weekly
  • Fiction

As many reasons as there are to kill yourself, there are just as many reasons to fake your own death. The reason is the easiest part. Pick one. Losing your job, losing your lover, losing the cap to the toothpaste; they’re all extremely valid reasons to disappear. The whyÊisn'tÊthe hard part, the hard part is the where, when, and how. Truly, planning how to kill your self is certainly more difficult than actually killing yourself. Whether you’re preparing for a wedding or a suicide; the logistics will always be the death of you.

For Celeste that had already been decided. The pristine and fully-furnished beach house that she purchased on impulse with her first series check had been vacant for years and was just begging for a little drama. An hour drive in her cherry-red convertible brought Celeste to the main entrance where she casually entered the gate code and coasted to the semi-circle driveway. The exterior had been repainted twice since she had bought the property. The semi-gloss coating went from powder-blue, to sun-kissed beige, and back to powder-blue, all at Celeste’s request, even though she had never physically been there. Often Celeste wondered how she had ever managed to make her life so complicated, and furthermore, why anyone actually complied with her requests.

The tabloids called her high-maintenance, hard to work with, and very difficult.

The beds of her six-bedroom/four-bathroom Barbie Beach Mansion had never been slept in. The nautical curtains still hung crisply from the floor to ceiling windows and the hard wood was so polished that her designer sandals squeaked on the chestnut flooring of the main foyer. The maid Celeste paid to maintain the property had opened the crystal-clear sliding glass doors to let in the ocean air. A nice gesture, but CelesteÊdidn'tÊplan to be around to accommodate the maid for her extra effort.

After shooting on location in Ireland for nearly half a year the Pacific sea breeze was somewhere between refreshing and nauseating. Inhaling the natural sodium of the California air, Celeste wondered if maybe her sudden unsettled stomach had less to do with her choice of setting and more to do with the half-stomach full of prescription pills she had popped like rainbow Skittles during her road-trip.

The tabloids called her potion addict, party-girl, and a total mess. She surveyed the individual rooms of the house. Having viewed them online from her laptop while she was in Europe, seeing their details in person was drastically less impressive than the guided video tour had led her to believe. Celeste brought her pouty pink lips into a smirk. If there was anything she had learned from her experience in the entertainment industry, it was that video often lied. Talking pictures could be edited to tell any story. They could make any angel into a demon.

Coral lines formed in the sky as sunset approached like poetry. With the where set in stone, the when of Celeste’s plotted demise was still up for debate. The orange and pink in the sky was getting darker, and seemed to speak to the Celeste like the kind of painting you would only see hanging above a toilet. Sunset it would be.

The sand was colder than Celeste had imagined it would be when squished between her toes at the bottom of the deck. With the when and where decided, it was really only a matter of how. There were still plenty of tropical coloured pills in her bag upstairs, knives in the kitchen, fresh linens that could be twisted into navy-blue and off-white coloured braids. The twin bed sheets with the little anchors in the spare bedroom would make quite a fashionable hanging rope, she thought. But no, Celeste had chosen her private beach house for a very specific reason, and as she watched the strong waves pound furiously on the shore the ‘how’ became more and more clear. Celeste had never been much of a writer. Her expertise was seeing the words on the page, memorising them, and bringing them to life when the camera rolled. The right starlet, in the right location, at the right time was the type of lightening in a bottle Celeste knew how to capture. For her most recent scene, she just needed the perfect script; the right words to make her audience miss her when she was gone. She wanted tears. She wanted apologies. Then, she would return. The paper crinkled under her hands as the wind blew smallÊtornadoesÊof sand over her bare feet. Celeste could hardly believe herself that after the millions she has spent on her footwear alone, she was about to pretend to dieÊshoe-less. But, she had been told the most worthy sacrifices were often made in the name of art. Pulling the pen from her dress pocket she scrawled in exaggerated bubble lettering. Her words were short enough to fit multiple mediums; the caption of a black and white picture or an epitaph on a tombstone.

With her final thoughts completed, Celeste got to her feet and sunk into the moist grains for a few seconds before setting her sites on the ocean, prepared to create the illusion that it had swallowed her whole. Tucking the letter into an envelope, she wedged it between the railings of the wooden steps, and then walked slowly towards the roaring waves.

This was about to be her finest theatrical moment. But, somehow, in all her planning, the one thing Celeste had not accounted for logistically was the power of an unforgiving undertow combined with a stomach full of muscle relaxers.

The tabloids called her reckless, unbelievable, and dead. – Anonymous

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